Man, December 2021. I remember staring at that Virgo monthly horoscope and just shaking my head. They were talking about Mars energy, demanding perfect execution for year-end projects, and generally making it sound like we were going to be stressed out of our minds trying to maintain some sort of calendar-perfect holiday season. Wellness? Yeah, right. I thought, “These astrological folks talk a good game, but surviving is the actual goal when you’ve got deadlines and gift-wrapping to deal with.”
I decided right then I needed a plan. Simple stuff. No fancy retreats, no expensive organic smoothie powders—just practical, almost rough-and-tumble tips for staying alive when the holiday season turns into a pressure cooker. But let me tell you why this whole wellness thing became less of a nice-to-have and more of a life-or-death mission that year. This wasn’t about avoiding a holiday ten-pound gain; this was about avoiding a full-on mental breakdown.
See, December 2021 wasn’t just busy with my regular work crunch. It was the month my landlord decided to absolutely lose his mind and ruin my life. I had been squatting in this amazing, rent-controlled apartment for seven years, never a late payment, and suddenly, he slapped me with an eviction notice. Not a standard one. A nasty, hostile, ‘you have 30 days to clear out everything including the memories’ notice. Why? Because his idiot cousin was moving back from Phoenix and needed a cheap place. Pure, unadulterated greed and a total abuse of power.
I called lawyers, I pulled up local tenancy laws, I argued with the building manager, and suddenly, my entire December—a month when I should have been wrapping gifts and drinking cheap mulled wine—was spent packing boxes, fighting legal battles, and trying to keep my freelance design projects on track. The stress levels? Forget the roof; they went through the ionosphere. I was eating instant ramen for dinner and breakfast, sleeping maybe four hours, and my usual Virgo fastidiousness turned into pure rage and debilitating anxiety. That horoscope wasn’t wrong about the high demands, but the source of the demand was unexpected chaos, not just ambition or holiday cheer.
The whole mess was insane. I was carrying around a briefcase full of legal papers and a backpack full of half-packed clothes, bouncing between coffee shops to use the Wi-Fi. It all compounded. I remember getting a call from a client, demanding a revision, while I was literally standing in line at the post office trying to send my Christmas cards—which, by the way, I had managed to write out in a manic, sleep-deprived five-hour session. I almost threw my phone across the room. It was that moment I realized I had to stop the external noise and just focus on the absolute basics to keep functioning.
My Rough-and-Tumble Wellness Protocol
I realized if I didn’t establish some non-negotiable routine, I was going to crack in half. So, I literally wrote down three stupidly simple rules on the back of an old receipt and forced myself to stick to them, no matter how many boxes I had to tape up or how many times that slimy lawyer called me.
- The 15-Minute ‘No’: My first step was building a wall. Every day, from 6:30 PM to 6:45 PM, I committed to sitting on a specific cheap folding chair—the only thing I hadn’t packed—and staring at the wall. No phone, no emails, no packing tape. I called it ‘The 15-Minute No.’ I practically dragged myself there, muttering obscenities the whole way, but the sheer discipline of stopping everything for just 900 seconds was a lifeline. I tracked this religiously in a cheap notebook I found. The rule: if you miss it, you add another five minutes tomorrow. That kept me honest.
- ‘Real Food’ Test: I stopped pretending I could cook a proper meal. I switched my goal. Instead of aiming for ‘cooking,’ I aimed for ‘one real thing’ per meal. This meant I went to the store and bought pre-washed salad, or maybe a block of cheese and an apple. If 80% of my meal came from a package (like those awful shelf-stable noodles), I demanded that 20% be something unprocessed. It was a miserable, minimal effort, but it kept the scurvy away and stopped the total junk food spiral. I’d open the fridge, grab the apple, and chew it with exaggerated force while reading the eviction papers. Small wins taste like bitter, sweet rebellion.
- Hydration by Spite: This is the pettiest one, but it worked unbelievably well. I decided that the landlord was not going to win by making me sick. Every time I felt that dry, tense headache coming on, I poured a huge glass of water and literally told myself, “He’s not worth the dehydration.” I attached my fluid intake to my anger. By the end of the month, I was probably the most hydrated, stressed-out person in the city. I drank water out of pure, unadulterated defiance, logging every single glass. It was water with a vengeance.
What was the final outcome? Did I magically find a new, perfect apartment and win the lawsuit? No, of course not. I ended up moving everything into a storage unit and couch-surfing for January and half of February, and the legal drama dragged on for ages. It was a disaster, a total failure in the traditional ‘winning’ sense of having a smooth, happy holiday.
But the practice itself? That’s what I learned to respect. When I looked back at my notebook, those 15-Minute ‘No’ sessions were the only times all month my heart rate actually dropped below ‘panic.’ I realized that the horoscope wasn’t about perfectly managing the holiday season with presents and parties; it was about perfectly managing my personal resources during a ridiculously stressful month. The Virgo in me needed to create order out of the external chaos, and since I couldn’t control the landlord or the courts, I controlled the stupid chair, the apple, and the glass of water. That was my practice. I survived the month, and I delivered all my client work, even if my home address was temporarily a five-by-ten-foot storage locker.
That year taught me that ‘wellness’ isn’t some fluffy concept only for vacation time or when things are easy. It’s the bare-bones, ugly structure you build to keep you from collapsing when the world hits you with a two-by-four. Now, every December, when the calendar starts filling up, I don’t look for complex diets or yoga retreats. I go back to that old, cynical routine. I find my 15-Minute Wall, I make sure there’s ‘one real thing’ on the plate, and I drink water with pure, concentrated spite. It works every time. Don’t let the busy season or the slimy landlords win; stick to the basics and just stay in the fight.
