Day 1

This is the tenth year that I have started the day with a writing discipline that uses my number of years in words. There are days when I wouldn’t write anything if I didn’t have this date with myself. It is the reader’s digest version of my personal history and helps me keep track of activities, events, people, and my health. Happy New Year to me as I enter my 79^th year. May it be the best one yet.

PS

My 79^th birthday began with a beautiful morning. I stepped outside to pick up the paper about 5:30 to enjoy the moon, the stars, and the 57 degree breeze. Good start. The mail arrived early and brought birthday greetings from friends of many years. Checking Face Book and e-mails brought more greetings and I felt acknowledged and happy. The good news in the mail was a packet from my money manager that shows the transfer of funds from the Hartford account to the Valic account. That is important because last Friday I received a bill from the IRS for over $30,000! That rocked my world. After I opened it, I couldn’t read the whole thing for an hour. Then I settled down enough to understand what happened. I called my CPA, the sender of the check, the receiver of the check without a call back or returned e-mail from them. So, I was dithering about that all weekend. Monday morning I talked to all three of them and was assured it was fixable and not to worry. Now the documents are with my CPA and he will take care of it. Both of the other two blamed each other and that didn’t help my upset. Chris came over and helped me get the 78 word blog into a book. She is a gift that I treasure. Then Hollie came and we went to see Philomena. It was a great movie. Judy Dench proves that wrinkles don’t detract from beauty.

Looking back over the year, there were few good days. For me a good day means the people were interesting, the activity was fun, and my energy lasted long enough to enjoy it. Beginning in May, after the last blood donation, when my health really went downhill, finally finding the cause for years of waning energy, and beginning the building process, took up most of my attention. At last I can do something that has the promise of healing the depletions, the bone loss, the lack of strong immune response, and hopefully my breathing will improve too. The biggest damage has been to my self-confidence. As soon as I found out that I brought all the problems on myself the self-doubt, double checking, second guessing, negative self-talk took off rapidly. Images of every mistake in judgment, wrong answer, missed appointment, all of the misses and losses pop up in my memory to reinforce that I’m dumb, don’t know enough, can’t get it right etc. Nasty way to live.

New year and my resolution is big. Forgive myself and keep working on fixing the damage. In our family, the mess wasn’t important, cleaning it up was all that mattered. I tell myself, See, today is better than yesterday. Healing is happening now. With the beans, greens, grains, and protein diet, wearing weights, walking, keeping busy, all contribute to a good 79^th year.