Today is one of those days. The end of another year at an age known as midlife, making a little bit of progress towards a) wrapping up the past year with some clarity over what’s happened, and z) preparing for the upcoming year: 2025.
Towards that end I topped my WANT-to-do list with “plan a special solo train trip to Powell’s City of Books”, but first set to researching and trying out some accounting software, finally deciding (to return to) Quicken Classic: Personal and Business. Knowing it’s far from a perfect solution, but anything is better than nothing. Especially if that “anything” is familiar and has the longest history of use by the most people. But then my payment wouldn’t go through (on three different cards with available $) so I’m going to cobble something together myself, and maybe that’s for the best. That will be imperfect too, but in a more customized (and cheaper/free) way.
I’m also going to try out some spreadsheet templates I saw listed on Shoeboxed – Google Sheets Expense Tracker Template: 5 Free Templates
Time really got away from me. I was supposed to be heating up my main meal when I got distracted for hours researching then trying out the Quicken Solopreneur cloud-based accounting thing, and deciding the classic shit is still better (and then failing to successfully finalize its implementation) that by the time I heat up my canned chili over and over a bunch of times in the microwave until it was all sticky around the edges of the bowl — each time thinking “now I’m ready to eat” — and then did in fact finally eat, a text came through from my sister about her husband (our much-loved brother-in-law) and his cancer (metastasized to his brain, among other places): if his tumor doesn’t respond to the newer more aggressive treatments they’re getting ready to try, “he could pass away within a few weeks to a month”.
They are getting hospice care lined up.
He has defied all of the odds for about a decade, and gone through all of these years of treatments and surgeries and stuff that it has never really felt like time (for me, particularly as non-nuclear family, and with dynamics with my sister demonstrating in multiple painful ways that I could not possibly ever do the right most wanted things for them) to do a lot of heavy grieving or prepping; he has been granted so many amazing reprieves.
But now it is really getting down to the wire. It is clear that there is nothing in 2025 we can plan on without a high likelihood of it being canceled or postponed indefinitely because DEATH. The great cancer wind-down. Which could be relatively peaceful or a bonafide surreal nightmare given the location of his tumor, and how it has recently taken a seemingly pronounced and impactful turn for the worse.
Once upon a time I was called “mature”. Maybe wise or adult-like beyond my years. But once I actually became an adult? NOT MATURE.
In many ways, I actually de-matured and became younger and more irresponsible in my forties. As visions that were more like hopes and wishes than plans did not pan out, and my body aged, and my energy and desire to persist with no promise of rewards waned, things have gotten more real in my own life and work without me finding a way out of the holes I’ve dug for myself and my wife. I have a lot more tools, for sure, but my toolbox is a fucking disorganized hoarder-ass mess and I’m super unclear and lack confidence in what I’m building.
It almost feels like all plans are useless. But of course that’s not true. And the whole thing about being an adult is KNOWING these times are coming and preparing for them. KNOWING everyone dies, and everyone ages (if they are lucky, and don’t die before they get a chance to age, which is something most of us should all be more prepared for: that we have very few positive options for exerting any control over how or when death happens, but we DO have some control over how we age and treat our bodies and approach risks). So the adult thing to do is to make plans anyway as best we can. Make responsible choices and preparations to ease our suffering and fatten our reserves of strength and practical resources so when the things we can’t control but know are going to get us all eventually HIT.
I’m getting tired of writing this now. But I realized today — after the postponement of planning one thing I want to do in 2025 and the researching and failing at the accounting software and the re-re-re-heated chili and the news about my brother-in-law and the crying I did in the late-afternoon December darkness now fully-descended — I realized that again I’d forgotten to plug the Christmas lights back in before this darkness fell.
I remembered how I joked to myself that this would be my sole scheduled responsibility for the season: something I can build my day around. Unplugging the lights when the sun comes up, and plugging them back in well before dusk. So many things I love: being in touch with what is really going on outside all around me (the weather the sun the moon). Ritual. And pretty multi-colored lights! Doing something our neighbors can enjoy and benefit from when I am otherwise an anti-social bitch-ass curmudgeon.
All of that and so simple to plan and succeed at, but I keep failing to do it in a timely manner or even clarify when the sun comes up and goes down, and WRITE DOWN when to do this lovely little thing. Instead I wind up running out there, stabbing at the cold metal outlet in the dark trying to get shit lit up before my wife comes home late after volunteering for overtime AGAIN.
It’s so simple to fix. No, not with a timer (our old one gave up the ghost, and due to my poor financial planning and wishful self-employment getting progressively less rewarding it’s not something we should throw away money on, especially when it’s such a simple and pleasant practice for me to do it manually, and blowing money on the lights themselves and the electricity to power them was unnecessary enough). It’s simple to fix by me 1) looking up sunup and sundown, and 2) writing it down and 3) prioritizing it – DAILY. With a ton of gratitude: a simple plan. A manageable plan. A plan to do something I am capable of and can submit to with pleasure even if it’s raining or cold or somebody might see me crouched down like a little Christmas light troll trying to stab the prongs into the box that a rat sometimes poops on after she’s done playing with this one clear-bodied plastic stick-pen she likes to move around under and next to the front porch.
So I will keep planning. And I will keep trying. One day at a time. One week at a time. Making adjustments after one moon cycle past solstice.
Sunrise is at 07:58 tomorrow. And sunset at 16:19. Something may come up — a death, a power outage, the breakdown of our government or big huge tree falling on me — and take precedence or force a bit of rescheduling. But most days I will be able to do it, and if not, it is not the end of the world. There is going to be about 8 hours of some form of daylight here; we can count on it.
And no matter what, while I am alive the sun is very likely to keep coming up and the earth to keep up the bulk of its motions with exceptionally reliable predictability. I can go ahead and let myself count on these things, and the knowledge that having some plans and being able to count on myself to do these little things and submitting to what IS helps ease suffering, and can lead to immeasurable amounts of happiness.
I can plan a little trip. And I can be just fine if it doesn’t work out. I’ve been told and believe it is true that NOT planning something is pretty much guaranteeing it won’t happen. So I can also plan to work with more focus, and thereby make more money this year, and plan to do some things I am proud of and that are helpful. I can plan to do my best to not add to the suffering.
I can accept that these plans may be foiled. I can accept that I will not achieve a 100% success rate. And I can still do a better job at making the plans anyway. Without giving up. This is called a growth mindset. Mindfully, patiently, lovingly reflecting on what really happens (when and if it does) to bump things off track, and identifying what I can do to steer things back to plan or towards a better alternate route and destination.
It is never too late to plan.
Having to change plans is a natural response to still being alive and having somewhere left in life to go. Even if it is just to turn on a nightlight. To take a whore’s bath. To brush and floss our teeth and to wave at a stranger like we’re not angry that the whole world didn’t exactly go our way today.
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