The Get Ahead bunch is wrecking Christmas
No wonder we get anxious as the holidays bear down on us, Shane Watson writes.
The husband thinks my pre-Christmas anxiety is off the scale. Oh come on, you may be thinking. The cookies will get done. Relax. Chill out.
But you would be missing the point, which is the steady creep of Getting Aheadedness. My lowlevel anxiety is not, it turns out, some First World neurosis, peculiar to women of a certain age.
It’s an entirely justified response to the hyper-organized army of people (mainly women), who are making Getting Ahead the new normal.
These Get Aheads have moved the goalposts, and you are now toast if you don’t play by their rules, or that’s how it feels. You used to score points for spontaneity, throwing last-minute parties and shopping in lastminute sales — the Get Aheads have ended all that. They booked a twinkly pre-Christmas lunch with the family months ago. (No room at the inn for the losers who only thought about it last week). They got tickets for the hot show on the day it was announced.
The Get Aheads have confirmed Mexico at Easter, and the cottage for next August, and the one after that. All the things you might think about in advance, they’re thinking about three months before that, six months to a year if they’re otherwise underemployed.
Wouldn’t it be nice to head off to that new boutique hotel for a last-minute weekend? Nope, the Get Aheads have got that block-booked until the middle of 2019.
Like the look of those boots?; Sorry, madam, but they all went to Get Aheads, you’ll need to be quicker than that. The Get Aheads are getting in our heads, speeding up life, so that even if everything is great, that’s no longer quite enough. Your new worry is what you could be missing out on in the future if you don’t stay one step ahead.A Get Ahead would have known to book a place to stay for the wedding as soon as the invitation landed, as well as a train ticket when it was cheap.
Get Aheads do not get caught napping.
And “I didn’t think about it early enough” is now a bit like saying: “I am past it.” Getting Ahead is catching because the alternative is getting left behind.
Only, once you’ve sorted one future problem you just move on to the next and the next and the next.
It’s not healthy, it’s not lifeenhancing, and it’s not fun. It can kill the fun altogether, especially if you start trying to pin your friends down to a plan a year in advance, and then get angry when they won’t commit.
The cure, maybe, is a return to first-come first-served. You can’t book. You can’t get a table until all of you are there. It’s not how Get Aheads like to do things, and boy it feels good.