This first day of the year is ripe for all sorts of discussion in all sorts of direction — what is on your minds this day?
Are you the type to come up with resolutions? Do you follow through with them? Do yours last as long as the end of the month? The end of the week? Do you purposefully make them vague so you won’t fail yourself (e.g., be a better person)? Or do you create measurable ones (e.g. lose 10 pounds by the first day of Spring Break)?
Are you the type to make other plans the first day of the year, like start planning the new garden, or how the new book is going to go? Do you plan on the campaign to take back America?
Or do you just sit and watch TV like other days off (in this case, a Sunday with football on TV, though the Broncos might be a pretty discouraging game, even against the Raiders)? Do you go for a hike (expecting Thinking fella to chime in here)? Do you do ordinary things as opposed to first day of the year things?
Or are you getting over the hangover from last night’s celebration that 2016 is finally in the rear-view mirror? Or are you now starting the doomsday prepping for Trumptastic 2017?
Let us know what’s up?
Oh, and as for me? I hope to finish January with my path forward clear and settled. I have two huge issues going on in my life —
The first and biggest is the fact that my mother is finally losing her battle with dementia and has gone into Hospice care in a different state, which made my trip there for Christmas much different than any in the past and which means a likely return in January for a very unfortunate follow-up. I can’t say it’s a tragedy or that I’m devastated. She has been in assisted-living of one level or another for a bit over five years, so I have become used to her deterioration and now, frankly, it seems to me more a release for her, trapped in a body that she can’t communicate from, nor, apparently can it sustain her further. I don’t know how much if any of her mind is still intact in the sense of “her” and I have said “goodbye” and “thank you” and “I love you” to her. My father is still there, as is my sister, and she has good care during this time. My father and sister are more who I worry about than my mother, especially my father who has been married to my mother for 65+ years. She’s his best friend and reason for doing most of what he does. I have not lost anyone close to me before and I really am not sure how it will affect me when it comes right down to it. I haven’t communicated with her directly for a couple of years — I think it would be different if it were someone I spoke with on a continuing basis. I don’t know.
While this is going on, my company where I have worked for eleven years is bracing for layoffs that are likely to affect my group and while that’s hanging over my head, it all pales but colors, the way I’m approaching January. I haven’t been on the job market in a long time, and at my age, I don’t relish the prospects. My wife is several years older and she very much plans on retiring this year, but we’ll see how this all plays out.
My resolution is to get through these two life disruptions intact with the support of my wife and family, and then see what February brings. I make no plans until these are settled. I may have lots of time to spend at my father’s house, helping him while simultaneously trying to conduct a job search, or I may be working and have relatively little time. I don’t know, and these decisions are out of my hands. I do know that 2016 sucked, and 2017 is starting out looking worse.