The Mandelbear's Musings

Today I am a record. I am also grateful for...

• Still being alive. At this age that isn't necessarily a given.
• Having gotten out of Amerika in time. (Hoping I'll be able to go back and visit. But that's not a given, either.)
• Help. In particular, this week, help from pocketnaomi putting up four bookcases in the living room.
• Finding some beloved books and a few other things, in the process of unpacking. In particular, some songs I wrote at Carleton, and sheet music -- with chords -- for a song of N's that we'd both forgotten the tune for. It might have been performed once.
• Kids who remember my birthday, including an hour-long video call from my daughter E. (Still waiting to see if I get anything from R on top of the "in case I forget" email they sent a couple of days ago.)
• Support groups. It's nice to be among people who "get it". Different "it" in different groups -- widowhood in one case, cancer in another. But still.

Well, it's a new year, so it's time for some goals. Parts of this post are recycled.

1. I'll start with a bit of unfinished business from last year: 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 this?? year, I guess. (Please ignore the fact that I'm picking an easy goal that I can check off early.)
2. That is of course related to another goal from last year and the one before: to get back in touch with more people -- including relatives and old friends. At least tell them where I am these days, and what I've been up to. See above.
3. Writing more in general is still on the list, including introspective and autobiographical journaling. Also see above.
4. Our taxes are going to be an effing nightmare. So the main goal is finding someone to do them for us.
5. I'm going to put setting up our DAFT business next. It has several moving parts, which will get goals of their own, so this one is just getting the legal paperwork and the bank account set up. Also see above.
6. The business will have two main divisions: Colleen's Closet -- fabric arts and related projects -- will be N's half. HyperSpace Express is my multimedia arts and record label. So I need to modernize HSX's website, and make one for C-C. A large part of that will be deciding whether to use a CMS, and which one. Or simply use Etsy and Bandcamp, tacked as subdomains onto the kind of static site I prefer. (I welcome your suggestions in the comments.)
7. I also need to go through all of my websites, and their infrastructure, and make sure they are up to date, functional, and well-documented. A lot of the bits have flaked off over the last decade or so. I noticed last night that some of the build tools are missing.
8. I need to record at least one album, so that my half of the business will have something to sell. But in general, do more music. The New Year's Eve zoom circle was, like last year, a good start.
9. Along with starting the business, N and I need to (belatedly) do our EOL planning and paperwork, including our wills. We're business partners, we co-own the house in Den Haag, and we have kids. It damned well has to get done this year. I have ordered this book on the subject, more for hack value than for reference.
10. Self care is on the list, as usual. Starting with physical -- that includes getting my health care set up, including finding an oncologist. That also includes more exercise and more walking.
11. Mental health care is "last but not least", but like last year it will be hard to quantify.