Ravens' View

My friend Steph posted this from Melbourne - looks like a great start to the year. 

I spent New Year's Eve with a good book (Wheel of Time series), some quiet jazz, and a glass of wine or two. I actually missed midnight, not checking the time until 12:10 a.m. Oh well.

I was reviewing my own 2021 for highlights. The first one is surviving COVID, I guess. Next one is surviving a UTI, severe dehydration, a collapse, and my first hospital stay since I was 6. All is good now. On a more positive note, I've really got into online streaming, especially for Farm Simulator, and built a good following. I've settled into my new place just fine, and had pleasant visits with my kids. Kept my sanity, too. That's pretty well it for 'success' I guess, as like many of us I have set the bar pretty low. 

My New Year's Resolution is to journal daily - more to track the day's highlights in the evening than set up an overly optimistic plan in the morning. I would like to finally start my podcasting, as well as lose weight, scan in boxes of photos, travel - lots of plans but my Traveller's Notebook will be the base I think. And I'll continue to avoid Facebook if I can.

 Growing up in Toronto, there was always some doubt we'd have snow at Christmas. But if the 25th dawned with some fresh snow, it was a merry time for us kids, and our parents too. Not a lot of snow, just enough to make a snowman and go sliding and burn off some of those candy canes. This was not an issue for us when I lived up north, of course, as there the concern was whether we would get snowed in. 

For some, Christmas means feeling a little blue, maybe depressed over a loss, or over some unhappy holiday seasons in the past. And now, with short days and dreary weather, as we head into yet another year of COVID and restrictions/protections, this latest variant gives us one more thing to be blue about. It can be a challenge to be positive at times, but for myself, I'm happy just to wake up in the morning and be able to breathe. That's a good start. I've had less face-to-face contact with people over the past few years, but have made up for it a bit with online contacts, either through Facetime or my gaming. I've settled into a new apartment, have put up some art, and have a great gaming setup. I often don't get a lot accomplished each day it seems, so I do my 'to-do' list at the end of the day, reflecting on whatever did get done. This Omicron means more limits on our lives - or it should, if governments weren't so worried about offending people and losing votes. Vaccination and testing are a good solution, but the decision makers don't understand the logistics involved. Or how to convey their message. 

But I'm optimistic and think we will see a drop again in a few weeks. And hopefully, the worldwide infections can be reduced enough so that there are no longer denser areas where variants can evolve. It would be nice to head into summer this year, being able to see people smile and give them hugs.

It's a 'busy' time of the year, as if the rest of the year we weren't always busy with something. Busy is just defined as being occupied with something, as in not dead, right? However, as a holdover from the Puritan work ethic, and/or fussy grandmothers, it has come to mean doing meaningful work that is a high priority for the doer. Or the person judging them. When someone says they were too busy to do something, they just had more important things to do, whether that was focusing on an honest effort to get a job done or the slightly dishonest move of using the task to avoid another one. Such as me posting this so I will be too busy to do Christmas cards. Rather than admit to someone you have more important things to do than their particular task, and take the responsibility of disappointing them, or being honest you had chickened out and risk losing face, it's easier to claim you were busy (as opposed to the rest of the world that is not busy?) and shift the responsibility of your choice onto some unknown busy-ness force. Yes, it is one of my pet peeves ;-)