So that was the old year

One of the greatest pieces of growing up I’ve achieved was finally recognising that I don’t HAVE to “do something” just because it’s the 31st of December. I always used to feel the need to mark the occasion, mostly because I was younger and “doing something” for NYE seemed important for some reason… to which end I actually went into the city for the fireworks a couple of times, 1994 and ’97 if I recall rightly—a sign of how much younger I obviously was if I found that tolerable enough to do twice, I obviously had far more patience then—but eventually the sense of having to do something grew wearying. And going anywhere also involved the potential difficulty of getting back home again.

Eventually I kind of snapped one year when the taxi I booked to take me to the club I was looking forward to going to never showed up, and thereafter I resolved that I wasn’t leaving the house again on NYE unless I had a really fantastic place to go and someone to take me there and back. I have stuck to that since then (friends are running a club in Newtown I’m sure I’d have a nice time at, but I can’t be arsed enough). So my NYE has been writing this gibberish, watching Dinner for One for the umpteenth time on SBS, having one of those Coles microwave curries for dinner… a life of excitement, hey.

Anyway. I made it through a whole calendar year without any medical procedures being done to me other than a normal blood test. Haven’t actually been operated on as such since 2021, but last year (there’s still a few hours left in which I can call 2022 “last year”) I had an invasive-ish heart exam that meant spending several hours at POWH. Mind you, lying back and watching the ceiling move when you’re on fentanyl was surprisingly entertaining. Otherwise, I spent four years in a row (2018 to ’21) going to and from POWH to get my left leg cut open for blood clots. It’s been nice having a whole year off from that, though I suppose I should actually go and get scanned again to make sure it’s still OK and not going to kill me… But yeah, I suppose the highlight of 2023 really was not doing something rather than something I did. Perhaps in 2024 we can change that…

Why don’t we end the year as I started it? The first proper post I made after the introductory one was We Rate Dogs’ Dogs of 2022 video, and I think the 2023 version seems like a good note on which to end things for 2023. Good boys and girls all.