Well, I suppose I should get this in quick, just in case. Better than waiting for the 31st I guess.
If you look at my resolutions for 2012, I failed just about across the board. The soda intake was mildly curtailed, but coffee took its place at work. Exercise was not appreciably stepped up for reasons that will be explained momentarily. Blogging didn’t get much beyond the usual nonsense, the elections damn near killed me the last couple of months, and while I kept the toxicity of the ancestral lands at arm’s length, it still got to me. I also failed to get up to the city as much as I wanted, or out to the pub as much as I needed. And I definitely didn’t give it a rest on jackets, or footwear, or Nerf guns, or watches.
A big part of all this was my back. That pain at the base of my left shoulder blade, which had been an occasional nuisance going clear back to late 2009, suddenly and loudly reasserted itself this spring. It meant an MRI, it meant four or five different physicians, it meant two cortisone shots into my spine and three different prescription drugs which each failed to do anything but induce constipation and inhibit drinking. And there were words like “arthritis” and “degenerative” and I was left wondering for a little while whether I didn’t have exactly what my father had…and whether I was about to find out what would eventually kill me.
From a purely distraction standpoint, things should have gone great. Vandy basketball beat Kentucky and won an SEC tournament and sent three guys to the NBA. Vandy baseball came out here for three games and a tailgate (sadly all losses, except for the tailgate). Vandy football turned in its best recruiting class ever and followed up with its best season in thirty years and a decisive beatdown on Tennessee. The Warriors drafted a Vandy guy and became the hottest team in the NBA, the Giants won another World Series and the Redskins traded up to draft the most electrifying player in the NFL…and assured themselves of at least a .500 season for the first time in recent memory. The Avengers turned out to be the best fun of the summer, some great books passed through the Kindle, I got to see Vanderbilt for the first time in six years and a Vandy football game for the first time in a decade more, the wife and I became symphony-goers.
But the back pain took me out of the gym and away from running, and the pain and the constant struggle with the insurance company left a sort of black cloud over everything. And turning 40 didn’t do me any favors either. And the IRS reared up again. And I felt compelled by June 28 to do a post on rebooting the year, and did I do any of that? Not really. I did cut out some of the junk food, and Hostess did me a solid by going out of business and taking those little white powdered donuts with them, but I didn’t even get back on Tuesday night shutdowns – and the fact that I was thinking of bringing that back for 2013 just drives home how distracted and unsuccessful I was. And I didn’t even have the worst health issues in the house.
Still, we had a good time on our New York vacation, and a good time on part 1 of our San Francisco holiday mini break, and we survived our holiday visitor, and we’ve continued to have good housemates occupying our spare room. And I got an iPad for my birthday from the lovely wife, which has almost completely fulfilled my portable computing needs. And tonight we were able to walk up and down Christmas Tree Lane, peppermint hot chocolate in hand, and come home to open cards and surprise packages and sit under the lights of our own tree and put the Yule Log up on the TV. And the kinesio-tape did wonders for my back, and I’m about to have two weeks off.
I said before of politics that you grind it out at the coal-face day after day. Turns out life is pretty much the same thing. Every morning that your eyes open, you’re ahead of the game already…best to just gut it out and keep going.
2013. Onward. Unless the world ends in the next twenty-six hours.