The Mandelbear's Musings

It's been a rough, busy year, even though it feels, looking back, that I wasn't very productive. A lot of what I'd planned on doing didn't get done; I'm trying to convince myself that packing up the Whidbey Island house and my Seattle apartment, buying a house on another continent, and moving into it lock, stock, and kittycats (it's not the first time I've had occasion to use that phrase) was enough.

Oh, and selling my car, Molly, and buying a new 3-wheeled enclosed mobility scooter, which N dubbed Scarlett. Because it's a car-let.

( The details -- goals from last New Year's Eve )

Total (85 + 100 + 70 + 100 + 100 + 50 + 40 + 70) = 615 out of a possible 900, so a bit over 68%. Not great, but twice as good as last year's 34%. I'll take it.

Another unscheduled action was writing a "what has the bear been doing lately" infodump to be distributed mostly by email to people who aren't keeping up with Dreamwidth. Next year, I guess.

Taking part in a filk circle on Zoom, and actually singing for the first time in months, was a pretty decent way to end 2023. It didn't set a particularly high bar for the start of 2024 to exceed. But spending the afternoon in the ER wasn't the way to do it. (Not as serious as I thought it was, or as it could have been, but I'm still going to have Words with the rep from BardCare when she calls tomorrow to follow up on the samples they sent me last week.)

And now it's time for some goals (I don't call them "resolutions") for the coming year.

1. Get the Whidbey Island house clean and ready to turn over to its new owners, on the first of March. Having a hard deadline helps with the procrastination. Usually.
2. Finish the EOL paperwork: find a lawyer (who hopefully can serve as an executor as well), and get the will and advanced directives done. Carried over from last year, because procrastination.
3. Continue my cancer treatments, and in general end the year in better health than I ended last year with, though I'll settle for simply living through it. This is, well, yeah. If I fail completely at this, you won't be subjected to another New Year's Eve post, and I won't be around to care.
4. Along with that, self-care. This includes the kind of healthy living -- nutrition and exercise -- that will help me as a cancer survivor.
5. I think I'll break mental self-care out into its own goal. I'm not sure what that means, really, so there's plenty of room for fudging. I probably wouldn't recognize it if I tripped over it. Optimism may be too much to expect right now; I'll settle for dark humor and something vaguely resembling hope.
6. Move out of the country with my chosen family, hopefully in time to avoid the chaos that's inevitable around the November elections. That depends on finding acceptable health care for all of us (including our cats), which may be a tall order.
7. Get back to music. Can I add singing and guitar practice to my healthy living habits? Could I possibly record scratch tracks of all my songs, as a legacy? We'll see. (Last night's participation in the New Year's filk circle -- I sang three songs -- is at least a start.)
8. Write more, hopefully including continuing to write my memoirs.
9. Keep in better touch with people, especially with my kids. (Last night's conversation with R was also a start.)

(Ok, they're more like guidelines...)