More than you could ever know...

For my family, Christmas time started soon after we finished eating all of our Halloween candy (which was usually the day after). This may sound early to some, but considering the fact that we spent many a Halloween in snow boots and parkas it seems fitting. Besides, there were five kids in my family. We had to get our letters to Santa early because this was a big stop for him.

After the sugar high settle from our ghoulish festivities, our attention turned to the TV. You see back in the “olden days” we didn’t have Roku and Apple TV and DVRs. We had no choice but the watch commercials. Which was a good thing because they provided us with a plethora of Christmas gift ideas to add to our letters to Santa.

Growing up our parents taught us to be independent and to develop our own interests. And nowhere was it as apparent as in our Christmas lists. There were five of us, and our age difference spanned more than twenty years.

By the time I was forming memories, my oldest brother was already graduating from college. I have no idea what his list looked like.

My oldest sister had all the big ticket items on her list, like 35mm cameras and equipment, and jewelry.

My youngest brother had all the nerdy stuff covered, microscopes, computer games, chemistry sets.

My youngest sister had the longest list. Whatever she saw she wanted. Her list at times was three pages long.

I was the artsy crafty one. I got paint sets and art crates and macramé projects. And clothes. I always got clothes. We all got the basics for Christmas: underwear, socks, t-shirts, pajamas, sweaters. But my clothing haul was always bigger than everyone else’s. And I loved it cause I love clothes.

Somethings never change.

On Christmas morning, our house looked like a department store exploded and all the wrapped presents landed under our 9 foot Christmas tree in the living room. My Dad had the exhausting pleasure of handing out gifts and then taking out big black garbage bag after garbage bag full of used wrapping paper and boxes.

As we got older we graduated from seeing our potential gifts from Santa on TV, to seeing them in the Sears catalog. (For those of you who don’t know what the Sears catalog is, ask your parents). This opened a whole wonderful word for writing our Christmas lists. Here things weren’t limited to what was popularly merchandised and commercialized. In this book was everything anyone could ever imagine, or so we thought.

Picking what Santa would leave us under the tree somehow got more difficult with this book. There were so many options. Soon we clued in on something that would help. Santa used a formula. If you didn’t follow the formula, your Christmas could be disappointing.

First there was always one big ticket item per child. For example, my youngest brother asked for and got a computer. Then we would each get two or three mid range items and several educational gifts, like books and puzzles. There was always tons of family friendly things, games and activities we could all do together throughout the year. Always got the undies. There was always a bunch of other things we got that was fun filler. We gave each other gifts, which could be from the list or totally off the grid. I usually went off the grid. And Santa did as well.

Every year Santa left each of us a gift or two not on our list, specifically tailored to each individual personality. Those gifts were special. It meant that Santa was truly watching us. One year I got a Game Boy and cartridges, and another year Dungeon and Dragons books. Both of which I still have today.

And that was pretty much how the system worked until we became young adults.

As we grew up our lists got shorter and shorter, except for my youngest sister. Her list seemed to get longer each year. And each gift on the list got more and more expensive. Some of the last presents I got from “Santa” included a sofa and a microwave. And of course underwear. At this point I made the deduction that my oldest brother had probably been on this sort of “present plan” since I was a toddler.

Then one year after we had all entered adulthood it stopped. Instead of presents we were each handed an envelope. We were told to use the money to buy whatever we wanted for Christmas. The only thing we had to do is to let our parents know what we bought. And in one fell swoop the Christmas list was killed off. Instead of our parents picking and choosing and shopping, each of us had the autonomy to pick and choose and shop. If I saw it and wanted it, I bought it. Merry Christmas.

No list required. No pre-thought needed. No sticking to the formula. No undies.

I didn’t have to think about what I wanted every year. I had no planning to do. I could just go with the flow. It may sound silly but that’s when things started to fall apart. Not having to write a Christmas list every year, not having to sit down and think about what I wanted bled into other aspects of my life.

I’m an organizer. I make lists and plan and deduce and execute. But here I was learning that I didn’t need to do that. I mean Christmas still came without a list. I still celebrated without a list. So life could go on without making lists.

For several years I’ve been going with the flow, doing whatever jobs come my way. I’ve been letting other people dictate what is happening in my career, both on stage and off. And what has happened is I’ve been in a string of less than good artistic situations. That’s not to say they have been lacking of talent and vision, for the most part, but that they’ve been at best lateral moves and at worse giant steps back for me. (If you’ve been reading the blog, you’ve read about some of them).

I’m not where I want to be and not having a plan is why. I’ve not sat down and definitively said what it is that I’ve wanted to do, where I’ve wanted to go. I’ve not done it for quite some time now and it’s taking its toll on me mentally, physically, and emotionally. I’ve only just realized that failing to make a list, in terms of career advancement, is failing for me. 

So this New Year’s Eve I’m going to sit down and write out what I want to do with my career, where I want to be and how I’m going to get there. I’m going to write a list, a Christmas list, if you will, filled with all the presents I’m going to give myself in 2017. It’s the only way to get what I desire: plan.

My siblings and I are full grown adults now. The family has exploded exponentially with wives and children and grandchildren. We live in different places. We no longer exchange presents unless we are physically together celebrating Christmas. Otherwise it’s just too expensive and exhausting. Yet when we do celebrate the holiday together guess what we do. We make lists. How else are we to edit the myriad of things available to give each other as adults?

The principle is the same in a career. How can you decide the best course of action in getting what you want without actually knowing what that is?

I encourage you to join me in list making. Sit in a quiet space. Think about where you want to go in your career and your Life. Decide where you realistically want to be in five or ten years and make a plan to get there. Work backwards from that point in the future, from that Tony award in ten years, to today. Write down what you need to do every year, every month, every week, and every day to make that goal happen.

And then do it.

That’s what I’m going to do before this holiday season ends and throughout the new year. Then next year at this time I’ll be my own Santa. I'll check that list. I'll see that I followed the plan. And I'll have given myself the present I wanted: a career on track to achieve my goals. Then after I buy myself some new underwear, I'll truly be able to say I got...

"All I want for Christmas..."