One year ago today, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. I guess I'm supposed to mark this occasion with some sort of celebration. Well, it's been a pretty crazy year, so it's a little hard to really celebrate. Looking purely at the events that were cancer related, I guess it wasn't too bad. Within six months of being diagnosed, I was in remission. A blink of an eye, really. So, I don't really know how much I really feel like celebrating. Maybe I'll have a beer.
I know that it could be worse, and I have seen worse. So, I feel fortunate. I AM A SURVIOR.
So, I recently just completed my court-mandated financial obligations. I wrote the final check to my ex-wife. And now, I am free and clear of that b**ch now. I don't have any more obligations left to deal with. For the last six months, I've had those obligations hanging over my
head. I've also had to maintain a bit of credit card debt which I
accumulated during the whole divorce proceedings. But I got lucky because my company made a slight mistake and paid out one of my bonuses a little earlier than expected. And that helped.
It's a relief because I don't have to stress about that now. I can finally start focusing on the future and work on build back my finances that was pretty much depleted in the whole divorce. I'm not really starting over, but now I feel like that past is fully behind me. It's a great feeling.
So, a month ago, I wrote about my resolutions for the year. So, how's that going for me? Well, it's not been so smooth as I had hoped. It always seems that something gets in the way.
The first thing that distracted me was a home improvement project I decided to take on. I bought some new bedroom furniture, and I decided to paint my bedroom before the furniture arrived. But, of course, I didn't make it that simple. One of the things I hate about my house is how thick and sloppy the paint looks on all of the trim. So, I decided to try to strip the paint off of the trim. That turned out to be much harder than I expected, especially since this was my first time doing it, and I was dealing with removing about 4-5 layers of paint. In the end, it took up two weeks of my time and I ended up giving up on trying to salvage the the trim. That was majorly disappointing because I wanted to keep the original trim, but it looks like that isn't really going to happen. And what makes it worse is that it's impossible to find stock trim that looks like the existing one, meaning that it would have to be custom. Ok...long story short, I am going to modernize the trim throughout the house. I did end up painting the room, but I still have to do the trim. I decided to wait for my parents to show up to help me with that, since I've never done that before. I still have a lot left to do.
So, where does that leave me now? I have only lost a couple of pounds so far. I cut out most of my soda intake. I don't drink as much beer anymore. My diet is much better. I did join a gym, and I actually do go, except for the time I was working on my room. I haven't done any yoga yet. I'm getting involved with some of the classes at the gym, but I haven't really done the yoga ones yet. It's slow, but I still think I can make the goal of 20 pounds by June.
I've only been to the mountains once in the last month. There's plenty of time still though. And it's so easy to get up there. Leave at 6am, get a good five hours of snowboarding, then be home by 4pm. That's not bad.
I haven't gone anywhere yet, but there are some plans in the works for some upcoming travels. I really want to get a karma trip in there sometime soon. What I mean by a karma trip is to go somewhere and volunteer. Building up the karma.
So, that's pretty much it. I still have a ways to go, but I am in a better position than I was before.