Do Not Attempt to Exit 2021 until the Ride Comes to a Complete Stop.

In perky blogger world, I should be writing cheery and targeted posts about “How I’m going to bullet journal in 2022!”

Spoiler: Same way I always do, but I did indulge in a truly gorgeous notebook from Notebook Therapy. I mean, c’mon, they had me at their company name, and then the notebook itself? Absolutely stunning, the quality is excellent, and I got it on sale.

And because I am really, really bad at monetizing this blogging stuff, I am not getting compensated for sharing the link to their site. But this will be the year of using the GOOD stationery. We have earned it.

Anyway, I’m totally in a funk at the moment. Remember when 2020 was ending, and we were all, “Thank GOD that bitch of a year is leaving!” and then within the first week of 2021 January 6th happened, and COVID never went away because we have a lot of shitty humans among us, and the sequel got much darker.

I have not been writing about politics because honestly, I don’t have the energy for it. It’s not that I have stopped paying attention or given up. I’m immersed in it as always. I just don’t have the mental bandwidth to write about it here.

And now 2022 is almost here and we are doing yet another round of this COVID shit, and I am truly hitting burnout.

I’ve been working this week, though hardly anybody else at The Place Where I Work That Does Not Pay Me was working. My inbox went from 50+ emails a day to THREE, and next Tuesday all the people who have been “relaxing and enjoying the holidays,” on their paid leave will be back and frantic to catch up on all the shit they shelved for two or three weeks.

I’m going to be 64 in June. That still seems surreal to me, because in my head I’m still somewhere in my 40s. I’m tech-savvy, politically active, wise in the ways of social media, I’m truly not as mentally old as the calendar says, but some asshole pasted pictures of my mother on every mirror.

I saw someone around my age on Twitter say in his head he’s really Gen-X, not a Boomer. I have to agree – my life experience has been far from the Boomer stereotype of, “Work at a job for 30-40 years, retire with a pension around 65, get really into cruises and spoiling the grandkids.” My dad got to retire. I just want a fun, lower stress job for my old age.

But I also know that my body is not 40ish, and I need to take better care of it. I have post-desk-job goals, because I’ll never be able to afford to retire, and I need to be in shape to achieve them. I’m accepting that I’ll always have to work at something, somewhere, so goddammit I want to make it something FUN, once I can get Social Security and Medicare to backstop the loss of income and insurance.

So I do have fitness goals, because as GAWD is mah WITNUSS, my next job will not involve desks and spreadsheets and Teams meetings and deadlines that move without notice, because YES, we did have two weeks post holiday to get a thing done (when everybody’s back to work again) but now it’s going to start a week EARLIER? What fucking genius did that without asking? I only found out about it after seeing it on somebody else’s spreadsheet. That sort of thing used to make me frantic, like, “How can I MAKE THIS HAPPEN?” Now I just shrug. There are a lot of moving parts and I’m only one of them. If it happens, it happens. (I’ve been meditating daily. It does help.)

So, I do have plans for 2022. I need to focus on the future to stay sane, because the present is just freaking Groundhog Day in Crazytown.