The Year End Assessment, or, What an Awesome Year!

Happy New Year! 2015 came and went. Fast. Did it go as quickly for you as it did for me? It's now time for reflection and personal assessment. I've been doing this every year since 1987 and it's always an interesting learning experience.

GOOD STUFF:

1) My blog...which serves as therapy, community, and entertainment.

2) My house...with it's newly stained fence, crazy painted porch, and outstanding garden. I'm so thankful to have a safe place to live (relatively speaking) that provides lots of fun and entertainment!

3) ZIPPY! After years of shopping, I finally found and bought a car that's more like a large dog that doesn't bark, poop, stink, have fleas or beg. It goes where I want, when I want. Very obedient and oh so cute! My gratitude is overwhelming.

4) My polka dot chair and table...makes me feel like a party is always at my house. Next year I plan to paint more polka dots! On everything!

5) I FEEL WONDERFUL! My health has improved by leaps and bounds. I rarely have any noticeable fatigue and I have enough energy for life. I finally found the secret: stick to the diet, no cheating, and no overeating as that also creates inflammation and taxes the thyroid. As Dr. Kharrazian says, "It's not just what you eat, it's HOW you eat."  Hooray for progress!

6) My fragrance-free friends, both online and offline. THANK YOU FOR KEEPING ME SANE.

7) Money. I love money. With energy comes money. With money comes security. With security comes less stress. With less stress comes better health. With better health comes happiness. Money is good.

Hmmmm?

Re-Friending. This was both fantastic and traumatizing so it's under neutral or questionable or hmmmm?. Reconnecting with old friends at first was really fun and exciting! I love finding out what people have done with their lives. With so much catching up to do, most of them emailed consistently at the beginning. We laughed until we cried. We confessed mistakes and regrets. We shared life goals and health challenges. It was nice reconnecting with my former life and wonderful to have pen pals...for a short time.

Peopling my life isn't without challenges. One friend only wanted to send me short headlines of self-centered drama every couple weeks without shared conversation. "My Son's Back in Prison." "My Daughter is a Meth Addict." "My Brother is Dead."  If it wasn't so disturbing it might have been entertaining.  It ended up just being exhausting as I kept wanting to fix her life, but I realized after a while there was no solution to any of it. Another old friend did the same thing. She never emailed, but if I emailed her in hopes of inspiring her to email, her excuses were surgery, family problems, and then finally cancer. Then she'd post photos of herself with friends shopping at the mall looking quite healthy and unstressed. Hmmm?

Some refused to email at all. One kept sending me her email addresses repeatedly with "I look forward to our reconnection" and that was it. Right around the time of my high school reunion, several ex-friends followed me on Facebook in lieu of friending because I have that option blocked. When I wrote to them to tell them I really don't do Facebook, but I'd love to hear from them and catch up via email, they immediately un-followed me and disappeared. LOL! So much for the value of ex-friendship. Do they really want to connect or am I just a Facebook number, a trophy, someone who will tell them they are beautiful when they post their daily selfie? I don't know if all the disappointment was worth it. Nearly all reconnections eventually disconnected with the confession they really don't like to email. Oh well....

Email communication was great, but I didn't stop there! A few of the new ex-friends made an effort to visited or we went places for fun! It was so glorious not to feel so isolated. So grateful for human contact I let my guard down and stopped reminding people they need to be fragrance free. One by one encounters became toxic with people walking into my house saturated in stinky laundry detergent, on-the-road bathroom hand soap, or some unidentified stink. Some people just didn't get it or couldn't smell it so they had no clue.

Aside from the stress and frustration it caused, I viewed this as a opportunity to practice patience. For someone who is perpetually impatient and irritable as a side-effect of chemical poisoning, this has been quite a challenge. I resisted the urge to scream at them, HOW CAN YOU BE SO THOUGHTLESS? I avoided the impulse to sarcastically berate them in writing, HOW CAN YOU BE SO STUPID? I abstained from being disrespectfully unfriendly, ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME? I took a step back (and out of their air space) in each instance and let the anger wash over me and reminded myself these people don't deal with stinky poisons on a daily basis like I do.  I taught myself how not to burn bridges with my vile tongue. I was so thankful for people who wanted to visit and TRY to be fragrance-free I took too many risks. As a consequence I'd be forced to go to bed for hours if not days feeling so ill I couldn't function. It's been a great learning experience. YES! I can be around real people and not kill anyone, but it's exhausting. It's easier to be a hermit. There is a reason I've exiled myself out in the middle of no where - a place people do not want to visit. It's less tempting and less compromising. I've kind of given up on the search for new friends...for now...and I'm thankful for my isolation.

Anyway, yes, some set backs, but I prefer to concentrate on the positive experiences. People can make life really enjoyable!

BAD STUFF:

1) Health care and mystery pain. Too many useless, expensive doctors wanting to do too many unnecessary, expensive tests with no answers and no solutions. I got really tired being quoted $1300 for labs only to be told after I complained loud enough that, OH! there is a discount and I guess we can give that to you for only $500. What is with these two-tiered health care costs? If they think they can get away with it, they will. I finally self-diagnosed myself and things have been improving. Whether my self-diagnoses are accurate is anyone's guess, but my assumptions can't be worse than the ignorant opinions of doctors with dollars signs in their eyes who all contradicted each other!

2) Useless insurance coverage. My insurance decided I wasn't paying enough money through the health care exchange and refuse claims without telling me. Nine months later one of my doctors contacted me to let me now this is what they were doing. When finally questioned, they said it's not their job to communicate with the customer as the customer should call them if there is a problem. Of course, they were taking the money I was paying, just not providing the service according to my contract. I wrote to anyone who mattered included every political representative in my area voicing my displeasure with the health care system demanding an apology from the insurance company. I was immediately informed by the powers-that-be I WAS paying the correct amount and after a month of bureaucratic bullshit, the insurance company sent a written apology and resumed service. The apology was really surprising! Needless to say, they are no longer my insurance company. When are we getting single payer insurance coverage? This corporate sleaziness has got to go.

However, for 2015, the Good far outweighs the Bad. It's been an excellent year!

New Year's Resolutions: Vote for the presidential candidate who supports universal health care (that's NOT Hillary!), maybe next year I'll finally get to move, and NO DOCTORS if I can possibly help it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I wish everyone much joy and happiness in 2016.