Tag Archives: New Year

Blue Monday is through.

Posted on January 16, 2023 | 3 comments

There are many great things about my job, but the craziest is that it means I love Mondays. Every other Monday is a day off, because I have a four-day work week. The Mondays when I’m at work are the one day of the week we don’t go out and do deliveries.

Don’t get me wrong, I like doing deliveries – it’s a great part of the job. But on a gray Monday in January, after hiking through the rain to the Skytrain, then on into the office, it’s nice to settle down at a desk, knowing you don’t have to leave again until the day is done. There’s always something to be done, and today I got to wrap up a whole bunch of tasks that have been nearly complete for a while. It was a day for sorting things out, for answering the phone, for crossing things off the to-do list.

I understand why this is often a hard time of the year – ordinarily people are coming down from the holidays, facing the financial realities of the New Year, and a long wait until the weather picks up, or the next break arrives. So I guess I should be grateful that our holidays were sub-optimal…The only way is up!

Wherever you are on your emotional calendar, I hope the sun is starting to show through the mist.

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Waiting for the bounce back.

Posted on January 4, 2023 | Leave a comment

It’s 2023 – you probably noticed. It was all over the news. The internet, or at least the corner I wander through, has been filled with people rounding up their achievements in 2022 and setting out their intentions for the coming year. I explained in the last post why I don’t have one of those, and how our year got rounded off in a rather unexpected way.

There used to be a regular pattern to the end of one year and the start of the next. The excitement of the run up to Christmas (with three kids, you can’t avoid some excitement – it’s contagious). I’ve always had the kind of jobs where you don’t get a huge chunk of break over Christmas, and there’s no holiday allowance to book. That makes the days off more precious, and those weird in-between days, when I go back to work, but all the adults in the workplace are still away, fun and relaxing. In the Home Library Service, those days between Christmas and New Year are our Off Road week, where we don’t make any deliveries, but catch up on stuff in the office that we need time for – reorganisation, changing the shelving, looking at delivery routes and stuff like that. Again, it’s a quiet time in the library, and the senior staff often take the time off. It’s a fun time to be there, and low stress.

Then the New Year would kick off, and it would all be fresh and exciting again. So much possibility in those first few weeks, where whatever new routine I had assigned myself was still functioning, and the exceptions hadn’t materialised to spanner everything. I would be exercising, writing, planning… But not this year.

The Kidney Stone incident really knocked Christmas for six. I feel like I barely saw the kids when they came to visit, and I spent more than half the day in Emergency. Nobody got any real Christmas dinner. I got into work for one of the Off Road week days, but the stone kept me home for the rest of it, and then I got worried about Mrs Dim’s cold. She still hadn’t shaken it, so we took Covid tests. She and I were positive, Tiny Weasel was not.

So there we go, after nearly three years of dodging the bullet (you know, by getting vaccinated and being responsible and wearing a mask etc) we finally got it. Which meant I couldn’t go back to work on Jan 3rd, like I should. Worse, Mrs Dim didn’t get to do her first trial morning of return to work today, which she has been so looking forward to – it’s been a very long time off work for her.

So the beginning of this year feels like the inversion of all the others. It’s been a bit of a mess, a disorganised shamble to the finish line of 2022, and a rocky beginning to 2023. I’m hoping that means we get an inversion of the usual trope for January too, and we suddenly find things pick up, instead of falling apart. Fingers crossed.

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That was 2022

Posted on December 29, 2022 | 3 comments

About a month ago I had an idea to write a round up of the year. I think maybe the reason I didn’t, was that there isn’t a great list of successes and achievements. No matter how many times I try to revise my expectations, or review what I count as “success”, there’s still an insistence that I must produce new work every year, and by produce I mean “finish and publish”. This only applies to plays, of course, because I’ve given up on the notion of the e-books being anything but a way of storing information about my prop-building exploits.

But it’s the year end, and Spotify have sent out emails showing you what you listened to. Authors will be reviewing their favourite books of the year, there’ll be “Best Movies of 2022” articles everywhere, video games reviews and so on. All in all, it’s a strong incentive to look at our own achievements and put things in “pro” or “con” columns.

Mrs Dim said the other day that she’d found a note that said our word for 2022 was “Optimism”. You have to remember that, back at the start of this year, we had no idea how she would be affected by her stroke long term. There was no projected date for a return to work. There was a faint chance I could move up to a full-time position, but that turned out to be too long a shot to pull off. So we’ve spent the year being optimistic. We managed to buy the apartment, allowing the elder two Weasels to move out and still live within their means. Fluctuating interest rates have made that harder, but now we know Mrs Dim has the chance to return to work in January, our income may rise a little to offset that again.

My brother came through his health scare with some terrific new scars, but a working heart. My mum and dad have got through the worst (hopefully) of the UK winter, despite a Conservative government actively trying to kill off large sections of the population.

We went to Seattle and showed off Derek to an actual DOCTOR. If I ever need to smile, I just watch the video of Derek trundling around. He only got motorised this last summer! That seems incredible to me. I’m resigned to the fact that most of his renovation work won’t be completed by Fan Expo in Feb, but he MIGHT be talking…

Anyway, we were optimistic right up to Christmas Day. We had gather the kids together for a nice lunch and to open presents, when I got a resurgence of what I had thought was a grumbling appendix. When it hadn’t stopped grumbling after a few hours, we went into Emergency, and they finally determined it was a kidney stone. I came out with some medication, the advice to pee through a strainer, and someone else’s cold, which I then passed on to Mrs Dim.

None of this has made the last week of 2022 any more optimistic, but I don’t think it’s knocked us down either. I made it into work today, and I won’t need to come back until next Tuesday if I don’t feel up to it. Mrs Dim has a similar timeline before her trial return to work period starts, and it’s a graduated return too.

We’re aiming for “Stabilisation” next year. Mrs Dim finding her footing in work again, Tiny Weasel doing the same in her job at the library. The elder two weasels are wrestling with work and college still, and I obviously have health issues to work out. And Daleks to renovate.

Maybe we don’t have a laundry list of accomplishments for the year, but maybe we don’t need one. Maybe we can just stand on the mountaintop and appreciate the view before we start the next climb.

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Start as you mean to go on…

Posted on January 2, 2019 | Leave a comment

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The start of a new year is a great time for new beginnings. We make resolutions, renew memberships, draw up lists. We pledge on social media to be better, to be more consistent, more productive. In the post Christmas calm, when work has shut down and we bask in the warmth of good food, gift-giving, family and friends, a new start seems almost inevitable.

Neil deGrasse Tyson upset some people on Twitter by pointing out that January the first is only significant in the Gregorian Calendar.

Neil Twitter.jpg

I understand why people were annoyed, but I think he’s right. If we’re only prepared to make a new start one day a year, what good is that? The day before the new year began, I tried to load up the file for my latest book, but it had corrupted, and all the work I had done up to that point was lost. One day it worked, the next day it didn’t. So, here’s the new year, and I’m preparing to make a new start on a project I was a third of the way through. And once that’s done, there are plays to write, sketches to produce, DIY and craft projects to take on. Each one will require a new start.

Every day is a new beginning. Enjoy the next 365 fresh starts.

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It’s a brand New Year…Again

Posted on January 6, 2015 | Leave a comment

My actual white board, now no longer actually white. "Omar Serif" and "They're taking the robots to Alderaan" are jokes I haven't gotten around to yet. Be relieved about that.

My actual white board, now no longer actually white. “Omar Serif” and “They’re taking the robots to Alderaan” are jokes I haven’t gotten around to yet. Be relieved about that.

It’s nearly the end of the first week of January, and this is the first post I’ve managed in 2015, which means I ought to be talking about Resolutions.

But, as you may know from last year, I don’t do so well with resolving to change. I need a list every day just to get through the things that keep the house running, so adding grand aspirations to that list has been somewhat problematic in the past.

However, last year, I decided to just write more stuff. This was a simple enough idea that I could keep it in mind, and even put it up on my white board above my desk. “Write more stuff” translates easily into whatever project I feel like doing, and as long as there is more stuff at the end of the year, then it’s working. That’s a measurable goal, that is.

And last year I produced more plays, a new ebook and a lot of sketches. I found that the break of fifteen minutes at work is just long enough to eat a sandwich and write a page and a half of sketch, resulting in a sketch every week. That’s a sketch each week written at work, plus the stuff I can write when I’m at home. Like every published writer is fond of saying, there IS time to write, you just have to choose to use it for writing.

Like last year, most of what I plan to complete and publish won’t reach the marketplace until the later half of the year, so I’m not going to list my projects here. I will post about them when they’re complete, and then put up reminders with links when they get published. I’m hoping the Appraisal Service continues to keep me busy, and that life at the Library remains as fulfilling and entertaining as it had proven so far.

What are the big projects for YOU this 2015? Are you going to write that novel or sequel? Are you going to try writing something that’s outside your comfort zone, like a romance, or a horror story, or a poem? Are you thinking of writing for the first time? Because I have a really good feeling about this year. I think it’s YOUR year. I mean, obviously that’s bad news for everyone else, but we’ll cope, honest. Don’t feel bad for us, you just go on and make the most of it.

We’ll be over here. In the corner. Maybe crying just a little bit.

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Happy New Year, eh?

Posted on December 31, 2010 | 2 comments

Watching the eagles at Brackendale - this year, we actually saw some...

The trees are still up and there are still strings of lights festooning houses down every street, but people’s thoughts have turned from Christmas to the coming year. And, of course, to the year that’s past.

It’s a funny thing about this emigration lark. We didn’t arrive in Canada on the first of January, but it’s hard to avoid thinking of this as the end of our second year.  End of the year is what it’s all about, after all.

One of the truths we’ve come to understand in this second year, is that it was both easier and harder than the first. The things that seemed so strange and difficult at first have become everyday. I know where to shop, I know how to get to a doctor, dental checkups are a snap. Mrs Dim and I both have jobs. We have friends, and as much of a social life as we can cope with. So much for the hard things. But this year we have felt some of the strain of being so far from family and old friends. Technology has been a big help, with Skype, email and FaceBook keeping us up to date with events and even helping us send real-time video greetings to my family on Christmas morning, but it’s not the same as the regular visits to and by friends. Or even the sporadic visits. Or those ‘Didn’t know we were coming, but found ourselves in the area” visits. The recent ructions over my working weekends and weasel wrangling showed us how much we missed the support of our families when it comes to getting a break from the weasels, or giving them a break from us.

A stranger relaxation comes from the acceptance that we’re here for the long haul. Mrs Dim was saying today that she’s not in such a tearing hurry to try all the winter sports on offer, or visit every corner of British Columbia RIGHT NOW, because she finally feels that there will be time for all of that. We’ve accepted, for example, that Middle Weasel really doesn’t want to give skiing a go again this winter. She got cold last year, she said, and she doesn’t want to do it again. That was a blow, because if she’s not skiing, then one of us has to not ski too. Brilliant grammar, Dim, try again. If she’s not skiing, then one of us has to stay with her, and the other has to ski with Eldest Weasel (who is competent) and Tiniest Weasel (who is a natural disaster on skis, hurtling down the slopes like a football in a helmet, but armed with two sharpened poles….). So, as you read this, I shall be off to the Mountain with Eldest Weasel only, taking my last ski of the year. Also, as it happens, my second ski of the year, but I’ll take what I can get.

We’re homeowners now, able to bore folks with our tales of renovation, and feeling a lot more Canadian because we have a piece of the land to call our own. In a year we’ve gone from being Newbies, renting and living off foreign earnings, to landed Canadians, paying tax and contributing to our community.

Back in March, celebrating our first anniversary of landing, I said we’d pretty much run out of firsts, but I think I spoke too soon. I’m finding, like a lot of people, that there are many, many firsts in a lifetime, and many more that you don’t regret having to do again and again. In the year to come we’re facing Eldest Weasel going up to High School, further employment ambitions and business expansions and the hope of a Christmas trip to the UK. Whether those things will be problems or challenges we’ll have to wait and see, but we’re ready for them either way.

Happy New Year, eh?

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