Giving Gifts is Better Than Getting Gifts

December 6, 2024


Although I am really bad at it (especially in real life), I love giving gifts. I would say that giving gifts is my "love language", except love languages don't exist. I will come up with any excuse to give someone a gift.

On the other hand, I hate getting gifts sent to me by other people, and I don't know why. I don't hate the actual gift, but there is so much anticipation leading up to it. Anticipation is good and fun, but the problem for me is that there is too much anticipation, to the point where it becomes stressful.

This happened to me this morning. I saw an email in my inbox, and I knew exactly what it was going to be. But I didn't want to open it. So I avoided it, and kept avoiding it. However, at the same time I felt "hey, maybe I should open this".

So, I started slowly and dramatically moving my mouse towards the email, like this was a video essay about to reach the climax. But then I would quickly move the mouse away, focusing on some random window, distracting myself in the Windows settings. This would continue for about an hour.

I eventually decided that I was going to open this email. I had work that needed to be done at the computer, and my phone was at 43%. So, I clicked the email and walked away. The thing was that if I came back to my computer (which I would need to do) I would see the email once I signed back into Windows.

So after about 20 minutes I come back in. When I logged in I saw the email, but only the header. So, I hesitated a little more. I eventually set a 1 minute timer, and forced myself to look at it once the timer hit 0. So I scrolled down and then immediately shifted my focus towards the bottom left corner of my screen, and proceeded to do all my work in that corner for 15 minutes, ignoring the email the entire time.

I want to be able to receive gifts, I love it. Every digital gift I have received is stored as a slideshow on my lock screen. But it's just so hard and stressful. Sometimes I carry out this process for an entire week.