I felt a little sad at first when the candy disappeared from a dish I’d put out on the break room, but the time it came for the final bar to find a good home, I was pretty content.

Over the last week or so, I’ve been slowly jettisoning a stash of candy to my coworkers.

I can’t speak for the rest of the newsroom, but my willpower typically disappears as fast as above-zero days this time of year.

To explain my metaphor:

My willpower makes a grand stand — like, “I’m going to be healthy!” or to use my weather metaphor, “It’s 39, so spring is right around the corner!” — and then a few days later the temperature plummets below zero with a biting wind, as I raid our advertising department’s desk drawers for candy.

Busyness plus a weakened willpower equals checkmate.

Now before you act all high and mighty, stop and realize every office has a candy dish or drawer. Here at the Herald, the most common ones are in our advertising department. I’m looking at you, Brenda Landherr, LeAnn Fischer and the late Merry Peterson (I say late because she no longer works at the Herald; she’s alive and well).

Now I’m not sure if the open-drawer policy on their desks is as open as the newsroom has treated it … but we’ve treated it like a “grab at will” policy. Thanks, by the way; you ladies rock.

But I’ve been trying to wean myself from the candy goodness over time — hey, it’s a marathon battle; not a one-off skirmish. But then the holidays hit.

Oh, Christmas, though art Murder Pt. I to thy willpower.

Murder Part II is the Herald’s busy season of January and February. This is time of year we are traditionally tied up working on our annual Progress edition. Not to mention, this coincides with production of our March-April Austin Living magazine, the new Paint the Town Pink special insert and will still have a daily paper to produce each day.

Needless to say, the busy times make you want to devour, at the very least, unhealthy foods.

It doesn’t help that I received an abnormal amount of Christmas candy this year, and they were mostly my vices: a pile of Take 5s, a bag of bite-size Reeses Peanut Butter Cups and other assorted goodies.

I kept them for few weeks hidden in a Christmas gift bag, but their call grew too loud: Eat me or leave me.

So I brought them to the Herald and decided to keep them in my own candy drawer, but I found myself eating too many. So I put our break room’s “open to a good home” spot to good use.

Consider it my return deposit to the Herald’s collective candy bank.

After I ate a bowl of fruit and promptly followed it up with three bite-size Reeses, I added all but a few to a dish in the break room.

Believe it or not, there’s something strangely fulfilling about seeing your candy disappear into someone else’s belly.