The day began about seven a.m., with Dad waking me up to ask if I was going to church. I told him no and was barely waking up by the time they got back.
Today we added more lights to the house, and prepared the Christmas cards. Mom made them, but we had to address the envelops, fold the letter that goes inside, and stuff them. Personally I find it a lot of work so we can tell people I barely know all about our lives. Then again, Dad doesn't use his Facebook so I suppose he has to exercise his vanity somehow.
Then we piled into the car to buy more lights at the hardware store ( w h y ), mail the cards, and use a coupon. Because that's totally how thrift works. And you wonder why our house is packed. On the plus side I got them to buy me books I wanted, which is an independent goal but if I can exploit Christmas to make it happen so be it. Knowledge is a higher value than tradition.
On the subject of values, we spent the evening watching television because of course we did. Watching television seems to be a terminal goal of Mom and Dad's, but it's not one of mine. Sitting in front of the TV is not a fundamentally enjoyable experience for me, so their constant insistence that I devote several solid hours to it every day that I'm at home is less than appreciated.
I suspect the issue here is agency. Watching television is not an agenty experience. You watch characters who aren't terribly likable make bad decisions for an hour. Then you watch the next episode. While I enjoy certain programs, the experience does not generalize for me, not the way that, say, reading does, or YouTube. In both cases, I have greater control over the subject matter (I have little say in what ends up on the perpetually-full TiVo), and at all times I have the option to stop and do something else.
At this point in my life, I have extremely little agency, considerably less than my parents. I can understand why they might enjoy watching someone else do stupid things. I, on the other hand, spend enough time struggling against other people's bad decisions which I can't control in my day to day life, without injecting it into my consciousness. If I were to make a family activity of it, board games would be a much more enjoyable option. (It also allows for conversation, which watching television does not.) But our tables are all to messy for that.
Speaking of which, I wonder if anyone ever picked up the avalanche of papers that happened during our television watching session. I already did it once today; it's someone else's turn.
