2022 – THE YEAR IN REVIEW
‘I caught the van that hit me,’ might be an appropriate tagline for the over-subscribed year that was 2022. Work projects, community work and volunteerism, my outdoor activities, as well as my workout routines were all over-subscribed such that there were long stretches of 2022 spent seemingly running from one activity appointment to the next. I am talking ‘360 degree over-subscribed’ such that every category eventually needed a little bit of a trim. I’ll give you this. It was never boring, and I would struggle to give my readers a full account if required. There was just such a volume and variety of stuff. It is, when you think about it, a nice problem to have especially in the cases where one is helping others or is being sought out.
It’s been said that former President Reagan thrived on being told where to be and what to do that it reminded him of his acting days when meeting expectations was largely a function of hitting his mark at the appropriate times. He found a simplicity in it and shined. To some extent that is true for me as well, but by September I found myself easily identifying with my son who enjoying the fruits of his thriving career as an engineer had registered for too many streaming services and ‘this or that of the month club’ subscriptions. Realizing there just weren’t enough hours in the day to really enjoy it all, he solved it nuclear-style by having his bank debit card cancelled and reissued to get a full reset, -smart. I hear a lot of these services are ‘easy in’ and ‘hard out’. I am not going to go that far, but I think I will be more realistic in 2023 about what I sign up for.
It is not just a tagline. I really did catch the van that hit me last spring. While squeezing in a quick workout before a Friday date night one spring evening, I headed out for what was meant to be a short cycling ride just to keep the workout faith which could have been as short as 40 minutes on this particular route. I was eager to knock out 15 miles and get back to the house for a quick shower and change before heading out to dinner with Theresa. It was going to be tight if I was going to hit ‘my’ next mark, so I was hauling through the ride and I managed to overtake a van that was pulling a kayak trailer that moments later swept me off the road at the next bend. Theresa and I spent that evening in the emergency room instead. Did I hesitate to go out riding again or change my ways after this? Not much, but then I still had the bulk of the summer and its goals in front of me.
The fun oriented busyness of this time is a dividend of being an empty nester, a new claim on the time that used to be spent getting kids from one thing to the next. This year the needle has swung slightly back to the familiarity of parenthood for two reasons, but only slightly. First, Keagan moved back home after graduating from Lewis & Clark College. Our house may be her current legal residence, but there are times we go days without seeing her. -And when she is at home, I can sometimes forget that she is upstairs. The drain on the router is sometimes my first clue she is around. Apart from the coordination of our sporadic carpooling, she has her own life.
-And then there is Todd, our genetically verified non-Lab Labrador named as a joke I think with the aim to give him the most human sounding name possible so that anyone hearing it is slow to understand we are talking about a dog and not a third kid. Todd continues to reveal his personality which is very easy going, sensitive, and playfully manipulative. Todd would starve in any working dog capacity. He’s fairly beta, and any job you gave him would have to be for who he is and not what he does, something where an upbeat smile needs to be a big part of the package. Todd was the accidental outcome of a hastily executed trip to the dog rescue to interview another dog. You might say he is one example of how being really busy worked out. To be very clear, Todd is enthusiastically THERESA’S DOG, a designation HE has chosen as much as anybody.
Having both kids in town is a really nice thing and a reason to have some fun dinner parties with them and their significant others. My two kids are dating good people. Everyone’s star is rising everywhere for all the right reasons, and when all four of them are over and enjoying themselves enjoying one of Theresa’s jaw-dropping dinner pageants, I feel very lucky that this can be so. Often they are Sunday night affairs, and depending on the judo practice I had earlier that day, I might be nursing some muscle soreness or stiffness by the time they arrive. On these days I am pleased to just sit and take in the good company. Sometimes I test the arrangement by challenging them to a game of Trivial Pursuit where I have the advantage of also being the sober, family bartender. So long as my mixology holds up, my reign as trivia champion is secure. ‘Who was that goofy Italian character on FRIENDS? You’re thinking Joseph,…Joseph Stalin. Yep, go with that. Send it.’ Okay, I am exaggerating. For Christmas we got a new trivia game where being thirty years older isn’t such an advantage. I forget sometimes most of my dinner guests were in diapers when Clinton was president.
Keagan graduated college last May and got a job working with autistic children as a behavioral specialist. No surprise, she is as cool as a cucumber when dicey situations present themselves. Her stories remind me a little bit of my time working at the Sacramento Children’s Home during college. I learned a lot that proved to be invaluable later on when I became a parent. I am betting the same will be true for her if she ever decides to have kids. Grad school plans are still I think a thing, but not an urgent thing, but there is plenty of time for that. Emerson continues to do his RF (Radio Frequency) engineering work. He gets sent all over the country to do corporate projects as well as some private builds in some high-end homes. He mentioned doing a build in one pop star’s mountain home. I was like, ‘Ooh! Even I know who that guy is.’
The year for me was a long awaited chance to make good on reaching my shodan rank in judo. I will apologize up front for not doing the story a complete justice, but I know some of my readers want to get back to their lives. I may be one of the slowest and oldest people to pull this off. I would describe myself as ‘retarded’ which Merriam-Webster still defines as an appropriate term to describe what has heretofore been my judo career, but Keagan says I can’t use this word anymore. It’s too bad because that might be the perfect word. I wouldn’t mind if my finally making shodan inspired other people to stick with it or, in the case of some older folks, a thought of, ‘If that guy can do it, I can do it too.’ I first took up judo in 1984 (maybe ’83). I was a brown belt by 1986, and I sat on the highest rank of brown for no less than 25 years. The rest of the story is a hodge podge of distractions from judo and my poor ability to deal with them not unlike being four credits short of a degree somebody just plain never finishes getting (I am by the way four credits short of another bachelor’s degree I’ll likely never get).
At 53 years of age, I have excellent cardio and I am so grateful for that. Though I might ‘look’ like I am in good shape, the list of maladies ‘under the hood’ is not short. I have an artificial right hip, and I have had one hernia repair which sometimes reminds me of its presence. Both shoulders, and especially, my right one are bad. My left hip has been diagnosed as on its way out, and recently my left knee has been starting to give. When I go to judo practice the workout I aspire to is a function of ‘what’s working well today’. -But!…for however often I go and whatever workout I do, there are thousands of others who are not even there. It is all relative. No I don’t move as fast as the 20-something kid who is an up and comer. I don’t need to be and I would self-sabotage if I tried, but drop me in a cocktail hour with people my own age and it’s, ‘You cycle thousands of miles a year and do judo?!’ Yes, sir, yes I do, and I am better for it all. Reaching shodan doesn’t mean I know everything, -far far from it, so I now have some new goals.
Date nights with Theresa have been euphoric. Yes, euphoric. They are also renewing. Reaching the end of some crazy, hectic weeks it is ever so nice to go out and spend time with the one person who understands me in what can otherwise be a cold world. I honestly don’t believe the world is the lost cause that last sentence suggests, but I can get to thinking it is cold, and Theresa reminds me that it is not. I’m the one who gets lost. But for date nights, I would probably never venture beyond the dojo near 8th and Santa Fe. We’ve had some fun outings and there is something about changing the setting that gets a different kind of conversation going. Downtown Denver is pretty fun, and it is so nice to see it opening back up again.
Five thousand mile cycling goal? -Trimmed, to just over 4000. Four judo tournaments? -Trimmed, to two. Long ride down the the coast? -Exchanged for cycling to Kansas (about half the distance of the other). HAMILTON tickets? -Sold to attend a wedding that was a lot of fun. BILL BURR tickets? -Donated to my son because I had the shodan exam. Fishing trips? -Less than half of last year. Hunting season? -Cancelled because I was red-lining by September. As I said in the lead paragraph, I flat out over-subscribed the year. There was more than one date night scheduled with restaurant reservations, bow tie, and everything else that was exchanged for a night of watching tv in bed when it came time to head out. Yep, 2022 was a GREAT year.
Pax Vobiscum, The Gilmartins