The struggle

2018 was hard. We made it to the end of the year, barely hobbling over the finish line. In the big picture, we are fine: we are all healthy, employed, and love each other, but the day to day has been a struggle.

I feel disconnected from the kids because we’re all so tired that when we are together we are a string of individuals on our own devices, with our headphones on, each consuming our preferred brain stimulus. Camille has old episodes of Full House running on a loop, Caleb watches YouTube videos of other people playing video games (I didn’t think there could be a rung below gaming on the intellectual ladder, but he found it), Carter has sports highlights on his laptop while playing something else on his phone, and I’ve got reruns of my favorite comedy series playing (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Parks and Rec, and The Office) for the 50th time because I don’t have the mental energy to learn a whole new cast of characters.

So why did 2018 kick our behinds? I think it was the wave after wave of unknowns, interspersed with crashes onto the rocks. Winter/Spring 2018 was a bundle of nerves as we anticipated retirement. Stuck in limbo between one job and needing the timing to work out just perfectly to get into the next one . . . looking back I’m amazed that we actually pulled it off. All those moving parts of packing up the house, kenneling the pets, having friends store appliances in their spare rooms over the summer, selling my car and having it stored in a hotel parking garage, getting employed, all of those cogs ended up fitting together and it worked.

But between there and here we rode the craziest rollercoaster and took a lot of unexpected twists and turns. And I’m wondering if 2019 is going to be another loop around a similar track?

We’re still waiting to hear what the future holds for Josh’s job. Today there were 4 different options that popped up, but who knows if any of them are actually possible or will actually exist in a few months. We have to see how the puzzle pieces fit together in the merger and then move from there. It feels like a game of leapfrog and we’re waiting to see how long we can stay on this lily pad until we have to leap to the next.

In the meantime, we’re trying to relax, recover, get more rest and spend more time together watching the same TV shows — hey, baby steps! Camille isn’t thrilled about most of HGTV, but she does like Chip and Joanna on Fixer Upper, whereas Carter much prefers the Property Brothers. We’ll figure it out, eventually.