A Look Back, and a Peek Forward

I can't believe how fast this year has flown by. Looking back, I'd have to say that this year was an improvement over the last two. We've managed to go ten whole months without anybody dying, so that's a check in the WIN column right there.

This was a pretty crazy year. It got off to a rocky start, what with losing Matt's mom last December, and then turning right around and losing both his step-dad and their cat that we had taken in in February. As you know if you've been following along, all of the grief and stress from those losses churned up a lot of latent grief over my miscarriages that I still needed to deal with. So I spent the first quarter of the year or so in a pretty deep funk.

But then things turned a corner. I kicked off Project Oven Repair, based on the suspicion that I had PCOS and insulin resistance (a suspicion that was confirmed at my annual check-up in April), and started taking better care of myself with the goal toward eventually trying again to have a baby. Since then I've lost over thirty pounds, lowered my BMI, and dropped my fasting glucose level by ten points. I still want to lose about ten or fifteen more pounds and get my numbers even lower--the holidays certainly didn't help with that--but I'm confident that I'll get there in the new year.

I also got serious about fiction writing as a career and made the monumental (for me) decision to become an indie author. Since then I started my own publishing company, published a well received novel and a short story collection, and wrote a new novel that will hopefully be ready to publish in the next month or two.

As great as those things were, things could have been better financially. My web design and virtual assistant business slowed way, way down, and I went through a long period where I just could not make a sale. It wasn't that dire because we had enough savings to get by, as long as we remained frugal, but we also had to rely a lot on our credit card. Business picked back up in mid-November, but by that point we'd racked up so much debt trying to stay afloat that the sudden rush of income was eaten up by bills before we knew it. Work has remained steady since then, though, and hopefully it will remain that way for long enough to enable us to dig ourselves out from under this mess.

Between the financial strain and the fact of facing yet another childless Christmas, and also the first holiday season without my in-laws, I have to confess that we had both sunk back into a pretty deep funk in the weeks leading up to Christmas. But the holiday itself turned out to be a pleasant, albeit low-key, day, and I think we were both feeling better by the time it arrived. I guess we had gotten all of the grief and self-pity out of our systems by then.

And now here we are, at New Year's Eve. I don't know what 2012 is going to bring. I composed a version of this post in my head back in October, and it ended with a declaration that my one major goal for 2012 was to become a mother. But that was before the full weight of our financial strain had settled on us, and it was also before I started paying attention once again to news and politics and what's going on with our world and our nation. I have to say, I'm feeling less hopeful now than I did then. I'm not one of those Mayan calendar doomsayer types, but nevertheless I'm feeling a lot of trepidation about the coming year, and I just have a feeling that we're in for some difficult times as a nation.

Between that, and our personal financial situation, we're still at a loss as to how to proceed with our TTC plans. My heart wants with every fiber of its being to stop taking birth control and start trying NOW. But my head says that we should wait and see what happens, with my business, with our income, and with the economy in general. Matt's having the same head/heart struggle. So I just don't know what we're going to do.

So for now, my main goal for the new year is for us to do everything we can to better our situation, both so that we'll actually be able to afford a baby, and also so that if the poo does hit the fan we'll be in a better position to weather the storm. And in the mean time, I'll continue Project Oven Repair and get rid of that last fifteen pounds or so, hopefully getting my glucose under 90 in the process.

This post wound up a little too doom-and-gloom to end with a chipper "Happy New Year," but nevertheless, I wish you and yours (and me and mine) a blessed and prosperous and disaster-free 2012.