Santa’s seeing red

I swear I wasn’t going to, I was so sure this year I can beat it and manage to simply pick up a few sensible and decent Christmas gifts, without losing a lot of time and my minds in the process.
The day started out so well - a quick trip to pick a video game for my son, no sweat, easy-peasy. Done. And a quick in-and-out at the mall. There’s not much I really want. I know exactly where I need to go. I’m good!
Well, I’m old enough to know better. It doesn’t work like that. Once you set foot inside the damn place there’s no quick escape. You’re done.
Don’t imagine I managed to buy all those lovely presents and everybody’s going to be happy. I didn’t. But God knows I tried.

With the bearish markets and the need to hodl, no way I was going to spend a lot of money on the usual crap. But still, a board game for the boy would be nice. Good luck with that - took me half an hour to look at dozens of games, all freakin’ expensive and I wasn’t going to spend a lot of money on a game that is only meh!
By some stroke of luck, my eyes landed on David Walliams' new book. That’s it! I’m buying it, even if the boy won’t be exactly thrilled. I just want to get out of the bookstore…
To think that would have been a good moment to run for the exit, only I wasn’t smart enough and another two hours of my life where wasted looking at crap.
The trouble is there’s so much stuff on display and you end up hoping you can find something that’s both nice and reasonably priced. A select few items were already on sale - surely I can find something. Maybe over there in the back, maybe in the next store. I just need to look hard enough! The trouble is the brain goes into information overload and you cannot keep track of so many items and so many prices. Even comparing doesn’t work anymore. If something looks expensive in the first shop, the same price becomes normal when you go into a different store, after one hour it’s starting to look like a really good deal…

The good influence of the many sensible people on this platform did help in the end as I decided that looking for a goddam winter coat for my daughter is stupid. Come January all that crap is going to be on sale anyhow… we’ll look for something then. It’s just Christmas, not the end of the world!
I’m getting out of here… that and the fact I was exhausted… one more store and I’ll just drop dead…
I feel like a total failure. Once again I got lured into the shopping madness, just another zombie aimlessly wandering through the maze, looking at all the tinsel decorations, lulled by the festive music, hypnotized…
The good part - I survived and I didn’t murder anyone in the process, although I came quite close!

Thanks for reading