As an AudHD with several offshoot neuroses like OCD and imposter syndrome, I don’t do New Year resolutions because all that does is stab my lurking demand avoidance right in the eyeball. Somehow, I don’t even have this problem that much with ordinary deadlines – possibly because “deadlines” in this day and age are almost always flexible. But a calendar doesn’t give you any grace.
I do have goals for our first full year in NYS, and they have a lot to do with the seasons. So now that the holidays are over I’m making plans and trying to reconfigure myself as both an individual person somehow related to who I used to be, and my new role as “caregiver.”
One of those is to raise my small business back from the dead. I have made some baby steps in this direction – I checked out a lot of venues and shops this fall and winter, got on the local vendor pages, etc. I need to do inventory and get my Etsy back up, but I can’t handle the pressure of making customs right now. Before I do Etsy or something like it again I want enough work area in the basement to be able to make my standard designs in all the sizes.
This is where the demand avoidance gets tricky, because I know I won’t take those above steps on my own. I may do one or two, but until I plant a date on my calendar for a craft fair or workshop or sale, I know damn well I won’t really get it into gear. I have to pace myself this time though, because of the caregiver thing. I can’t spend ten hours straight in the basement sweating until I shrink like felted wool from the steam of rinsing 30 shirts out the day before the next festival. I’m eyeballing a local fest at the library and working toward that. Even if I make nothing new at all, I’d still have plenty of stuff to sell. It’s just a matter of doing the admin work. *gulp*
The other Thing I Really Want to Do (Not a Resolution) this year is get back to gardening. We brought all our planters up from Ohio but in this yard I have more land. I need to put in a couple trees to replace some dead ones, and at this point I will be happy with getting some herbs and tomatoes started. I don’t know crap about the growing season up here or how much the wildlife is going to come for my garden, so I need to start small. Like learning to take care of the raspberry bushes we already have. Starting a compost pile. I was even considering chickens, but we have a lot of wildlife that may want to snack on chickens and I can’t handle that at this point in my life.
“Caretaker” is finally becoming somewhat manageable, which is why I can think about having any sort of outside gig at all. Looking back at the last year, I can’t believe I’m saying that, and hoping I don’t jinx myself. I moved two kids, one a trans teenager and one outgrowing his ADHD meds, to a new state and new schools. I moved one old lady out of memory care, and a feral outside cat inside, and we all lived in two hotel rooms across the hall from each other for a month when our second AirBnB didn’t pan out (Never. Again.). We had the most nail-biting closing we’ve ever gone through selling Mom’s house and buying ours, and I was touring apartments trying to find one on short notice in case either one failed.
Then we made it to our house, and our grand ideas of putting Mom on the main floor right in the middle of the family turned out to be a pipe dream. We had no idea how bad her PTSD and OCD had gotten. With the dementia added there’s practically no empathy or emotional regulation. I had never heard of a “dry drunk” until I started looking into her behavioral issues more. When former alcoholics don’t quit on their own, like Mom, they can get super controlling over their environment. There was that, and paranoia, and then came the wandering. The neighbor’s house looks a lot like her old one and she ended up there twice before we beefed up security. Every car going by, or pedestrian, and she’d get agitated. Many times she threw open the window to strike up a convo with a total stranger she thought was someone she knew, or someone she should pretend to know. Or, she’d think it was someone doing something nefarious and hunt us down to make us explain their presence across the street outside.
We finally sped up our plans to remodel downstairs. We had to put her in respite care while the work was being done. That gave our family a little time to breathe. Now that we’ve made contact with the place, if we need respite in the future we can go back, so that’s a good safety net to have in place. Of course I need to sell a kidney on the black market to afford it but that’s another story.
With Mom in her own suite, things are a lot more peaceful. There’s a garage between her and the outside, and she’s not facing the busy driveway and street. She still wants to fight with the washer and dryer when I do laundry. I batch the laundry on a day when I can run interference.
I’ve been reading again, making things. Starting to make the house ours and getting to know our town. We’ve found a few favorite restaurants and a few “never again” ones. I’ve been on many long scenic drives, hiking, exploring, stumbling onto jaw-dropping vistas. I bought boots and I’ve put some mileage on them. I can’t wait to get out again in spring. I’m impatient to get things done on the house but I keep reminding myself I am hopefully never moving again, so I have the rest of my life.
Of course the country is on fire. I feel like we ran out the fire door at the last minute, and yes I realize how effing privileged we are to have gotten there. Having a trans kid in a red state, even being autistic in a red state, was a slow moving horror movie. We had to make some crazy choices to get him out.
We voted in NY this fall for the first time. Even when things have been difficult, I’m so thankful to be here. I hope this year gets better for everyone. I hope things are way, way different by the end of it.
Dreadful Ideas 