My failures and success’s in the year that was 2021

 My Dad always said “Don’t  make any drastic changes when angry or upset.”

Great advice Dad.

Too bad I didn’t listen to it.

My year started pretty quiet.  Still working from home.

Waiting for the vaccine to solve all our problems with COVID.

Not looking forward to the change in the administration.

In February, I was made an unbelievable job offer.  More money that I ever dreamed of plus monthly incentives.  I couldn’t resist and left a job I had been in for almost 10 years.

Big mistake.

Huge.

After 6 short months,  I resigned with no plans.

All my years of working to be financially secure thrown out the window.

I reached out to some of contacts at my old job to see if I might be able to return.

Then I waited and prayed.

I learned the meaning of “not in my time but in his time”.

It wasn’t until Thanksgiving that a job opened up.  Not the job I expected but I knew my prayers had been answered.

There are so many positives to the new opportunity and returning to TD.

Lesson learned “all that glitters is not gold”

Not only had my unemployment thrown my financial plans into a whirlwind but I was also not prepared for the lack of structure in my life.

I am much better with some kind of schedule. Maybe I need to plan better for my next retirement.

I did take advantage of the time to get organized.  Jenn found jobs for me to do just about every day.

All important papers have been organized and some purged.

All cabinets have been cleaned and organized.  A fair amount of items donated or pitched.

I watched too much TV.

I didn’t read enough.  

I didn’t write enough. In fact, this is my first blog entry since mid-October.

When I work, I have the structure that works better for me. 

Blogs get written.

Bills get paid on time.  I didn’t miss paying any bills but did pay some twice, yes twice.  I forgot to transfer money from savings to checking so for the first time in over 30 years, I bounced a check. It cost me a $30 fee from the bank where I forgot to transfer funds and $12 from another bank for a returned check fee.  Fortunately, both banks refunded the fees since I hadn’t made that kind of mistake before.

While home these last few months, the days when Jenn was working from home, she limited the amount of time I could spend watching the news.  I was yelling at the TV and it was really taking a toll on my mood and attitude.

My vocabulary on a regular basis includes inflation, the border, the supply chain failure, Afghanistan, we were promised COVID would be taken care of, defund the police, trillions spent on “give me’s”,  31 trips by the President to his vacation home since January, Joe not answering the questions from the press and on and on.

Here we are just a few months from March 13th,  it is hard to believe March 13, 2020 was the last day I was in the office before COVID sent us all home.

I do like working from home. No long commutes.  Casual dress every day (although I do not  work in my pj’s). I do miss some socialization with my coworkers. My friend, Mary, with whom I shared an office, finally got approval to go in and pack up our office.

I guess if we look at the failures, it is mainly changing jobs BIG MISTAKE, the frustration with our current administration, my 401K not growing due to lack of income, COVID still with us and tragically losing  more people that I knew because of the virus, my fears of getting sick have made me more of a homebody, the not moving physically as much as I should and making my world smaller over my fears. I still believe in the vaccines and got my booster this week.  BUT I also believe that people have the freedom to CHOOSE it they want to get the shot.  The government mandates do not work for me especially pushing people especially our front line workers due to their refusal to get vaccinated.  What happened to Joe saying he would not mandate a vaccine???

The success’s are I didn’t think I could survive over 4 months without a paycheck, I am lucky to have people that had my back while I was jobless and gave me support and gave me job leads as they heard about them, I was able to get all set with Medicare and supplemental coverage (not having health insurance for a few month was very worrisome), hitting the magic number next month to be able to collect social security and it does not have an impact on my TD salary, I did read Luke each day from 12/1 through 12/24 (for me this was an accomplishment and something I will be continuing in 2022). 

I am so ready for 2022.  No resolutions.  I am called them goals. 

Lots of soups on the menu.

Veggies, veggies and more veggies.

Experimenting with my air fryer, instapot and electric wok. I even bought a cookbook for each of those items.

More movement, even it is just starting with laps around my car a few times a day (hey you have to start some where).  If the laps around the car are the best I can do due to my fear of falling then that’s what I will do and it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.

I plan on writing my blog regularly and getting back to work on my books in 2022.

There you go, first blog entry for 2022 done and saved.

Oh and one more thing, I am really going to miss Betty White.

See you next week.