Otherwise known as “ruminating on the current state of affairs”
So I hijacked the post template today for my daily recovery posts, and it’s a little late to make New Year’s resolutions, especially since I never keep them or even intend to keep them anyhow.
Having said that, this is a freeform post, I’m not really sure where it’s supposed to go from here, and the language is probably closer to my own internal narrative than is socially or politically acceptable.
Tomorrow is a day of taking things down, cleaning shit up and generally getting stuff done, January 1st is usually something like that anyhow, so there’s no surprise there.
So, Happy New Year, it’s been a shit-show of a final quarter in my world, deaths, diseases, family issues, and of course there’s the whole thing where the world is going fucking insane on us on a daily basis.
I think I like the choppy paragraph thing, and I think I’m going to go get a bit of a drink for the duration. I know my family is all out and sound asleep, but I’m still up, ringing in the new year alone with my worries and issues and all that crap. Here’s a couple fingers of whiskey, sit with me and let’s ruminate shall we?
Unlike so many people that do this kind of post, all;
“2024 is my year, it’s going to be so much better, new year new me, positive directions and only good vibes”
:type of this, which is awesome and works for so many people, I’m not wired that way.
I have to look around, slow down and get internal, look back to see forward as it were.
I have dreams, yeah, and ambitions, but this last year, it sucked, like I mean, truly, royally, and genuinely sucked. I seriously contemplated just cashing out, buying a ticket back to my father in heaven, more times this year than I can count, and all of it due to the ongoing mental load that guys carry, that nobody talks about.
See, we all know mom’s are amazing, and my wife is doubly so, I need to write her a letter sharing how amazing I think she is for all of us, but that’s not the point I’m struggling with sharing at this moment. Dad’s carry a load as well, especially in this world where we’re seen only as the provider, we bring in the money, that’s all anybody will grant us authority over.
THAT’S BULLSHIT. Father’s in this day and age are as involved in the insane overwhelming and generally unfathomable level of daily minute details that mom’s are, or at least they should be. If they’re not then well, it’s time for some of y’all to review what it means to be a father.
As for me, if you’ve read back, we’ve got six kids, one with convoluted (but thankfully, fairly mild at the moment) medical issues, and three more with ASD diagnosis situations not to mention the youngest is two, and cutting molars, one of which came in broken, sideways and septic in the last week of the year, yay, dental surgery on a two year old. So, trying to parent all of that as one of a team of two competent parents is challenging enough.
Trying to be one half of a partnership, when you’re struggling with your own growth, healing and childhood issues, that makes is all the more FUN.
What I’m trying to say, since I can’t seem to come around to it, is that life is hard, really damned hard, even with the best of intentions I fuck things up, and get shit wrong. Hell, today alone I fed my kids all three meals, mostly on the fly with leftovers and patching meals together out of things we needed to get eaten up before it went bad; all during a 12 hour day where mom went to work(NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT THAT, really just not, on call is brutal, since she get’s everybody else’s “I’m sick from last nights party, and can’t make it in” as well as covering for all the booked time off like New Year’s Eve, Boxing Day, New Year’s day, probably Easter and Thanksgiving as well, but at lest she’s getting called in, she’s so amazing).
I support her in working as much as she feels up to doing, and that’s all fine and good, but it’s hard on a guy, being all things to everyone, when there’s no time left over for me to do, well, anything for myself or my own mental health. My free time, my me time, is all spent scrambling to catch up on the housework, the actual paying contract work, and so many other things, that when I get to the end of a day, it’s just a crash and burn scenario. I’m tapped out every night.
Heck, the Fitibit hasn’t recorded a sleep score over 70 out of 100 in all the years I’ve worn it. Usually it scores around the 50% mark, which is about right considering my nights to sleep time run from 12 to 6 daily, with at least two AWAKE periods in there due to restless kids that never sleep through the night anyhow.
So yeah, six kids, from 17 down to 2.5. Two adults, me and my amazing wife who’s trying to work through her own stuff and get some sense of self back after this latest round of ‘keeping the baby alive for the first two years’, and we’re all just careening madly along the rails of life, trying not to get distracted by all the lies and crap that society is trying to shove down our throats.
There’s a list a mile long that I won’t bore you with, stuff that needs done beyond the usual daily grind. But there’s some dreams I have as well, one is to be able to make love to my wife more than every other month, and another is to get us out of this house and into a larger place with room to expand outside.
So I come to the crux of things, what’s important, how can I capitalize on it and where to go from here?
My drink’s running low, and it’s almost an hour into the new year, so I should wrap this up, since tomorrow morning’s sharing post is needing to be written before the kids wake up tomorrow morning.
But here’s a list of general goals for the coming months, I’ll probably detail them a little more in depth later in another post.
First, I’m 290lbs, I’d like that to drop to 225 if I can, and get back to where I could jog a mile if I needed to, as well as overhead lifting my own bodyweight at 225-250lbs which requires full body control of another magnitude.
Second, there has to be a way to earn at least a $1000 online somewhere, somehow, monthly, to boost our income levels, as well as doubling down on my specific skills as a professional accountant in the real world, that will bring us up to a monthly salary of at least 4-5 thousand, so we can get back in the black without my wife trying to kill herself to ‘save us’ from my incompetence.
Third, new to me vehicles:
My two ideal vehicles, but the truck needs to be fire engine red. and the mustang should be iridescent midnight blue. Along this line, I also dream of a reliable and dependable ride for my wife to do all that she needs to do in life, as well as setting the kids on the right path with their own vehicles.
I’m not asking too much, am I?
Duke.