Yes, I know, I’m writing this article a day late.  It was a busy day for me and I’m going to take the lessons of today and use them in a post.  See, then it all ties in together.  Now work is fun and fun is work, but its not work work because its fun.  See?  Well, it made sense in my head.

Anyways, there is only a week left before Christmas and the weights of stress are falling across all of our shoulders.  I am lucky, and have a fiance who is adamant about getting things done ahead of time.  The only things we still have to do now are mail out Christmas cards.  Well, I am also waiting on a couple gifts for her to show up in the mail and I need to buy one more thing.  But that’s not stress worthy.  Most of the gifts are done, the house is decorated and if there was a little bit of snow on the ground it would be feeling a lot like Christmas.  The other part of Christmas that’s needed is company!

Chances are, if you’re able to see family on Christmas some of them will drive you crazy.  Terrible jokes, questions about the choices you’ve made in life, judgments, or shitty gifts.  There are many things that those you love bring to the table.  But what about that other group of people, friends.

When we make our Christmas plans we try to bring our second family into it.  The family of choice.  In the last couple weeks we have had more people stop by our house than in the last year combined.  No matter how often you may talk to these people on Facebook or Twitter there is still hours worth of conversation to be had.  Get some drinks (alcoholic or non) some snacks, turn on background noise and don’t make any other plans for the night.  Have your friends stop by and just talk.  This is much cheaper than going to the bar when you want to get away from your family.

Maybe you can even make something of all this.  Do a gift exchange, take pictures.  Or if you’re like us record some podcast episodes. (Pizza Games Zombies East Coast edition anyone?)

With all the chaos in life, and especially now, don’t forget your friends.  You don’t want to be an old man or woman all by yourself in later years because you didn’t work on your relationships.