Happy 2014, everyone! It's too early to tell what the year will hold, of course, but I can say with all certainty that I'm starting the year out in a better place than I was this time last year. It's definitely better to be up and around on New Year's Eve than it is to be in a hospital, even if you aren't a big party person. (I'm not.)
One last super-huge thank you to all of you for playing such a huge role in my recovery. You can never know how much your emails and comments meant to me. This blog helped me keep my sanity during a tough time. I'm glad I had you all to share it with.
I guess I'll never be able to look at 2013 without remembering all the chemo, needles, nausea and such, but other things happened too:
I expanded my booth in one store and made the hard decision to close out at another venue.
I took a road trip and ended up engaged!
My grandfather passed away.
I got a storage space for some of this junk.
Both our vehicles got totaled in front of our house. (I need to fill you all in on the resolution to that little saga.)
I bought lots of junk. I sold some of it.
I started a Secret Project, which will be revealed very soon.
I made a friend.
I laid a festering former friendship to rest for good.
I met a junking celebrity.
I got new glasses! And a haircut! And older!
And I finally made it to 1,000 posts!
And that, as they say, was the year that was. I have some things to say about the year just starting, but they'll have to wait for another time. I have a Secret Project to attend to.
Showing posts with label 2013. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2013. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 01, 2014
Friday, January 11, 2013
2012: The Year that Was (Non-Cancer Edition)
Sooooooo....
What else happened to me in 2012? Surely it wasn't all melanoma melodrama!
Damn tooting! Except for Nigel and Sixtus, it was actually a pretty darn good year.
For starters, no one in the family died--neither human nor feline. I'm kind of at the age where that has become one of the signs of a good year. A few weeks after Mom died, I was standing in the graveyard and he looked around and said: "There's an awful lot of people in here I used to sit down to Thanksgiving Dinner with." I'm kinda glad to have kept the number of folks above the ground the same this year.
Then there's the job front. My plethora of part-time gigs here and there yielded a connection that in turn yielded an awesome regular part-time gig, with just enough hours at the right amount of pay that allows me to do work that I love, and still have plenty of time for junking!
I don't get benefits, but I got picked up on Keith's insurance this summer. That is what has enabled me to get my surgery.
I had what I consider to be my best year of blogging ever, with over 200 posts in the hopper at year's end.
The junking front continues to reap benefits for me, both fiscal and otherwise. I'll be writing a lot more about that in the year to come.
We bought a new car that's the right size for running around town, going camping, and junking! The best of all worlds!
We saw Kris Kristofferson give an awesome open air show! We also took a lovely trip to celebrate
Yes, those two tumorous twerps did rear their ugly little mugs, but they were dispatched. Now, I just need to make it through the next steps, whatever those may be. I really wish it was all over, but there is still some ways to go, unfortunately.
Overall, though, I can't complain. There are things I could have done better. Things I should have done better. Things I wish I had done. Things I wish I hadn't. In that regard, it was a lot like every other year. Looking back always brings that kind of feeling, doesn't it?
As for 2013, who knows? I guess we'll just have to take that journey together, huh?
What else happened to me in 2012? Surely it wasn't all melanoma melodrama!
Damn tooting! Except for Nigel and Sixtus, it was actually a pretty darn good year.
For starters, no one in the family died--neither human nor feline. I'm kind of at the age where that has become one of the signs of a good year. A few weeks after Mom died, I was standing in the graveyard and he looked around and said: "There's an awful lot of people in here I used to sit down to Thanksgiving Dinner with." I'm kinda glad to have kept the number of folks above the ground the same this year.
Then there's the job front. My plethora of part-time gigs here and there yielded a connection that in turn yielded an awesome regular part-time gig, with just enough hours at the right amount of pay that allows me to do work that I love, and still have plenty of time for junking!
I don't get benefits, but I got picked up on Keith's insurance this summer. That is what has enabled me to get my surgery.
I had what I consider to be my best year of blogging ever, with over 200 posts in the hopper at year's end.
The junking front continues to reap benefits for me, both fiscal and otherwise. I'll be writing a lot more about that in the year to come.
We bought a new car that's the right size for running around town, going camping, and junking! The best of all worlds!
We saw Kris Kristofferson give an awesome open air show! We also took a lovely trip to celebrate
Yes, those two tumorous twerps did rear their ugly little mugs, but they were dispatched. Now, I just need to make it through the next steps, whatever those may be. I really wish it was all over, but there is still some ways to go, unfortunately.
Overall, though, I can't complain. There are things I could have done better. Things I should have done better. Things I wish I had done. Things I wish I hadn't. In that regard, it was a lot like every other year. Looking back always brings that kind of feeling, doesn't it?
As for 2013, who knows? I guess we'll just have to take that journey together, huh?
Wednesday, January 09, 2013
Goals 2013 (Long Term)
I think I'm going to spend some time the rest of this week blogging about personal stuff related to 2012 and 2013--recaps and goals and such. I usually don't seem to get to these posts until about the end of January every year, but I seem to have some free time on my hands right now.
I've written before about January as a time for looking forward and looking back. I think I've also explained the way I feel about New Year's Resolutions, which are kind of like cultural cliches, and goals for the year, which to me implies targets that are reachable, but which require work throughout the year to make them.
When I used to keep a paper journal, I would leave a bookmark on the page where I wrote my year's goals, so I could look back on them from time to time and remind myself about the things I wanted to accomplish. One thing I learned was to write every goal so that I would know for sure that I had met it. There's no point in saying "I will be a better person in 2013." because you have no standard or way to measure it by. If you can instead focus on actions that you want to take or habits that you want to eliminate, you'll know for sure that you made your goal.
I used to be absolutely horrible with my bank account--constantly overdrawn, bouncing checks, losing tons of money to fees. Setting the goal of "being financially responsible" didn't seem to help. What does that even mean for me? It wasn't until I set the goal of not bouncing any checks for a year that I was able to get a handle on the issue. In order to not bounce checks, I had to identify the things I needed to be doing to prevent that from happening. It took a couple of years, but I did get that under control.
That's the way I approach it anyway. I'm not a lifestyle expert and I've never been on Oprah or written a book, so take that as you will. I'm just a babbly junker with a blog.
As for me and 2013, I've got several goals that I'd like to meet this year. Several of them are a bit too personal for me to put up in a public forum like this. Some of them are so boring that I cannot think that anyone would have any interest in them at all. There are, however, a couple that I can share here. If I remember, we'll look back on these and see how I did at the end of the year.
No pun intended, but my biggest issue right now is my weight. I weighed in at the hospital at 264 pounds, which is the largest I have ever been. I know it's the largest I have ever been, because every time I hit that number, I start working like nuts to get a few pounds off. It's been probably more than five years since I've had any kind of regular fitness and diet thing going on--one designed to take weight out and help keep it off.
It will be a little while yet before I can really start doing anything about this, obviously, but once I've bounced back from the surgery, I'd like to really work on my weight. My goal for this year is to drop 40 pounds by the end of the year. We'll definitely drop back in on this one and see how it's going.
Meeting my blog goal for 2012 was a big deal for me. I've not blogged that regularly for that long since I started this blog back in 2003. (Is this my tenth anniversary year? Oooooo!) While I'm not sure that I've really added that much to the overall signal to noise ratio of the wider internet, I'm kind of happy with myself for applying the necessary organization, planning, and discipline into practice to make 200 posts happen. I definitely want to do that again. Once again, I'm shooting for 200 posts this year, which will also propel me past two other goals. I'm on the verge of 900 total posts now, so I should hit 1000 before the end of the year, if I can add 200 to that total. 1000 posts in my first ten years! Insert sarcastic "woo hoo!" here.
Finally, a business goal. Like a lot of junkers, I have succumbed to the temptation of buying too much stuff. I've got way more in backlog than I absolutely need. You simply don't make money on it when it sits and waits. This is an extreme goal, but a necessary one. By the end of the year, I will have all of my backlog stashes (there are three) cleared out and in the booths.
Okay, that's enough about me. If you've read this far, you deserve a cookie or something. What about you? Did you set any goals for 2013?
I've written before about January as a time for looking forward and looking back. I think I've also explained the way I feel about New Year's Resolutions, which are kind of like cultural cliches, and goals for the year, which to me implies targets that are reachable, but which require work throughout the year to make them.
When I used to keep a paper journal, I would leave a bookmark on the page where I wrote my year's goals, so I could look back on them from time to time and remind myself about the things I wanted to accomplish. One thing I learned was to write every goal so that I would know for sure that I had met it. There's no point in saying "I will be a better person in 2013." because you have no standard or way to measure it by. If you can instead focus on actions that you want to take or habits that you want to eliminate, you'll know for sure that you made your goal.
I used to be absolutely horrible with my bank account--constantly overdrawn, bouncing checks, losing tons of money to fees. Setting the goal of "being financially responsible" didn't seem to help. What does that even mean for me? It wasn't until I set the goal of not bouncing any checks for a year that I was able to get a handle on the issue. In order to not bounce checks, I had to identify the things I needed to be doing to prevent that from happening. It took a couple of years, but I did get that under control.
That's the way I approach it anyway. I'm not a lifestyle expert and I've never been on Oprah or written a book, so take that as you will. I'm just a babbly junker with a blog.
As for me and 2013, I've got several goals that I'd like to meet this year. Several of them are a bit too personal for me to put up in a public forum like this. Some of them are so boring that I cannot think that anyone would have any interest in them at all. There are, however, a couple that I can share here. If I remember, we'll look back on these and see how I did at the end of the year.
No pun intended, but my biggest issue right now is my weight. I weighed in at the hospital at 264 pounds, which is the largest I have ever been. I know it's the largest I have ever been, because every time I hit that number, I start working like nuts to get a few pounds off. It's been probably more than five years since I've had any kind of regular fitness and diet thing going on--one designed to take weight out and help keep it off.
It will be a little while yet before I can really start doing anything about this, obviously, but once I've bounced back from the surgery, I'd like to really work on my weight. My goal for this year is to drop 40 pounds by the end of the year. We'll definitely drop back in on this one and see how it's going.
Meeting my blog goal for 2012 was a big deal for me. I've not blogged that regularly for that long since I started this blog back in 2003. (Is this my tenth anniversary year? Oooooo!) While I'm not sure that I've really added that much to the overall signal to noise ratio of the wider internet, I'm kind of happy with myself for applying the necessary organization, planning, and discipline into practice to make 200 posts happen. I definitely want to do that again. Once again, I'm shooting for 200 posts this year, which will also propel me past two other goals. I'm on the verge of 900 total posts now, so I should hit 1000 before the end of the year, if I can add 200 to that total. 1000 posts in my first ten years! Insert sarcastic "woo hoo!" here.
Finally, a business goal. Like a lot of junkers, I have succumbed to the temptation of buying too much stuff. I've got way more in backlog than I absolutely need. You simply don't make money on it when it sits and waits. This is an extreme goal, but a necessary one. By the end of the year, I will have all of my backlog stashes (there are three) cleared out and in the booths.
Okay, that's enough about me. If you've read this far, you deserve a cookie or something. What about you? Did you set any goals for 2013?
Tuesday, January 01, 2013
Goals for 2013 (Short Term)
Okay, I'm not really writing this on January 1, 2013. Let me get that little bit of truth in advertising over with first.
With any luck, I'm sitting up in a hospital bed, so hopped up on pain meds that I don't know my own name, much less that it's a brand new year. With a little more luck, Nigel and Sixtus are gone, everything under the lump was clean and clear, and I don't have bits of my butt grafted on my neck in their place. If I do end up having all that much luck, then I'm certainly not going to be in any shape to write a blog post.
However, I'm not the only person who finds himself in a state of dubious consciousness on the first day of the new year, which means that I really don't have that much of an excuse for not blogging. I don't believe that any of those revelers in Times Square are waking up this morning and wondering if they have bits of buttock on their neck, though.
Usually during the first week of the year, I like to think about recaps of the previous year and then setting some goals for the new one. I don't always get around to blogging those thoughts, but I do try. Given my current hospitalized and medicated condition, I kind of have a tunnel vision thing going on. 2012 was the year I found out I had cancer and my goal right now is to get out of the hospital and get healthy. That'll have to do for the moment.
Once I'm back in the saddle (sometime before the end of the month), I'll write a little more about the year that was and what I would like to get done in the year to come. How does that sound?
By the way, I'd like to say "thanks" to all of you all who have expressed concern and support to me, either in comments or by private message. I've tried to be low key and nonchalant about this whole damn thing, because the alternative was to drive myself and those around me nuts. I hope that hasn't made it seem like I don't appreciate all of your support, because I really, really do. I've read many of those messages several times over. Thanks for being a part of my life, folks. I'm truly lucky in that regard.
With any luck, I'm sitting up in a hospital bed, so hopped up on pain meds that I don't know my own name, much less that it's a brand new year. With a little more luck, Nigel and Sixtus are gone, everything under the lump was clean and clear, and I don't have bits of my butt grafted on my neck in their place. If I do end up having all that much luck, then I'm certainly not going to be in any shape to write a blog post.
However, I'm not the only person who finds himself in a state of dubious consciousness on the first day of the new year, which means that I really don't have that much of an excuse for not blogging. I don't believe that any of those revelers in Times Square are waking up this morning and wondering if they have bits of buttock on their neck, though.
Usually during the first week of the year, I like to think about recaps of the previous year and then setting some goals for the new one. I don't always get around to blogging those thoughts, but I do try. Given my current hospitalized and medicated condition, I kind of have a tunnel vision thing going on. 2012 was the year I found out I had cancer and my goal right now is to get out of the hospital and get healthy. That'll have to do for the moment.
Once I'm back in the saddle (sometime before the end of the month), I'll write a little more about the year that was and what I would like to get done in the year to come. How does that sound?
By the way, I'd like to say "thanks" to all of you all who have expressed concern and support to me, either in comments or by private message. I've tried to be low key and nonchalant about this whole damn thing, because the alternative was to drive myself and those around me nuts. I hope that hasn't made it seem like I don't appreciate all of your support, because I really, really do. I've read many of those messages several times over. Thanks for being a part of my life, folks. I'm truly lucky in that regard.
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