This year has been both shit and fabulous. It's been shit because the Missus suffered a bad fall and incurred a wrist injury in January that required some pretty serious surgery. She now has a lovely scar, plus various bits of metal and several screws holding bones in place. Needless to say, her ceramics work went on hold for a while.
On top of that, her knee injury is slowly deteriorating, meaning she's in constant pain as she waits for her name to reach the top of the surgeon's list. We also lost our much-loved new cats, Dotty and Dolly, within the same two-week period in the same month.
January was, quite frankly, a month that can fuck the fuck off and stay fucked the fuck off.
Fortunately, the rest of the year did get better with a relaxing holiday in Greece in the summer and a slightly flasher holiday in the Dominican Republic to celebrate the other half's 60th in November. Other highlights included the Boy publishing the third installment of his excellent comic, Sagas of the Shield Maiden, and some memorable gigs catching up with old friends.
From my point of view, I set myself four big goals in 2023:
- Get a new job
- Complete 175 classes at BJJ
- Write a new play
- Get my brown belt at BJJ
The one I failed on was the new play. The new job was a biggie, and doing 175 classes and getting my brown belt at BJJ were huge ones to tick off. But the play didn't happen.
Sadly, my own writing has fallen by the wayside in the last two years as work became all-encompassing. With a new job, though, I'm now travelling into London twice a week, so I'll have two one-hour commuting/writing sessions where I can kick back in. And that will make a new play, and a couple of smaller creative projects for 2024, a real possibility.
Purely to be accountable to myself, here are my goals for 2024:
- Draft No.1 of new play by June
- Draft No.2 of new play by December
- Pass probation period at work
- Complete 150 BJJ classes
- Complete 100 BJJ weight training sessions
- Compete in 10 BJJ tournaments
- Read 5 books by Charles Dickens
This is all do-able. But let's see where we are in six months. Because we know life can always boot you up the arse when you least expect it...
