Before we really dig into this post, let’s just level-set here: it’s not like I don’t buy myself things year-round. I do. Probably far too often, but I find I always come up with a viable reason: I replaced a black sweater like this last month, this has a hole, this doesn’t fit, this isn’t my style, I need this for a blog post, etc. But there was something new about saying, “I’m going to spend $100 on myself for whatever I wanted for Christmas.”

I let go of the, have-to-have-a-reason, and said I’ve got $100 for anything I wanted. Could be 1 thing, could be 10 things. I settled on 3 things.