Here I am criticizing myself because I haven’t even written about Christmas,.
“How can you write a blog at Christmastime and not even mention Christmas?” I ask myself. “What is wrong with me?!”
Is there such a thing as ‘Holiday Trauma?’ Because if there is, I have it. In my mind everyday is just like the one before it and the one after it. I recognize seasons, equinoxes, and solstices, but that’s about it. Everyday is another day to battle against the universal force of disintegration. And I am so occupied with that battle that I do not have any energy left over to romanticize any day or period of days as more joyful or significant than any other.
I know, people will say that that makes me at best a heretic, or at worst an A-theist.
Well, to that I’d say not at all. I MUST believe in a God, or else what would give me the will to keep going? I MUST believe in a loving parent who accepts me as I am, with my disengagement or is it perhaps disassociation about Holidays?
You see, when I was little, the Christmas Holiday was extraordinary. It began just after Thanksgiving (and the build up to Thanksgiving was pretty remarkable too, since I believed the mythology about how my ancestors, who had been saved from famine by the First Americans, sat down peacefully, at a row of three or four 72-in Brown Southern Yellow Pine Rectangle Picnic Tables, with turkey, squash, corn, and beans; to give thanks with those very First Americans for their mutual survival) and it lasted until the second Day of January. My grandmothers, ‘Zelma’, and ‘Little” and my great Aunt Mona (Whom I most resemble today) saw to that. Everything was decorated with lights, tinsel, fake snow designs stenciled onto the windows, Christmas trees, presents galore, endless homemade Christmas cookies on the sideboard in the hall, and all kinds of rituals. Rituals getting out the mechanical ‘roaring lion’ who, when plugged in and the proper button pushed, would walk three or four strides, and then stop and open his ferocious mouth and ‘R_O_A_R!’ There was my mother’s old bedroom with the musical revolving lighted Christmas tree that would play silent night as I was tucked snuggly into my mother’s childhood bed. Things like that.
But After my mother died in that car accident, all that Magic just went away. ‘Little’ Grandma just tried to teach me how to be a lady (have good manners) and a mother (Play with dolls), and grandma ‘Zelma” started telling me the secrets; Like, that when my grandpa Syd was alive, she and Syd would work together to make that ‘endless supply’ of homemade Christmas cookies.
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Published by Jessie
Hello,
My name is Jessica T. Eustice, and I’m a longtime educator in North Carolina with roughly 40 years of experience in special education, caregiving, literacy support, and community-based work.
Like many Americans, I’ve been watching the rapid development of AI with both fascination and concern. Much of the public conversation focuses on jobs disappearing, automation, and economic disruption. But I think there may be another side to the story that deserves attention.
My idea is this:
AI may push society back toward more individualized, relationship-based work — a kind of modern cottage industry built around uniquely human gifts.
Instead of everyone competing for fewer standardized corporate jobs, more people may begin creating small, human-scale forms of work based on personality, trust, mentorship, creativity, and care:
- tutoring
- coaching
- caregiving
- teaching
- art
- storytelling
- local services
- companionship
- skill-sharing
AI lowers barriers to entry in ways that make this newly possible. Someone without technical expertise can now build a website, teach online, create educational materials, organize clients, or reach a niche audience.
In my own case, I’m exploring a small ESL tutoring practice called “Gentle English With Jessie,” built around patience, emotional safety, and one-on-one encouragement for adult learners.
It strikes me that many of the abilities AI cannot easily replace — warmth, presence, trust, reassurance, lived experience, emotional intelligence — are precisely the abilities many ordinary people already possess.
I wonder whether the future of work may become less industrial and more personal again.
I thought this perspective might be of interest to NPR or WUNC because most AI discussions focus on economics and technology, while fewer focus on the possibility of a human-scale social reorganization around individual gifts and local relationships.
Thank you for reading.
Sincerely,
Jessica T. Eustice
Chapel Hill / Carrboro, NC
I identify as a teacher of English for English language learners, EC, and Social Studies; I have expertise in the humanities, am experienced in studying Language Arts, Reading, Arithmetic-for-practical-purposes, and Algebra-I.
I have striven to broaden and deepen my capabilities to maintain my integrity as a worker in the American economy since 1977 when I started working, as a cashier in fast food. Since then, I have served as a camp counselor, a work-study student in college, a puppet-wagon lady in the summer. I tutored privately, and in an academic institution and with a Learning Center. I taught as an intern teacher, a licensed teacher, and a Community College Instructor. I have also been a retail administrative assistant, and a caregiver.
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