January 2025 – Recapping back on 2024

January 2025, I read a sweet post about new years resolutions a couple of weeks ago. Many a joke has been made about buying the monthly (not the yearly) gym membership because most of us aren’t gonna make it there past January. New years resolutions are often about giving something up. Sugar, fast food, alcohol, carbs, smoking etc. Or adding something such as more dieting or exercise. One thing they all have in common is its not something we want to do but something we are forcing ourselves to do because we think we should. Of course a life change can’t be forced.

She decided that she was done with resolutions that made her feel bad about herself (that she was going to fail anyway) so if she was going to participate she was going to do something fun.

Her new years resolution was to try every single type of pasta shape in 2025!

(Her husband and kids were understandably thrilled.)

She made a whole plan based on the pasta options she could purchase available to her where they lived and she would only start ordering new shapes once she exhausted all her local options. (She included Asian options as well because ramen, soba and rice noodles certainly count.)

Turned out they wouldn’t even be eating much more pasta than they already had been but now it wouldn’t always be spaghetti or macaroni. She also wanted to start trying new sauces depending on the type of pasta because every different shape is actually designed for a specific sauce.

If I didn’t have so many gluten issues that is totally something I would love to do…

What a radical idea, a new years resolution to look forward to!

With the last few years I think we all deserve that. A resolution that doesn’t make us feel like failures. Or that we’re not good enough. Or that our bad habits define us.

How about trying a new type of cheese every month?

Or a new ice cream flavor every month?

Shockingly studies prove that when we’re happy, we’re healthier and make healthier choices.

Usually my first blog post of the year I do a month by month recap of the year before. Last year’s post I titled, “January 2024 – The hits just never quit last year” and here’s the first paragraph:

<< "Every January I devote our first blog post to a full recap of all the year before it and I’m trying to figure out how to NOT write something that is downright depressing. Guys, frankly, I won’t blame you for skipping this one. 2023 started out in the worst way I can imagine for my family. On January 9th I received the call that my nephew had passed away that morning. He was only two years old. And it was my dad’s birthday and I was the one who told him..." >>

Unfortunately this post as a recap of 2024 would have read much the same. I keep hoping for at least a year without loss but maybe its just my age now as everyone is getting older, everything has a shelf life.

I lost my soul horse in March and Lodi lost his soul dog in November.

Those losses, on top of the losses of the year before, really meant my legs were firmly taken out from under me.

I finished my office and I know now why I worked so hard on it. I really needed a little space just for me to hide and heal though I didn’t realize it fully at the time.

I received a call in July from my uncle. (I have a large, close family of artists and writers.) He decided to finally publish his book that he had been working on for over fifteen years and he thought of me. He and I spent more time together than we ever had before to get it done. Time I am incredibly grateful for. And the book came out absolutely gorgeous. Its called Flight Over Tintangle.

Maybe he had a premonition, or maybe it was because of his last birthday turning him 75 (an age his own dad didn’t make it to) that he decided that it was now or never.

What we all thought was bronchitis or pneumonia (or even whupping cough) took my uncle to the emergency room on Thanksgiving day 2024 with a broken rib.

They found a mass in his lung, kidney and ten spots on his brain.

This new years they gave him 6 months to a year.

He once told me that its not that life is short its just that everything takes so damn long. By the time we get our shit together, are no longer so broke, poor and dumb, life is almost over.