Welcome December

This is the first day of December.

That means I have 31 days to:

Watch 20 Netflix movies so I will reach my goal of 200 this year. [The actual total will number more than that but I count the season of a series as "1" so it doesn't look like I spend more than an average amount of time watching rented movies and tv shows.]

Decide which digital photos I want to have printed so I can update the photo album. It used to be easy to take pictures, send off the film, get the photos in the mail, label said photos, and mount them in the photo album and scrapbooks. Now I take digital pictures and download them to the computer, where they are stored away in folders filed alphabetically instead of in an album where family gatherings and life events are in chronological order and tangible for my viewing and sharing pleasure.

Finish compiling this year's emails from my sons. When my daughter was in college she saved the emails she and I sent each other, compiled them on a disc, and had them printed out and bound at Staples. I used that idea when my sons went to college, compiling and printing along the way. The pages are few for my youngest but I'm saving what I do have. Since P moved away I have saved the few emails he's sent with the details of his new job and apartment. I'm sure there will be other milestones that it will be nice to have a record of in the future.

Find a job. Sigh. This might take longer than 31 days. I have high hopes for the interview I had last Wednesday; I will hear this week if I am selected for a second interview. All year I have been pinning my hopes on the next job application or the next interview or the next round of interviews. Time for a new strategy if I don't have a job by the new year, which means I will decide if I am going forth with a small business or not. The entrepreneurship skills class has been very good, laying out all the steps and details of starting a small business. I am a gatherer of information, so I already knew a lot of what we've covered. I was looking for a secret formula or a sign that this was meant to be. That only happens in fairy tales. What I have is a notebook full of steps to take and forms to file, with the knowledge that I would be taking on a huge responsibility that requires a lot of work and may return little or no profit for an indeterminate period of time. It would be a gamble, and I am not a risk taker.

Figure out how to make up for the last five months when I see P at Christmas. I knew the distance would make staying connected difficult, but I did not think the disconnect would happen so quickly. For instance, when P called last week he asked his dad if he was completely recovered from the pneumonia, which is something he still asks during phone conversations despite our assurances that Ken is fine. The problem is he hasn't seen his dad since the day Ken was discharged from the hospital, when he was still very weak from the pneumonia and the 45 pound weight loss. P doesn't have an image to replace the one when his dad was sick. We can't start where we left off because we aren't the same, but we have to figure out a way to get up to speed quickly so we can reconnect and enjoy the limited amount of time we will have with each other. Compacted time together does not make up for visits over time when the real stuff of day-to-day life happens, in the moment and with firsthand emotions.

And my biggest task will be to make an effort to be proactive instead of reactive. I realized this fall that for as long as I can remember I have made decisions about my life based on my reactions to what has already happened, whether that's circumstances or what other people have decided for themselves. I observe, collect information, read the reactions of others, and find a place to fit myself in the space that is left. This year I have had all the space a person could use, and I didn't know what to do with it. When given the time to do anything, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. There are 31 days left this year to figure that out.

I may not accomplish all of these tasks in the next month. I do know it's time for a change.