Been hiding from the world most of the year but especially since late September. My dad was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme after his first craniotomy and the second was three weeks later and if I’m not doing mom/wife/work/house/dog shit I’m reading about treatment options and managing stuff. The clock is ticking for him and I hate it. It’s kinda depressing and I don’t want to bum anyone out. but we have two puppies so that’s fun and they’ve been a huge help.
get this anxiety/mental health in check -- between covid, long covid, broken leg and recovery there's some residual stuff there I need to take care of train for a marathon. Goal isn't necessarily to complete one, as I'm not sure my body can withstand the training necessary to run that far. But I wanna get as far with the training as I can, and would love to complete 26.2 if my body holds up to the workload. If I can do that, then the goal next year would be to start running ultras
Get a better job. I've been at this shop for five years now. I've been getting raises over the years, and financially, I'm "okay," but not great, or even really good. A guy with my skills should be getting more, but I've stayed here because it's easy for me, and I can pretty much do what I want. But the general manager is going to be retiring for health reasons soon, and if he goes, I'm not staying. He's a really cool guy, and the owner is a fucking dumbass. He's a nice barrier between me and the owner. He said he'll probably leave at the end of January. I've already applied at one of the local tech-schools, so I'll find out about that in the next couple of weeks.
further develop my skill set for work. Possibly teach a few classes. find a better mental health groove. Devote myself some free time.
lose ~30lbs and get back to exercising regularly stop drinking during the week get my novel published before my HS reunion
Do y’all do hs reunions? This would be my (sweet fucking Jesus) 25th year reunion, and it would also be the first. Since our class was SO small - like 26 people - we’ve never done any of them. Throw social media on top of it and I don’t know it’s anything anyone wants to do.
I didn’t go to my 10th because the smooth-brain organizers scheduled it for the Friday after Thanksgiving and I was out of town, as was half of our class. The post-event pictures on social media were awkward. My 20th is in a couple years so if it actually materializes, I’ll consider it.
i don’t. I’m still in contact with a few who I was good enough friends with, everyone else I don’t talk to because they’re irrelevant to me. completely different topic, but I’ve been watching a lot of this guy’s stuff lately and it’s an interesting channel:
This year will be our 30th, and I’m still not so sure I intend to go. I haven’t been to any of the other ones over the decades either. My reasons are many. I didn’t care for high school at all. It wasn’t “the good old days” to me. Those started when I took off the cap and gown and continue to this day. I feel no sense of nostalgia or love for my alma mater. As for my classmates, we’re practically strangers at this point. Even the ones I see semi-regularly around town, it’s generally the same conversation: “How ya been, what ya doing now” followed by awkward attempts to GTFO. But also, and I could be wrong minded here, but some of my closer high school friends left town after graduation. And despite coming home, for the holidays or whatever, have never bothered to contact me when they’re around. Some have driven right past my house. So just because another decade has gone by, now we’re gonna get together? Screw that.
While getting in bed last night, I actually had to use the words, "Oh, shit, better go switch from A/C to heat before the snow gets here."
We are going to have above freezing temperatures next week. I was north of Lake Simcoe last week and snow was melting overnight. Even the small lakes were unfrozen. This year we had a LONG Indian summer and winter is a post-motorcycle-accident Gary Busey.
I was adamantly against reunions for decades. I still keep in close touch with my closest high school friends. If I haven’t seen you since 1985, what would be the point? But I decided to go to my 30th (7 years ago) for the hell of it, even though my other friends had no interest. It was a blast, and I’m glad I did it. It was interesting to see the folks I was marginally friends with, and I had some interesting conversations with a couple of girls I dated post high school. It was worth doing once, but I have no interest in going to another one.
I'm kind of ambivalent about reunions. If I were in town and it was convenient and easy for me to attend, I'd probably go. I don't have any real negative feelings towards my high school or my class. On the other hand, I'm not going to extend much effort to go, because I just don't care that much. I kept in touch with some people, and the rest I can't really claim to know anymore. So, it's just another party, albeit one where you have instant icebreakers for basically everyone there. I'm sure it could be plenty of fun, just like any other party, but I'm not going to jump a flight to go or anything. My 20th came and went during COVID and our class president (is everyone's class president in charge of planning these things? Is that a thing?) is smart and kind so she halted any planning until it could be done more safely. I'm not sure when/if that will happen, and I'm rarely in the region where I went to school except for the holidays... and nobody wants to put on an event in New England in the middle of winter.
I don’t even remember who our class president was, now that I think of it. I don’t know if they’re planning anything or not, and I’m not volunteering myself to do it. I’d probably go, if it’s convenient. But air travel or anything expensive is absolutely off the table.
Our class President was completely MIA during the last class-wide FB group message in the lead up to the first reunion. The person who took up the mantle was a friend of mine, married to another friend of mine, and they threw it together as a couple. Then her husband had benign brain tumor removed, his personality completely changed, and he left his wife and kids as soon as he recovered. He was one of my groomsmen and I’ve barely spoken to him since. His ex-wife just started putting her life back together.
Dad has had some changes since his surgeries. We figure two brain surgeries in three weeks will do that, plus having a racquetball sized tumor to start the whole thing. I can’t imagine what the ex wife went through with that. It seems cruel but brain stuff really is hard to predict and to control outcome wise.
Yeah, it's a really shitty situation without a straightforward answer. I don't really know if it threw him into a mid-life crisis or if there were actual cognitive changes to who he is. He was openly flirting with one of my wife's friends at our wedding when his wife was there, so I think it's a little of column A and column B, but our friendship completely evaporated once he fully recovered. I tried calling him twice with no answer or reply and haven't tried again since.