dgaf

some people naturally put in more effort. i rarely buy gifts, so i generally put a bit more effort into buying them when i actually do. my group of girlfriends does secret santa each year, and we pool our money for each others' bday gifts.

all this gifting has been going on for years and years. and since there are five girlfriends total we do this multiple times a year. so of course trends have emerged. our online wishlists (links usually included) save us a ton of time / effort, tho of course someone needs to actually get it done. that person is usually me, and i generally don't mind. (and to be totally honest, i prefer doing it because i do the most research to find deals. which i think is important cause why wouldn't we want to spend the same amount of money to get you more stuff?) of course we've also noticed that one of us generally doesn't participate in the gift giving preparation process. half the time this person also doesn't pay us back.

i'm closer to this person and she's been very generous to me a few times so i don't mind as much that she doesn't always pay me back. it bothers a couple of the rest of us a lot more tho. in fact, they've considered taking her out of the gifting altogether. i don't have anything really to say about that. i understand their point of view but i just don't feel as strongly about it.

background over. actual story:
last year x was secret santa to y. x forgot to get y a gift. =\ y was already annoyed (see above) at x anyway. so when xmas came around this year i reminded x that she had forgotten the year before. (y had brought up the forgotten gift a few times over the year so i knew it really bothered her) x remedied the situation by getting y a gift this year in addition to getting her person a gift too, which, coincidentally, happened to be me.

that we have wish lists means we nearly always get exactly what we want. some of us keep a long list and will bold a few especially favored items. of course we try to get you those items first. it doesn't always work out because of budget constraints but we do try. i have a long list (a buncha books) and several bolded items, one of which is a book. it was awesome to get two packages this year from barnes and nobles cause i knew it meant books and i was expecting my bold item but it turns out i didn't get that. i got three other books from my list. i didn't get any bold items this year.

i know that it's shitty to complain about getting gifts, especially when you got what asked for. but, well, i'm petty. and i admit, i felt disappointed that i didn't get a bold item. BUT it's not just about being petty. i felt stupid because i had stood up for x over the years. others have complained about her basically being a crappy friend. they said she just didn't give a fuck. i just thought she didn't make it priority. i don't know the exact circumstances (maybe it was sold out), but that she got me only books and not a single bold item, not even a bold book, says to me that she didn't really spend much time / thought on my gift. it was convenient to shop from a single retailer, so that's what she did. basically, she put in a minimum amount of effort.

oh well. honestly, this doesn't change much for me. i still don't prefer to take her off our gifting list and i won't put less effort into her gifts in the future. but it does make me think a little differently of x. as always, my naivete about people disappointed and surprised only me.