If you need mileposts to mark your life, I guess years are a convenient way to measure it. As Jimmy Buffet said “Spinning around in circles – Living it day to day – 24 hours maybe 60 good years – it’s really not that long a stay”. (Cowboy in the Jungle). So just off 365 spins and another circle around the sun here I am back at the start/finish line of years. This will be the 2025th lap the earth has taken since the Christians took over counting. There are a lot more laps completed but we count them backwards from the beginning of this calendar. I don’t make the rules.

I tend to measure my time in eras rather than years. The year thing is too rigid to apply to a life. That’s for the planners, calculators, and record keepers. I can’t tell you how much time I spend trying to figure out what year I did something. It’s the same process every time; find a thing that I remember the year it happened; from there start the process of putting things in order and connecting dots until I can come to the thing I was trying to remember, in the first place. It can take awhile sometimes.

For now 2024 is a clear memory and will mark the end of a couple of eras and a unique beginning of another era. We lost 2 of our boxers which is a significant hit to our entire clan. Although living in different households and even different states, our family all know each dog personally and they are all part f our whole family unit. We all grieve our own and each others losses. Early in the year we said goodbye to Daphne and then at year’s end we said goodbye to Harry. Each carried their own legacy and established their own era.

The other significant event was both end and beginning. A cancer diagnosis hits hard but it is not the end. I can’t help but reflect on the past and comtemplate the future. At the very least, I end up with “how did I get here” and “where am I going”. What ended isn’t completely clear yet, as I continue to assess damages and measure impacts. Recovery is the beginning. Not unfamiliar territory to me.

So, if New Years is to be a milestone, it will mark the beginning of another era in my life. I’m not particularly happy to say goodbye to 2024 anymore than any other year. In review, my blessings and good fortune still outnumbered the misfortune and disappointments by a lot. I expect that to continue through this next lap. Just another trip around the sun and just like JB’s Cowboy in the Jungle, I’m going to:

Roll with the punches
Play all of my hunches
Make the best of whatever comes my way
What I lack in ambition
I’ll make up with intuition
Plowing straight ahead come what may

Jimmy Buffett
Son of a Sailor 1978