As ever, I begin with a reflective reckoning with my #23For2023:
Get Your Finances In Order
Generate income
“Get employed” is what this really implies, though I also just wanted to leave wide room for interpretation here given the tumultuous and unpredictable nature of the last couple of years. While I actively decided I wanted to return to formal employment around the beginning of 2022, it’s been a real challenge to clinch this goal on so many levels, so I count the pocket change I’ve generated from participating in user studies, scholarships and modest financial aid checks from my adventures in returning to school, and the tax deductions I’ve generated from making donations as steps in the right direction. Finally putting the great majority of work on my parent’s estates mostly behind me, I’m downshifting on my academic adventures and leaning hard into my formal return to the work force, so if you know of an opening for an experienced foodie, I’m available
Pay down credit cards
My credit card debt has tipped into the 5 digit mark for the first time in my life and it catches my breath every time I’m confronted with that information. Having watched my parents go through bankruptcy and reverse mortgage their home, not to mention just having been raised by a *mostly* frugal family, I’ve mostly been pretty financially responsible as an adult. I carried a pretty consistent, modest revolving balance in my twenties, though it never got out of hand. As I began working full time and had the income to do so, I not only consistently paid my balance in full every month for years, I usually transferred a payment as soon as I made a purchase. Having been out of work for three years now, I’ve leaned a bit on credit to fill in some gaps and have been learning to juggle my credit from zero interest card to zero interest card, a practice totally not intuitive to me and one that still makes me feel a little icky, though it’s really a way to make the best out of a tough situation by using my available cash reserves sparingly by making minimum monthly payments, not paying interest on charges, racking up sign on and cash back bonuses, and improving my credit score by expanding my credit to debt ratio. I still hate it, and if I’ve got to live in a capitalist system, it’s one small way I can play the game and maybe benefit from an unfair system. Once I start bringing in a steady income again, minimum payments go way up and balances will get paid monthly again.
Pay off your student loan debt
Although COVID deferments began rolling out early in the pandemic, I continued making payments because I could, until I joined the Great Resignation at the end of 2020, then I started juggling my repayment options and riding every extension of deferment along with everyone else managing uncertain everything in unprecedented socioeconomic circumstances. I applied for extended PSLF qualification, submitted my application for Biden’s one-time forgiveness, which I’m not counting on ever seeing, requested reimbursement for payments made voluntarily in 2020, which they still haven’t sent me, made sure I was signed up for income based repayment, which is still currently $0 until I start working again, and held my breath until repayments were finally due again, really this time, starting in October. While I waited, I leveraged some privilege in the form of inherited cash to open a high interest savings account dedicated to making student loan payments, so again, using my capitalist gains to my benefit, and thanks, mom. Minimum payments are very manageable on my repayment plan and I’m paying above that to cover accumulated interest until I can afford to pay the whole damn thing down with hard earned cash.
Inventory/check in with your portfolio
Not nearly in the organized way I’d like to still do. Now that I’m using a laptop again for the first time in years, I just need to carve out the spoons to start plugging data into an Excel sheet, and navigating an Excel sheet is a skill I need to refresh anyway.
Write living will
Nope, still haven’t done this, and it’s totally embarrassing, given what I’ve been through for the last four years.
Get Your House In Order
Epic fail in this entire category, not a single one of these and I’m feeling pretty bad about my life right now.
Declutter, edit, or otherwise organize any space for 10 minutes every day
HA! I can barely keep up with dishes, laundry, and keeping surfaces cleared and wiped down, and I have a fully participating SO. I’m about to hire the external support I need to keep up with adulting and also have clean floors and bathrooms. Then, perhaps I will have the bandwidth to tackle my clutter monsters.
Gather all the blind tech you’ve been thinking about selling and start posting it
Gathered, not posted or sold.
Inventory, edit, and organize photos
Purge jewelry
Have a blanket made from old t-shirts
Sell/purge vintage items
Set up a craft/hustle work space in the garage
Investigate and if available, acquire and install door attachments for hat cubby
Create better use of space over shelf in coat closet
Get Your Mom’s House In Order
Close probates
Of all the things on this list I’ve failed to do, if I only achieved one thing this year, it’s finally wrapping up the long, painful process of sorting out my parent’s affairs, it’s really been a soul-crushing, complicated mess. While we’re not entirely past this Herculean feat, the overwhelming majority of it is in the rear view mirror: One of the two probates is closed and the second is in the final accounting stage and we hope to have it closed by around summer. I’ve got an assortment of family items I evacuated from the house before selling it this summer that I still have to properly inventory and hope to distribute among the family. Other than that, we’re pretty much done, and I’m taking the liberty of removing this entire category from my annual list, taking a deep breath, and looking for the space to better reach other things on this list.
Creative Expression
Write your damn book
Ugh, I’ve lost momentum on this one. Hold, please.
Post 1-2 blog posts monthly
I posted only four times this year, and one of those was my 23 For 2023, that’s barely quarterly. Knowing I was slipping on this aspiration, I accepted the invitation of a friend to join NaNoWriMo this year with the intention of generating more content to use in the coming year, which was helpful, though I still have a lot of empty notes I’ve opened, jotted down a title or an idea, and never come back around to. While I did not come remotely close to the 50K word goal, I do now have 18,126 words to play with and drop here. If only I was a better Stoic who could drag my ass out of bed before the sun.
Mojo List
Mojo list needs editing and an overhaul. On the rare occasions I accept my calendar invitation to check in and follow through, I mostly stare at it in agony, paralyzed to take action on any of it.
Learn at least 12 origami well enough to execute without following directions
Nope.
Get Your Body In Order
Only 42 entries in my Day One app means I’ve only sat for focused meditation an average of less than once per week this year, less than half the number of times I’ve done so in the previous two years. My mental health, overall, has been better than ever this year, though the year is ending on a really challenging note, and I know how important this regular practice is for my mental hygiene. I’ve mostly failed at all these fitness/health goals, too, and I’m at the heaviest weight I’ve ever been at in my life, I’m out of breath doing a modest amount of vigorous housework or getting ready to leave the house, let alone going for a short walk. I feel more awkward and less balanced and graceful in my body than ever before. Housework and running errands on foot around the neighborhood because we choose not to have a car are my main sources of exercise. On the brighter side, I do feel a weirdly improved sense of stamina working in a commercial kitchen environment a few times a week these days as compared to fall a year ago when I started taking culinary classes, so there’s that. This summer was one of the busiest summers I remember having in a very long time, from a busy weekend hop to Portland that happened before spring semester even closed to a convention in Houston, final clearing and selling of my mom’s house, a Peace Corps reunion getaway to Minnesota, then hitting the ground running on fall semester, my exercise habits were disrupted beyond recovery. That, and for no reason other than an external trigger that seemed to make sense to me, I showed up for some kind of stretching, mild cardio, or yoga on the day or two per week that my SO was commuting into his office for work, and now he’s on a full-time remote detail, so I’ve got to change up that strategy now, too.
Walk or other outdoor movement at least 23 minutes per day
Just barely hanging onto this habit.
Carry the 30 lb. backpack weight on all short, quick neighborhood walks
Honestly don’t remember the last time I did this, so that’s a no.
Bike, hike, and/or camp 6 times
We went on an urban hike of 7 1/2 miles around the beginning of the year and that’s about it. The summer was too busy to squeeze in even a local camping hike at nearby Lake Chabot and I’m pretty sure the only few times we got on the tandem, it wasn’t for more than a few miles.
Core or yoga at least 23 minutes per week
I was hitting this one at a bare minimum at the beginning of the year and dropped the ball entirely after my action-packed summer.
24 For 2024
2023’s list was really hard to look at, I’m not going to lie. While my mental health overall has been much improved over past years, I’ve really been struggling a lot since the days got shorter. It just hit so much harder this year somehow, and in addition to old ghosts coming around to haunt, new ones surfaced in the form of the loss of a hometown friend. I know I had a busy year, one that felt very productive, and yet, this list is full of nopes. The good news is that all the lesser nopes are balanced by the very big YES of finally, very nearly, being at the end of the long probate nightmare I’ve been living for the past four years, so I’ll take it. I’m just feeling really meh about the close of one year and the beginning of another, I’m utterly lacking in enthusiasm this year and feeling so overwhelmed by all the things I have to do all tangled up with the things I want to do all pressing up against the limits of my aging, out of shape body. So I take a deep breath, reflect on this last year. Take another very deep breath, and maybe walk away from all of it for awhile to let it soak in. Take another very deep breath, and prepare to lean into a new trip around the sun, as always leaving some things behind and making space for new. While I’m not quite a geezer yet, I’m no spring chicken, as they say, and particularly after what I’ve been through in the last four years, it’s more imperative than ever to leave things behind and make space for experiences. So with that, here are my 24 aspirations for 2024:
Word for 2024: Love and Happiness
Yep, I’m claiming two words this year. The world just needs more love and it just makes a good base word for every year. Having it buzzing around in my subconsciousness really does move me to come to everything with more compassion, more understanding, and more kindness, like how the simple act of smiling before you answer the phone really does lift your tone and mood. When considering a secondary word, I just couldn’t not hear Al Green in my head, and happiness, after all, is this crazy notion I started actively cultivating back in 2019, and after the last four years I’ve had, I could use the active reminder. Besides, that gives me another song for the year, too, like when my word was Go!
Get Your Body In Order
Walk or other outdoor movement at least 24 minutes per day
Carry the 30 lb. backpack weight on all short, quick neighborhood walks
Bike, hike, and camp at least one time each
Use a workout app at least 24 minutes per week
Get Your Finances In Order
Get hired doing something interesting and exciting for compensation you are worth
Pay down credit cards
Pay off your student loan
Inventory/check in with your portfolio
Write living will
Get Your House In Order
Hire house cleaning support
Declutter, edit, or otherwise organize any space for 5 minutes every day
Sell your blind tech
Inventory, edit, and organize photos
Purge jewelry
Have a blanket made from old t-shirts
Sell/purge vintage items
Set up a craft/hustle work space in the garage
Investigate and if available, acquire and install door attachments for hat cubby
Create better use of space over shelf in coat closet
Creative Expression
#Write24in24
Write your damn book
Post at least 1 blog post monthly
Edit/revise Mojo List
Learn at least 12 origami well enough to execute without following directions
I was in a bit of a dark place yesterday reflecting on my year. It felt like being stuck in a Groundhog’s Day loop, I was busy, but what did I do and what do I have to show for it? In some ways, it felt like the end of any one of the last few years, though it shouldn’t have. It was a pretty good year overall, and right there at the end, I just wasn’t feeling that. If Facebook is any indicator, and it’s probably the cause, there’s a hive experience we’re all sharing, despite our individual circumstances. When the days suddenly got artificially shorter, it seemed to really hit me extra hard this year, my energy and motivation to do anything disappeared with the sun at 4 p.m. I thought it was just me and soon found similar reports from all kinds of other folks. It took me weeks to adjust and I still don’t like it. Likewise, I’m seeing a similar level of enthusiasm for the close of this year and the beginning of a new one. Not bad, not great, just unremarkable and underwhelming transition to a new year, a new month, another day. The last several have been so traumatizing that a “good” year is nowone that we’ve all made it through relatively intact, albeit feeling exhausted and used up, this is now how we feel about a relatively uneventful year. I’m not sure how I stayed awake until midnight last night, and I didn’t care if I did. My SO and I had a quiet day at home, I observed my usual rituals of drafting these reflections and reorganizing my priorities for the coming year. I also wrote down all the things I want to leave in the past and burned them in effigy close to midnight. I ate a couple of cookies and cinnamon rolls. I didn’t even feel like opening or drinking the prosecco we got. We watched the clock turn over, wished a few friends a happy new year via text, hugged and congratulated each other on making it through another year, and went to bed. And I’m officially at an age where late nights and rich foods, sugar and carbs in this case, make me feel moderately hung over when I wake up, so I’m not even convinced it’s worth it anymore. For what it’s worth, I hope you find all the things you’re looking for in the coming year and that you lose the things that don’t serve you. I wish you all the love and happiness you need to be and do your best this year, and may a good year truly feel like a good year when we get to the end of this one.
It Starts With Quiche 