Wednesday 14 December 2011

The Eight Stages of Creative Gift Giving


1. Make a list of people you want to give gifts to. Add a few more because you're just a dripping with generosity. Ignore the fact that in a few months you will have to mass produce personal, meaningful, and hopefully inexpensive bits of wonder that you've harvested from the depths of your soul.

2. Realise that Christmas is 6 weeks away so you might want to get this process moving, if you want to avoid finishing the gifts for people on Christmas day/in January. You shudder slightly and divide your list into "must gives" and "maybe gives".

3. Take an afternoon and surround yourself with inspiration. Get you coffee or whatever and start thinking. Last year you shot a little too high and ended up not even making most of the brilliant gifts you thought of. This year, try to think up something that is both mass producible AND personal.

4. After hours of research into how much book rings and card stock paper cost en mass, settle on the MOST BRILLIANT CHRISTMAS PRESENT IDEA THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN!!!!!!! It's funny and personal and can be made cheap enough to send to every single person on your list! You are a genius my friend! Revel in the fact that all your friends are probably going to be asking you to make more of said gift to pass on to their friends! You might even become famous! (You feel slightly guilty about obtaining fame from something that is supposed to others-focused, but you don't mind too much.)

5. Begin production. It takes hours of writing and rewriting, making and remaking, thinking and rethinking, but you don't mind in the slightest because you are CREATING! You are forming little bits of love to give to all of your favourite people and they are just going to melt with gratitude!

6. Continue production. Okay, this is taking a little longer than planned. You start to wish you could do something different today. You start kind of disliking your once brilliant gift. You've already watched an entire season of Doctor Who and you're mad they changed the actor to that skinny, dorky guy so you have nothing to pass your time with.

7. Give. You finally wrote the last note, curled the last ribbon, and addressed the last package. You stare at your mountain of presents, ready to be sent. You should feel happy and satisfied right now but you don't. You start picturing people's faces as they open them and you project your current feeling of dislike for the gift onto them. You hear them say "Uh, thanks! This is really, um.... neat."and are flooded with insecurity and a little bit of self loathing for thinking such a dumb idea was going to turn out well. You consider burning them all, but you've already told some people to expect a spectacular gift from you and there's no way you can think of something better at this point. You drive, wincing, to the post office and drop them all off, swearing that you'll never create again.

8. Take heart my friend! You might feel like poo right now, but I'll bet when you wake up in the morning tomorrow you'll at least be happy it's done. Then some people will start getting their gifts and thanking you and tell you in a genuine, honest tone of voice that they really like it. You might not get famous, but you gave something to every friend you could think of, and went only slightly over budget, and Heck! That's something to be proud of! Happy Holidays!

2 comments:

  1. Delightful. I was laughing so hard I almost woke up the baby. We received said gift today and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was so proud in fact that I showed it to my housemates beaming. And don't worry the "skinny, dorky guy" grows on you.

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  2. I loved it! I sat on the floor in my room after all the festivities were over and read through the whole thing. It was hilarious and personal and exactly the sort of thing that I cherish from the Sharps.
    And the above writing was super funny. You make me and my brother laugh a lot (he's a fan)

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