It’s 9:11 pm on the Eastern part of the US. I thought I should say a few things about this year ending, before it ends. I hope to be snoozing when it does end. I have to be at work in under 12 hours.

I’m not going to miss 2023. This has been a shitty, crappy, fucked-up, confusing, surrealistic, stressful, unhappy, and painful year. I’d take 20020 again in a New York minute, and that year was supposed to be happy, but the pandemic shit on those plans. It was still less horrible that this year.

It began immediately. By the end of January my employer began slashing our hours. I went from having at least 35 hours per week to sometimes having 12. This went on through March and April. I was blindsided because the previous year (2022) I was still without a vehicle due to a four car accident that totaled my car and two others. This was caused by a dumbass who thought it was ok to drive down a very busy thoroughfare after being shot while committing a crime. He was unconscious when he was taken to a hospital after he perpetuated chaos. He was in critical, but, stable condition.

In early 2022 I was still only able to work three shifts per week. One of my roommates brought me to and from work because it was not too inconvenient since she worked about three miles down the road. I was living on a hybrid income of Go Fund Me donations and small paychecks. Since I could only work three shifts per week, I didn’t miss the hours when the schedule chopping began in January 2023. It was a bit of a stunner and as time went on I became ever more depressed. So many hide stressors was taking its toll.

This year the drop in hours and shrinking of my paycheck was exacerbated by my $450 auto tag renewal in February. In Florida auto tags expire on the owners’ birthdays. My renewal was extra expensive because the tow yard that stored my crushed Pontiac G6 legally charged storage fees because I never removed the vehicle from their yard.

Gee, could that have been due to the fact I was in the middle of being treated for five things, four of which could have been cancer? One did indeed did turn out to be cancer: a skin lesion (actually, I’ll take skin cancer over any other kind) on my left shoulder. During the time in which the shot man’s actions were breaking my right shoulder, and tearing its rotator cuff, I had fresh stitches in the left shoulder from having a squamous cell lesion removed.

I was very grateful I lived through the accident, especially after I realized that none of my airbags deployed. I was grateful everyone else survived as well. Three of us were taken to hospitals. All I kept thinking was, how the fuck am I going to get to my medical treatments? I have no fucking car. I am obviously going to miss months of work. Thus, Uber and Lyft were not going to be feasible. And, at the time, my roommate’s old Camry was broken down.

This was just a part of the crap I was dealing with instead of bothering to tow my dead car back to a space in front of my apartment, where we have on-street parallel parking. Keeping a mangled car on the street owned by the City of Winter Springs would, guess what, get my car towed to a tow yard.

So, Courtesy Towing in Longwood lawfully charged me $410 and my regular renewal fee was $36. This ate into the money I’d set aside for a full year of car payments. Getting shitty schedules at work also ate into those funds because I had to use much of that money for rent, electricity, water and food. For a long while I was good about replacing it into my savings account.

In May of 2022 I was able to purchase a 2017 Nissan Rogue from the accident settlement. I put $10,000 down on the vehicle and kept $4,000 in savings for car payments. It was enough for 14 months. My aim was to secure better paying employment . My health and employer had different plans. At least, I was able to work a full schedule and this worked up until early 2023.

Against this backdrop I’d also been having almost non-stop sinus infections that began in December 2022. In fact, I’ve only had about 5.5 sinus-infection-free months during this year. I have one right now. Just before sitting down with my phone to compose this, I blew out some colorful gunk I refer to as Jackson Pollocks because the crap in the tissues reminds me of the same colors he used in his paintings: yellow, red, green. Luckily, nothing blue came out of my nostrils.

The complete exhaustion and depression caused by constantly being sick didn’t exactly build motivation in me to look for side jobs.

But, I’ve been extremely lucky because my roommate, Rose (not her real name, but one she wants me to use here), got an inheritance from her mom and it has been mine (our) savior. She’s paid the full rent for about 8-9 months; I’ve taken on paying the full electric and water bills. This can’t go on. I owe her a ton of money. On the other hand, I’ve seen another side of her I never allowed myself to see. We’re developing a good friendship. I got her hooked on the TV show, “Grimm,” right around her October birthday and the crazy chick ordered the entire series on DVD. We’ve been glued to the TV ever since we started watching them. This has been a real bright spot this year. I’m very grateful to her for this. I did get to return some favors to her starting around June. She a rare kind of surgery that had to be done in Tampa General Hospital. Tampa is about two hours east of where we live. I’m glad I was able to help her out, but I still have guilt over having to depend upon her money.

All year my work schedule has been a rollercoaster. Some weeks I get decent hours, some weeks shitty hours. Then there is the emotional entanglement that had been a carnival ride, but that’s another story that I’ve written about here.

There are a couple of positive things. I went through two ENT’s over my sinus issues. I dumped the first guy and now I am seeing one I like, who seems to actually enjoy working in medicine, and is without arrogance. The CT scan of my sinuses indicated that my deviated septum was not likely to be the cause of my constant infections. It’s obviously not an auto immune issue because my immune system is working just fine. I have a CPAP machine for my sleep apnea. I have three sets of removable parts that I’ve numbered, so they can be rotated in use. I religiously clean those parts and sanitize them. I proposed to my new ENT that perhaps the guts of the machine are full of bacteria. Given that I’m two years beyond getting a replacement machine, that seemed plausible. He agreed. RE-read the above for reasons why I didn’t have the time or energy to keep a fire burning under anyone’s ass to replace my CPAP.

Getting the replacement machine is something that fell through the cracks of 2021-22’s drama. Now, one is supposed yo be heading my way as soon as the supplier acknowledges the updated prescription from my primary. My doctor had to send a notice to my supplier, Apria, explaining that my machine was broken beyond repair AND was out of warranty.

The few bright spots I have are so overshadowed by the financial burdens I’m under, I can only feel anxiety that things are not going to work out.

I’m exhausted, worn out, stressed, scared, and a bit angry. Seems like nothing is turning out the way o want or need. I feel as though this will bleed into 2024.

While my hope is diminished, I still am grateful for the things that make life suck less. I know it could be so much more worse. I am grateful for all the wonderful people I have for friends, and co-workers, or customers at work.

I want 2023 to leave quietly and for 2024 to gently enter and give me the 180 degree change I desperately want and deserve. I want the strength, ability and resources to help people and animals and help improve our screwed up world.

I need a miracle and I want what I need.

Have a great 2024.