To start with, I turned 50 in April. To celebrate, my bro and I went to Las Vegas for a long weekend. We went to the Elton John Concert and had a blast. In a random bar at a random casino on the Strip, we randomly ran into the ex-wife of a certain foreign exchange student from Belgium that we hosted in 1977. He never left the U.S., but left our family's world in 1985 or so. We hadn't seen or heard from him since.
Running into his ex led to renewed conversations and relationship with my brother that ran away from home, and we're ending 2013 with a visit from him. He came to town yesterday, and we all had dinner. We'll spend the rest of the week with him. It is just not possible to communicate in a blog post how miraculous, awesome and wonderful that is. (But I'm also mad as hell at him for disappearing these 27+ years). I guess on the 1-10 scale, I'm 8.5 mad and about 13 excited. Mostly, I'm overwhelmed.
Back to Wellness and Strength, I started vaping instead of smoking last December. I'm still smoking a little. My Brother quit completely in June and Mom quit November 1. Not only did I impact my own wellness and strength issues by mostly laying down cigarettes, the paradigm expanded to include the last smokers in my family - and they've been more successful at it than I was.
I've lost some weight. And I did it right. I changed my diet lifestyle and started working out. My performance deserves a grade of "C", but at least it's not an "F". There's much more to do, but the ball is rolling, and I fully expect the progress to continue in the months and years to come.
I walked away from the gay world this year, and no longer identify myself with this ethos. Like a candle that burns all the way down to the bottom until it runs out of wick, there was no particular fanfare with my exit from this paradigm. I'm just too old, too out of place and bored with it anyway.
After 30+ years away from it, I bought a trombone and rekindled my love of the music and the instrument I grew up with. And I am enjoying it more than ever. Not only do I get the benefit of playing, I can do it without being good enough or better than someone else. It's been a truly wonderful experience.
And I almost lost mom, who had a heart attack in November. She has had two stents (yes, I learned to spell it correctly!). She is doing well, but will have another procedure in January to fix an Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm that is just as serious as her heart problems, but couldn't be fixed until the heart was stable.
Next year is lining up to be crazy. I think I've been a few baby steps away from crazy for a long time, but in 2014 I think I'm actually going there whether I want to or not. Since the journey has become inevitable, my plan is to put on my Big Boy pants and go there with attitude and enthusiasm, and not fear. Who knows? It might just be fun!