Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties. ~ Helen Keller

Goodbye 2025!

I am happy to say goodbye to 2025. Like any year, good things happened, bad things happened but this has been the most stressful, wearing year in a very long time for me. It was the year that my heart stopped, happily medically and even more happily it started after the surgery. I guess I was technically a cyborg for a couple of hours while my heart was stopped, not something I want to do every year.

This was the year I was supposed to retire, but my heart surgery interrupted that plan. It was the year that one of my bosses tried to trump up controversy and get me fired. And a job that I haven’t liked in a while, had a really shitty year. And delaying my retirement just made it worse. And doing a job search in one of the worst years to look for a job in higher education has not been great. Not to mention that universities, like many businesses now really disrespect job applicants. Essentially a lot of jobs now, acknowledge that they’ve received your application and you never hear from them again. Hell, I was even ghosted once after doing a second level interview.

This year was the year that my parents truly became elderly. They both significantly declined this year. My father fell multiple times, split open his head, broke his leg and hip. My mother declined quickly and finally lost her battle with cancer and passed away in December. It’s not just a death, but the responsibility all around it that wears you down. The impact on family, finalizing bills, making notifications, going through probate, dealing with the house. Finding out that people you are related to really don’t give a shit about you. It’s all a lot, takes a toll on everyone and takes way too fucking long.

This year in many ways has been the loneliest year of my life. It’s been a year when I feel less connected to people than I ever have. I felt isolated and alone this year, even though I received great support during my surgery recovery, this was a year when I have felt more than I have in decades, that I am in the wrong place and I’m here alone.

Finally, my luck has disappeared. The joke I’ve been making is that if there was a game, where there were 100 balls in a jar, and you would win if you picked 99 of them, and only lost if you picked one particularly ball, right now I would pick the losing ball every time. It’s been that bad, particularly the last few months.

So goodbye 2025, I’m not sorry to see you go. Hopefully what you taught me was that I must make things better, even if that means drastic changes. I hope my friends, your 2025 has been better than mine and let’s hope for all of us that 2026 brings many happy days. ~ Rev Kane