Christmas Shopping and Editing

I went Christmas shopping today.  One thing you should know about me is that I actually hate shopping.  No, this isn't something that most people would assume, seeing as how most women do.  But what I hate most is Christmas shopping.  The crowds, the noise.  You can never find exactly what you want, and sometimes you don't even know what you want.  By the end of the day, you're tired, cranky, certain no one is going to like their gifts and broke.

Today was certainly no different.  I found myself growing grumpy when we could find presents for one year olds, and presents for three year olds, but do you think we could find one for a two year old?  Everything was either too old, too young, or far far too expensive.  It made me miss the days of a tub of play-do making kids happy, even if I was one of those kids.

If that wasn't bad enough, then there was the fact that we didn't even end up buying all of our presents because we honestly didn't know what to get a couple of people.  Meaning that we will have to go back out instead of being completely done...

So why am I telling you this when I'm supposed to be talking about writing?  I have always maintained the editing was my least favorite thing to do in the world.  I avoid it at all cost and usually manage to put it off far longer than I want.  Today I got up thinking about how I could avoid editing for even longer because I would get to go out Christmas shopping, and surely that was better than editing, as I hate editing so much.

I have to admit that I was wrong.  Christmas shopping is not better than editing.  By the time I got home I was wishing that I had spent the day on the computer getting some editing done.  (For the record, I got absolutely no editing done, and I probably wont.  This blog post was a last minute thing and didn't even manage to make it up for the deadline...I'll do better next week I promise!!)

That's got to say something about shopping, when I spent the day wishing I could be working on my book rather than trying to figure out what everyone wants.

For the record, my characters are now complaining about how I ignored them today.  As if I never give them attention.  Thankfully critique group starts up again next week, and I can forget about Christmas for a couple of hours while other people rip apart my writing.  It'll be awesome!!

I guess I just have to learn how to balance my life better.  In November I got lost in the writing, so now I'm rushing to finish everything for Christmas.  Next year I'm going to have to figure out a way to not completely ignore real life during November so that I'm not stuck trying to do it all in the early days of November.

I think I'll just do all my shopping online next year...