thank god we don't have light sabres

“day 19: your thoughts on your family”

Oh, you know, they’re my family, gotta love them, blablabla. There’s clearly two sides to my family though: The cool, laid-back, more humane side; and the anal, controlling, judgmental side. The interesting thing is that within either group, not all of the members are related by blood, and not all of them necessarily grew up together either, so it’s really neither nature nor nurture (say that six times fast). It’s usually OK, and family gatherings are usually large enough and/or involve enough booze for the two sides to generally avoid unpleasant outcomes, but A) there’s always one who has to completely fucking ruin it for another, and B) by the end of the night, avoiding unpleasantness has become so exhausting that the only solution is to sit in a corner far away from everyone and just drink, which means there’s always a hangover to deal with the next day (and that in turn is more unpleasant if you’ve had to travel to attend the gathering and are staying/expected to brunch with members of the opposing faction the next day). Living very far away from anyone actually makes this much easier to deal with most of the time: It’s pretty easy to let a nasty email go unanswered, duck out of a Skype chat going bad, or check caller ID before answering the phone if you’ve already had a bad day and just aren’t in the fucking mood, and when you’re stuck on-site, the trick is to be vague about your plans while there, so that when it starts to be too much you can fairly easily pick up and go visit someone else. The times that you really miss the side you’re close with it sucks though.