Three to four years back I think, I came up with the idea of “The 25 Days of Scrooge”. Over time I came to realize that my favorite Christmas story is “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. A classic tale to so many, and many would likely agree with me.

Due to its classic-ness, it’s been adapted to plays and movies and TV specials many times over since its first release. Surely there’s at least 25+ variations.

Thus “The 25 Days of Scrooge” was born. The idea being that every day, starting on December 1st, and ending on Christmas day, you watch at least one available version of the story.

I have never fully completed this challenge, because let’s be honest, that’s a LOT to go through and by the time you get to Christmas day, you’d probably be saying “Humbug!” to the idea of watching any more of the story. That said, I do hope to actually achieve this one year.

A year with a pandemic would probably serve as a pretty good chance, however I have also been extremely fortunate to have not had my day job affected, and I don’t always have the best time management skills, so it’d still be a challenge to get a viewing in every day. I would not be watching/listening while doing my job.

More typically, what I’ll do is focus and watch my favorite versions rather than enough to fill 25. Below are much of my favorites, in no specific order except the first one because the Muppets.

• Muppet Christmas Carol
• A Christmas Carol (1938)
• Scrooge (1970)
• A Christmas Carol (1984)
• Scrooged
• Scrooge (1951)
• A Christmas Carol (2009)

I consider myself pretty fortunate in that I don’t usually have weeks that I feel need to post about, however it feels due this time around. I’m going to be sparse on specifics because it is all work related, and no need to betray confidences there.

Last week we had a parting of the ways with one of my coworkers, as he had put in his two week notice and everyone went on their way on good terms. However, they were not able to finish up all of the tasks that they started, despite best efforts. Due to this, the task of finishing these tasks up fell on my shoulders.

I’m not against that, by any means, but it still put me in a hard spot. I was knowledge transferred as best we could in the time provided, but in all reality, you’re never going to be able to “transfer” all knowledge needed for a given task. So I still lacked a lot of familiarity, especially around decisions made and previous conversations had for the tasks.

Take that, combine it with at least one of the tasks being WAY larger than anyone managed to anticipate, as well as trying to handle my own usual client workload, and I am just mentally drained right now. The worst part being is that I still don’t have most of the tasks over the proverbial finish line.

We also have a very contentious Presidential election going on right now, which is helping no one with any levels of anxiety and stress. I am both glad for the weekend, want it to never end, but also can’t wait for Tuesday when this damned election will finally be over regarding time to vote, and final tallies calculated. I seriously don’t want to be talked to, reminded about, or nudged regarding anything about voting for at least a week after Tuesday. I say that because you know, the 2024 election campaigning starts Wednesday…damn it.

I’m mentally tired, I’m generally physically tired, and I’m ready to just shut up and turn my brain off till at least Monday.