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We are (almost) halfway through the year. How is 2022 going for you?
I'd like to know how you're all doing. Did you have any goals for this year? Have you achieved any of them? Given up on any of them? What are the top 3 things that changed in your life so far this year?
Well, my fiancee wants to have a kid, which I also want, but she wants it right f* now and that's a source of occasional conflict.
I lost some weight.
I'm studying for admission tests for government jobs, and I realized I like learning about the law. It's kinda...fun? Who'd figure? Wanting a steady job is totally related with the wish to become a father, in my country government jobs are prestigious and highly sought due to high pay, benefits, and stability (it's basically impossible to get fired).
COVID is basically over although not really over. I finally met some of my fiancee's friends which was nicer than I expected. I think I lost about 20 social skills points due to the pandemic.
One of my best friends is having serious mental issues related to the pandemic, I saw him yesterday after almost 3 years. Thankfully he's making a strong recovery and I'm confident he'll be 100% in 2 or 3 months. I had lots of tips for him since I've been in treatment for about 17 years, and referred him to my doctor since he doesn't like the one he's going to.
I'm really happy living with my fiancee, I never lived with a girl before and we're pretty much making each other laugh and doing lovely gestures all day long. It's the best.
Godspeed on your plans on having kids. Expect to have your life turned upside down for the first few years. Prepare yourself and your fianceé by adjusting your expectations around a new and challenging reality, and don't be afraid to ask your loved ones for help. It takes a village to raise a child, and to remain in a healthy relationship.
Not all can have a kid, and not all kids are little angels their first years, but I'm confident that its among the most challenging and rewarding things in life.
A very mixed bag.
Back in January, my ex got back in touch with me and apologized for disappearing fifteen months prior. Turns out I was completely wrong about why she just ghosted me out of the blue. She was not in a good place mentally and she actually tried to take her own life while we were apart. We're back together but it feels like we're not a couple. For all the time we've known each other, we've never kissed, let alone slept together, and I feel like an outlet for her problems.
Going on holiday with her next month, but I booked more-so because she was going with friends and they were planning to abandon her a few days in and go travelling all across Europe. I tried to convince friends of mine to come along too but none wanted to. I'm going because she's stressed and doesn't want to be stranded.
Also found out another friend is mentally in a bad place after losing his mother, being dumped by his fiancé and having his family excommunicate him, all over the same month. I won't elaborate on the reason why his family cut him off, but as far as I'm concerned he did nothing wrong. He's virtually given up on life and I think the only reason he's still here is to take care of his pets. It's pretty much a "once my pets die, I'm out" situation.
I finally passed all my AAT exams and am now a qualified accounting technician. I also left a temp job I hated to go into a permanent position which is... okay. I don't do a whole lot of accounts work and I feel like an overglorified phone monkey sometimes. My pay is worse than it was 18 months ago, the cost of living has gone up to the point where I cannot viably move out of my parents anymore, and it's not like my girlfriend is willing to move into a place with me. Next stop is ACCA but I really do feel like I'm chasing a pipe dream and don't even know if I can get into financial or management accounting.
Shit's really been getting to me and I lack the motivation to do much beyond work. I don't even have the energy to play video games half the time...
I oversee a big list of sole trader suppliers at work with very strict payment terms who earn multiple times more than me. Having some of these people utterly flip at me on the phone because their ten day old invoice hasn't yet been paid has royally pissed me off.
Been trying to see a therapist myself because I know I'm depressed, but the NHS had a several year waiting list long before COVID was even a thing, and I'm now at the point where private therapists charging £90/£100 a session aren't even replying to my enquiries.
I wouldn't ordinarily write anything particularly introspective on Tildes anymore, but this time, I feel like I could use a channel to verbalize my state of being so far.
The year started well: I began writing for my own Russian-language magazine about New York, a city I'm deeply, maddeningly in love with. I gave myself a goal and overshot it: "15 minutes of reading time per issue minimum" quickly turned in 25 minutes and above. Turns out, I simply cannot speak concisely about something I'm envisioning so clearly. (Apparently, it's a feature of ADHD.)
So now, I have a handful of long-reads I'm proud of, that look deep into the history and the present of New York. I plan on going on with it and, perhaps one day, developing it into something bigger than what it is right now: essentially a blog on a social network. I have but a dozen subscribers, and yet one has already decided to support me financially via patronage. This gives me hope about the future of this endeavor.
Then, an elderly maniac attacked Ukraine – and stole their country away from thousands and thousands of intelligent, empathetic Russians... and also from me.
Out of desperation, I messaged @Adys, whom I worked for briefly a long time ago, asking if he has any sort of prospects of escape for a nobody from a middle of nowhere. He came through for me big time, offering me guidance, insight, and a paved path for me, away from the shitshow happening on this end of the line. @Gaywallet helped me greatly as well: without his help I could not get the initial leg up in my journey.
Three months of my life disappeared due to stress and worry and anxiety and an indeterminate future. On the positive side, I was able to safely travel and stay away from (what seemed at the time like) possible internal dangers of an aggressive war-in-everything-but-the-name, and I got to see a gorgeous and welcoming city of Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. Should I ever get a chance to travel back there, I would do so in my own right as a tourist with the means to afford it. It would be a worthwhile trip.
I wouldn't want to talk about how things are going right now, as it is an ongoing matter, but it does appear as though things are looking up for me. The relief of the news about my chances being good has invigorated my creativity, and so I'm back to writing for the magazine and making notes for other projects.
I still have reasons to worry and plan for eventualities, but my prospects are much better than they were at the end of February.
I graduated university, bought a car, spent two weeks with my dad and start my new job next week, so things are going well so far. I guess that's 4 changes. I guess next is looking for a place of my own, since I'll have the income for it, but the market is super screwy right now.
I'll admit to posting this because I'm so enthused about my own progress in learning a new language.
In the past few months, I went from having one Russian speaker in my life, to seven, including four I actively talk/write to on a near-daily basis. A while ago I took the decision to actually learn the language, as it had become obvious I would make significant use of it. I had some bases already: I could read (slowly), and I knew... a few words, not enough to get around.
After the war started, I had planned to learn Ukrainian; unfortunately, I don't actually have many people to speak to; even the few Ukrainians in my life don't actively speak it. And if I do want to learn it, fluency in Russian will help quite a bit.
A month ago, I decided to take the plunge and learn it. Russian would be my fifth language. I had given myself the goal: "Conversational russian by May 2023".
So how's that going? Well, today, I had an actual back and forth conversation, in Russian, with my ex's sister. It was slow and full of mistakes, but I still am just flabbergasted by the pace of my own progress. This has been going MUCH smoother than I thought it would, especially as I haven't found Russian to be particularly "easy" (unlike Swedish, where the progress surprised me because I found it to be a much easier language to learn for English speakers than I gave it credit for at first glance).
OK, aside from that, my goals for this year... This year is the "year of relationships" for me. I posted an update about this early in the year. This has driven me to place significant importance to decisions relating to the relationships in my life (friends, family, romantic, and self).
Self: I am slowly learning to actually like who I'm becoming. Working on really identifying the flaws I dislike and addressing them, while squashing long-standing issues that plagued my life.
Family: I've confirmed what I thought: I don't like most of my family, and trying to have a relationship with the people in it I dislike is futile. But I also learned my cousin is awesome and we hang out sometimes now.
Friends: I noticed my social circle has become too large, and because of this, I am unable to care for the people I want to care about. I am currently actively working on this aspect of my theme. I hate leaving people behind, but it seems like I will have to simply drop some friends. And it seems like the person I call my "best friend", awesome as he still is to this day, doesn't really deserve that title anymore as I have people in my life who deserve this title more.
Romantic: Most interesting for last. AKA what @cfabbro calls my "dumbest idea ever".
Well, early in the theme I labeled myself polyamorous. I then rekindled my relationship with my Ukrainian ex. It was weird, complicated, intense, and frankly kinda toxic. Extreme highs and extreme lows. Then the war started and what had already been amped up to 11 was now at a solid 200. We're still in each other's lives, but I am happy to have her as my "family" now, rather than as my SO. Her twin sister is amazing and recently called me her "best friend in Belgium", that was heartwarming.
I lost my other love and still feel pretty fucked up about it.
And, a couple of months ago I met a very nice Russian woman. She's also going through a bit of an identity crisis about her Russian and Ukrainian roots (who wouldn't be?). We recently started dating and I'm in quite the honeymoon phase with her. She's amazing. She turned out to be poly, and was shocked when I told her I'm also polyamorous. I'm finally simply excited about what the future will bring, and I wonder what the end of year update will look like, here.
One last major thing that changed in my life: I am currently working on opening a VR arcade in Brussels. Very excited to have a physical business here. But it's going very slowly.
OK, finally, the goals I gave up on:
Quit my job for the second year in a row. Nothing was terribly wrong with my job, but I wasn't sure I'd learn enough moving forward and got a job offer from Google. So it felt like an upgrade to leave.
Been doing my second dating push for the past year. I'm specifically trying to find a spouse. This round I'm getting better results than last - although I'm not trying to lock anyone down just yet. I try to keep things low key, and don't want to seem vain, so I'd kept my employer off of my Hinge profile until recently when a friend pushed me for it. I think that one change is responsible for the preferable spousal candidates I've been meeting. It feels kind of bitter sweet. If I want to throw away my high earning job for one reason or another I feel like that puts a future relationship in jeopardy because it was potentially one of the initial deal-breakers we matched on.
I decided officially to not get a dog until I'm in a long term relationship, or by some other means have a secondary pet-parent that the pup could rely on. Being a single dog father would be a mixed bag. I'd now rather wait until I can co-parent an animal.
According to the unspoken laws of the universe, as long as you're trying to find a spouse you will only find meaningless super fun sex. 18 months after you give up on it, you'll find yourself happily married. But you have to sincerely give up, otherwise the universe will know that you're faking it and will keep you on the waiting list. You can't fool the universe.
Coincidentally the world just changed two or three days ago. I just got an AS degree and the commencement ceremony was on Friday and my normal days off are Sunday and Monday so I took a four day weekend. About a week ago I got told my mother was in the hospital for pneumonia. And the day before commencement I hear from her that she has an MRSA infection in her heart, is not elegance for surgery, and will die within the next 30 days.
So now I am here in Las Vegas trying to cheer her up with what limited time I have. So I guess the first act has been concluded, the second act is underway, and nobody knows what the third act will bring.
That really sucks, and I don’t know really what to say. But I just wanted to acknowledge your comment, and say I'm so very sorry to hear this news. I hope you're successful in cheering up your mom.
Thanks, though I think I was mainly just looking to sort out my feelings a bit because there are a bit too many to deal with. Mostly right now I feel bad because she lives two states away and I don’t know how to be there for her when she really needs me at the end because we can’t realistically predict it and she lives in a place that is a bit hard to travel to.
Yeah, I do that too; Occasionally writing comments mostly to help sort myself out, and not really expecting any replies. But your comment really did affect me, and I'm genuinely sorry to hear that about your mom. So I just wanted to let you know that, and that you weren't just commenting into the void. And if you ever need to chat, or even just vent, feel free to PM me.
p.s. While not as severe as your mom's situation, my own parents' health is starting to fail too, to the point they're now seriously considering their end of life housing and care situations, getting their affairs in order (e.g. redoing their wills, signing DNRs, sorting out their finances, etc.), etc. So if you need any advice on that sort of stuff, let me know and I will try my best to help. At the very least I can provide you with some resources, and hopefully point you in the right direction since I have recently been helping my own parents with that.
Thanks. To be honest, the biggest thing that is helping me is that I have been able to talk to her and understand what she is going through. She decided to accept what is happening and not try to fight it and suffer for it out of fear. And I find relief in that because the last thing I would want was for her to suffer. She’s done enough of that for more than one lifetime and she won’t have to any more.
Of course there are regrets. For both of us, even. We never had the close relationship that either of us wanted to have. But I view those regrets as very temporary feelings.
That's a remarkably healthy response by your mom (and you), and is good to hear! Thanks for sharing, and I genuinely hope you are both able to make the most of the time you have left together.
p.s. I have similar regrets with my father, who I have never really gotten along with (until recently), so I know how you feel. He injured himself several times over the last year though, which has opened both our eyes to the reality that he's getting a lot frailer, and won't be around forever. So we're finally working on trying to overcome our issues with each other now. We may never be truly close no matter how hard we work at it since we're so diametrically different at our cores, but at least we're managing to peacefully coexist these days, which is a start.
Dumped my terrible stressful IT job for a new, chill and relaxing one that treats me better. I used to say in my old job that we were techno-barbarians: all our documentation exists only as a scattered oral tradition passed on by word of mouth, and one of these days we would graduate to cave paintings.
Now at the new gig I have access to clearly written procedures stored in a central location, and they schedule ample time to train me in on something before they expect me to work on it solo and deploy it to live. Big difference.
Then I found out I have ADHD, which was definitely contributing to my problems working in such a chaotic work environment where little actual management took place. There are also far more implications to that diagnosis that I'll probably be chewing over for a while - it definitely cast my difficulties in third-level education in a new light.
So far, easily a high 8/10 year. Rating may go up if I successfully complete NaNoWriMo for the first time in July.
Mixed bag.
Started out the year with my workplace making some weird and frustrating decisions. I decided to start interviewing and move on to the next steps of my career. Ended up interviewing for months while working on a team I actively dislike being on. Saw all my longtime competent coworkers beat me to the punch and leave before me. After a small eternity of interviewing I got an amazing job offer for a big company doing what I want to do, and they're paying for relocation and visa sponsorship for me to move to New York City. That process is finally wrapping up after another 2 months of a small eternity doing background checks and visa setup.
Finally I'm about to leave my job and do the big move, halfway through the year many months after I thought I would happen. Now I'm in the boring yet unsettling calm where I'm slowly getting ready to move, right before the big and exciting move, restarting my life, and getting started on what I'm confident will be a big fun adventure in a big city.
Positives and negatives both. My mother has finally gone onto hospice care, where we just focus on giving her the best quality of life possible while she dies. This is in itself both sad and an immense relief from the continual struggle to adapt to keeping her life more or less normal as her body's functioning broke down. At the same time, I have a new job starting. After months of searching for something more interesting I lucked into a position which will provide new opportunities and greater stability both. I'm sad to be giving up the entrepreneur's life, but there's a lot of parts of running a small business which are just tiresome. I'm happy to take a theoretical pay cut in order to have a job where someone else sets the KPI's, finds the clients, runs payroll, keeps up with the website, files the taxes, keeps the hardware running, etc, etc, etc. It'll let me do a lot more of what I want to be doing, and I'm looking forward to it.
I'm finally being somewhat productive at work after about six months of being totally unable to motivate myself, so that's good.
I'm sort of seeing a girl for the first time in about a year, and it's the most serious romantic involvement I've had since my divorce over a year ago. I like her, and I'm very physically into her, but I'm finding it extremely hard to connect with her emotionally. Despite sleeping together, she has some sort of big wall up that makes it impossible to truly know her. It's my first experience with something like this; I've been with women who were apprehensive at first, but universally once we've slept together, those walls come down very quickly and we're sharing very personal things with each other. That's not the case here. I can ask her questions like "What are your dreams?" or "What are you truly scared of?" or "How do you feel right now?", and the answers range from "I dunno", to "fine". If she didn't keep agreeing to go out with me and sleeping with me I'd think she doesn't like me at all.
The sex is good, and she's really sweet normally, and I see glimpses of humor when she decides to actually talk, but if nothing changes here I don't really see how I could actually have a relationship like this with this person. I'm hoping that over time if she gets comfortable with me she'll start to open up a bit.