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 My primary Writing.com blog. |
 Prompt #39: What's your favorite kind of gift to receive? What kind of gifts do you think are overrated? My favorite kind of gift is one of two things: either something that's either very intentional or personalized... or cash/gift cards. The gifts that I think are overrated are the things that are given without much thought, even if the value of the gift is considerable. Since I tend to buy myself the things that I really want, cash and gift cards are always appreciated (as long as, in the case of a gift card, it's to somewhere general like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, etc.). I know a lot of people think they're impersonal, but I actually appreciate the consideration of, "Hey, I didn't know what to actually get you but here's some money for a place that you like to shop and I hope you're able to buy something that you're really excited about." And I do very intentionally associate my gift cards with the person who gave them (I try very hard not to just toss them in a drawer and forget about them for months at a time). I'll also try to send them a note whenever possible. "Hey, just wanted to know that your Apple gift card is going to help pay for the new MacBook I'm saving up for. Thanks so much!" For all those reasons, I think gift cards are actually a great gift for someone like me, who doesn't exactly maintain a year-long wish list of things I'd love to buy but for whatever reason haven't yet. I also really love personalized or individualized gifts, where it's clear there's thought behind it. There was one year at work where it seemed like every time I was in a meeting, I was fixing someone else's screw up, predicting problems that people would ignore only to have that prediction come true, etc. And, like, YES, that's my job most of the time, but it was a particularly notable span of several months where it was happening so often that other people were noticing. And in my department that year, my coworkers got me all kinds of themed gifts: a "Fixer of Everything" name plaque for my desk, a work notebook that had "All the Things I was Right About" printed on the cover, a mousepad with a dumpster-fire on it that said, "Everything's Fine" ... I loved it because they were amusing gifts that said, "Hey, I see you." The same goes for people who put thought into where the gifts come from. "I know you're really into D&D right now, so I bought you this sourcebook that seemed cool." Or, "You always talk about how into Formula 1 racing, so I got you a gift certificate to a racing simulator." Even if it's something that isn't a perfect match to what I would want for myself, the fact that someone put thought into it makes it special. At the other end of the spectrum are gifts that don't have any thought put into them. My wife's family is famous for this, where their love language is gift-giving, but it's not so much what the gift is, as much as it is the fact that a gift was given. A few of the family members will literally go to the bargain shelves at a bookstore or order a bunch of stuff of the Amazon "lightning deals" page without any other family member particularly in mind, and then wrap everything up and you get what you get. For them, it's more important that you, say, have a gift to unwrap under the Christmas tree, than it is ensuring that the book they got you is an author you actually care to read. Those are the kinds of gifts that I really struggle with, because I don't like material things cluttering up my space, and if it's not something I specifically want, it will probably go unused and just collect dust on a shelf until I'm doing a decluttering one day and realize that I have a perfectly good decorative salad bowl that I've never even opened the box to, that will be going out in the next run to the Goodwill donation center. Overall, I've never really been big on gifts. It's probably my least important of the five love languages. I can certainly appreciate a good gift when it's given, but overall things just aren't a huge priority for me. |
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