As 2025 Comes to an End, I Reflect....

 

 

I'm not normally one of those to bare my soul in public, but after the year I've had, I decided that a little self-reflection wasn't a bad idea. I'm about to end my year on a very high emotional note. I get weepy if you look at me cross eyed. I have a damn good reason. But I think I'm going to do something I never do. I'm going to make some Resolutions for the New Year. I need some changes and 2026 is as good a time as any to make them.

See, this summer, I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. Let me tell you, that initial phone call did something to me that I'd only heard about -- my body went numb and panic started to set in. A very intense feeling. It started small inside of me and got bigger and bigger and bigger and the next thing I know, I was as close to a full-blown panic attack as I've ever been before. And I've had three immediate members of my family come to me and tell me they had cancer. It's not a fun diagnosis and it's not a fun thing to hear. 

I was very lucky. We caught it while the tumor was less than a centimeter in size. I was smart when I started perimenopause by not taking HRT because the studies were showing HRT was highly causal to Breast Cancer diagnoses. The kind of cancer I had (and I can use the past tense, thank you) was Estrogen/Progesterone negative, HER positive. Oh-so-easy to treat. I had a lumpectomy to remove the tumor and as I type this, I just finished my last radiation treatment three days ago. Five days of intense radiation on the right breast and if any remained, that killed it off. My next step -- with very appropriate date, I might add -- is to start the hormone blocker therapy for the next five years to make sure it doesn't come back. Two weeks after that last radiation. Appropriately enough, to start on New Years Day. 

You get news like that, live on the edge of the knife's blade for months and the stress is commensurately rough. I've had nurses and doctors commend me for my combative attitude in treating and fighting this. This surprises the hell out of me. Because I don't feel like I've done or felt or acted in any way special at all. This is me. I don't know how to wallow in self-pity or give in to feelings of doom and gloom. I was raised and have lived my life to let it absorb into me for a day and then, the next morning, spit on the palms, rub my hands together, and tackle it head on. I don't think about it, I don't worry about it. I just plot my steps and get up and do them. It's how my family is. It's how I was raised. I learned that from my Mom. 

I always told my friends that my Mom was just a more ladylike version of me. Or maybe I was a less ladylike version of her. I never know which. Ah well....

It's been an emotional, stressful last half of the year. And my way of dealing with it all was to bury myself in my therapy and writing a novel I've always wanted to write. My take on Shakespeare's Hamlet: Prince of Denmark. Not rewriting a classic -- no one can do that; you can't rewrite perfection. But I asked, how would that story develop in a modern world? Would it stay the same events or would they change? I kept my mind occupied in answering that question. 

My attitude was, "let's get 'er done." And we did. 

So, here I am at the end of the year 2025 and looking into my future with a renewed sense of my life. I beat A-fib, Congenital Heart Disease, and High Blood Pressure two years ago. And this year, I'm considered a Cancer Survivor. And I have made the decision that my life and my world need a good shake up. I need a good shake up.

Time for re-invention. And resolutions.

So, my few New Year Resolutions are these:

1. Just do it. Enjoy the delicious food. See those movies that make me laugh and cry and feel. Life is too short. But the truth is, my life has been too sedentary and I'm too fat. I've learned one thing in all of this -- everything in moderation. So eat the food. Drink the drink. But move. Strength training. Walking. Rowing machine. Half an hour a day. And stop stressing over everything else. It'll take care of itself. 

2. Indulging my passion for books and stories is going to be my buzz this year. Read more, write more. Find the stories that move me, inspire me to write and explore them. I finished The Undiscovered Country and I think I want to do the same for all of my favorite Shakespeare plays. Find the stories in a modern world -- how these people would act and adapt to a modern world, how the events would play out. Will they change or stay the same? Will the outcome alter or remain? I want to read more books, in and out of my genre. I have several in the pipeline. I'm always outlining. 

3. I will no longer give in to my damned Imposter Syndrome. If you don't know what that is, look it up. It's crippling. I did my rewrite/edit on The Undiscovered Country and bemoaned that it was too good to have come from me. I'm not talented enough or smart enough to have written this book. It's not me. It's not mine. And that's just (pardon the expression) bullshit! I've been writing a long time. I was never without a book in my hands for the first 30 years of my life. So, to my Imposter Syndrome, I say this (and again, forgive the expression) -- FUCK YOU, IMPOSTER SYNDROME! YOU LOSE! I will believe in myself and my talent more.

4. And lastly, take nothing for granted. Every little thing is a gift from so many sources. No one owed me life; it was a gift to be born. No one owes me an easy life; I make it of my own design and choice. No one owes me a long life; I make that happen with my choices and my lust for the experiences of life. No one owes me a future; that is mine to create in my own image and to my own desires and whims. My own knowledge. I choose. I desire. I create. I want to be more, know more. I want to travel and experience new things. And the time is coming when I can do that. But no one owes me the things I want. I make them. I do them. And I will chronicle them as I go along. 

So many things to do and see and be. I think that is going to begin today, not 01/01/2026. I can embrace them on the first day of the new year, but I think I can get a "runny-go", as Mom used to say. Kick-start it now rather than wait. The rest of my life is mine.

And I am now going to live it. And, you know, I might even get my butt in here and blog more. No idea what content yet, but.... I'll think of something.

How about you? If you've read this far -- and thank you for that -- tell me about your life, your plans. Your dreams. I really do want to know.

As the late, great John Denver used to close his shows...

Peace, my friends.