it's been a year
wednesday, january 1, 2020


i'm alive. it's just been a year.

we spent 3 months trying to locate a place with my son's meds, only to find out he could have gotten them all along if wires hadn't gotten crossed. saxy went to the e.r. at least twice, spent 3 days in the hospital, had a surgery that ended up being as big a problem as the original problem, has had a few specialist appointments, and spent the last couple of weeks sick. he's fine, it wasn't that serious, but it is a mess that has now added about $20k of medical debt that we won't ever be able to pay (and that's WITH insurance) and has impacted too many paychecks. we lost my baby girl, rogue. she was 13, and for a cat that didn't grow out of kittenhood (apparently some form of dwarfism), we were lucky to have her that long. but it still tore my heart out. our dryer died (which is a small thing in the scheme of things).

but there were good things. we did go to dragoncon again this year. we couldn't afford much, and things seemed a bit more low key than usual, but taz had a wonderful time. we managed christmas this year (phoenixcat helped a lot) and saw all the kids except our oldest granddaughter. my channel reached 500 subscribers, and i tried some amazing makeup. finances have been tight, but mostly manageable. mostly. hubs got a great review in his job and a decent raise: not what we wanted, but more than anyone has ever given before. and i'm sure there are a ton of little things i'm not remembering.

but that's no surprise. good things are hard to see when you're depressed, especially little ones. and i spent most of this year in a depression i didn't acknowledge until late in the year. while i couldn't get professional help (our insurance has taken care of quite a bit this year, but it's still a shit plan because it's all we can afford), finally acknowledging that problem did help. i also could see what led up to it:

at least two years of such upheaval that all my habits and routines were in tatters. i haven't worked out consistently in almost four years. i haven't written consistently in at least two. i haven't done much baking other than christmas in two or three. all the things i love doing fell out of my life. which probably explains why i threw myself so hard into youtube: it's creative and doesn't require that much thought (some, but not liking planning/writing a book). however, it's also expensive as hell (so changes coming there as well) and a huuuuge time suck.

menopause killed my weight loss. i would have to eat an unsustainable tiny amount of food to lose weight now. by the time i figured out i needed to change my goals from weight loss to muscle gain, my workout habits were already slipping and upheaval was making it harder and harder to get back to it. and over the last 2 years, i've regained almost everything i've loss. i've had to come to terms with that being normal. i now realize that weight doesn't equal health, but this initially was so beyond frustrating.

the news reports about i.c.e. was picking up anyone brown from homes, business, wherever, and not caring that some of those people were u.s. citizens and still were held for days, sometimes weeks. it did sort of drive home my importance to my family: they need me here to watch my son or they can't go to work. so i can't risk getting picked up even by mistake. and i've let that fear rule my life for the past 6 months at least. i don't go out except to grocery shop late at night and do laundry late in the evening. we go to my son's doctor appointments. but i don't walk, don't go to the mall, etc. i'm a person who needs sun, and now days i don't get much of it. s.a.d. has been a hard fight every time a new storm rolls through. and there have been a lot of them of late.

and of course, the constant barrage of hate, cruelty, and disdain for others. it's overwhelming. and i can't do much except advocate from my laptop (see the last point). so, yea, it's been rough. it's been a lot. it's been overwhelming. and i've struggled just to get up on most mornings. i think you can see why whysper fell by the wayside. hell, all my writing fell by the wayside.

but as i was thinking about goals for this year, i made a decision. i really can't live this way. i need to move forward again. i hope we lose the asshole in office, but if we don't, i can't let this stop me from living. and that's what i've been doing. i do think i needed the last year off of reaching for goals, but now?now it's time to regain as much of my life as i can and transform the rest if i can. but that doesn't mean i need to go after it all at once. it took years to reach this point; it's going to take awhile to rediscover myself.

this year i will focus on two things: writing and exercising. writing because i'm sure that's part of why i've been miserable. not writing ALWAYS makes me miserable. exercise because i'm feeling the effects of not taking care of myself. i have no stamina. i'm tired. my headaches are getting worse again. i'm not aiming for losing weight. my focus is mostly going to be on building muscle, so i'll get heavier before i lose anything. but i'll be doing better than i am now, and i still plan to start walking or doing my mixed martial arts again. and it's not weight focused anyway, which would only have me banging my head against a wall in frustration.

i can't control a lot that's going on in my life, and definitely not anything around me, but i think i can recover these two things. and that will make it quite a year. here's hoping!