The end of the calendar year is always a time to remember, to reflect, and to look forward to what a new year brings. The actual date is irrelevant; in my country and culture the year ends on 31 December. Other countries and cultures might use a different day, but the effect is the same — a year is ending and a new year is beginning.

The Semisonic Song has a famous line Every new beginning comes from some other new beginning’s end. I used that line any number of times in my writings over the years and probably will again. It fits so many things so well. So it goes with the ending of a year and the beginning of a new year.

The celebrations tend to excess. I won’t be celebrating like that. I will retrieve Young Son from his journey to SoCal and we’ll return home. I expect we will spend a little time reflecting on the year together and remembering Wife/Mom. It seems appropriate.

As I think on 2013, it was a year of changes — some of them life-changing. I saw Wife through the end of her cancer and her life. That was a watershed event, culminating almost two years of diagnosis, treatment, rediagnosis, re-treatment, and uncertainty. She died on 19 January 2013 after the last-ditch efforts of her medical team failed. It was one of the hardest things to say goodbye.

It took me months to get my feet back under me. My struggle with the life change of losing my life-mate continues. It is not as intense as it was early in 2013, but so many things remind me of my previous life. It was not a life I wanted to give up; like Wife, it was taken from me when she died. I do not yet know what I am to be or to do, but I keep working on it.

Work all but dried up in 2013. I offered my resignation twice; both times it was rejected. I am expensive and I worry my expense drags the company down. But I’m also not quite ready to move on. Perhaps my principal engineer is right and we are about to turn the corner on work. I am willing to give it another six months, reevaluate at that time, and assess the current project climate. I am confident I can find enough contract work to keep myself fed if it comes to that. Or I could take on a teaching job, work on that nine months of the year, and spend my other time traveling, photographing, writing, and doing some contract work.

My Girl contracted leptospirosis on our way home from a Texas marketing trip. She was a sick girl and I thought I might lose her. I was unprepared for that. She pulled through the infection and is herself again. The thought of losing her so soon after losing Wife was unbearable.

I began shooting film again in 2013. I experimented with film a bit in 2012, but never posted any results. I bought my first medium-format camera in 2013 and expect to shoot medium format quite a bit in 2014. I’ll shoot 35mm when I need the portability of the smaller camera.

Late in 2013 I bought a medium-format film scanner. I’m still learning to use it and I think it has a problem with its sensor. If so, it will be exchanged. I will be spending time in 2014 learning to use the scanner so I can scan new images and old. I have many, many old negatives and slides that should be scanned to be preserved.

I made a few prints in 2013 from some of my favorite frames. This is now an important part of my life, the making of photographs. I don’t yet know what 2014 will bring in this regard, but I am considering posting a few of my best prints locally to determine if there is any interest in them as fine art.

I added quite a few new recordings to my collection. In particular, I picked up the back catalog of Mason Proffit. Over the years, I really enjoyed much of the Talbot brothers’ work. They were the core of Mason Proffit. I can see how MP became an influence on much of the music that followed them.

I found myself looking for Andrew York’s recordings. Andecy is one of my favorite solo guitar songs. He has a few recordings made over the last 20 years and I picked them up. They are wonderful recordings and the material is interesting.

I am going to take a few online photography classes in 2014. I am working my way through a Photoshop tutorial at the end of 2013/beginning of 2014 now. The objective of the tutorial is to learn alternative methods to simple desaturation to obtain quality black and white images. In January there will be an online class. The instructor will review four captures and post-processing of them and share results in a webinar. This is an easy way for me to get some training.

Learning is important, particularly as we age. I think learning new skills and expanding one’s knowledge keeps the brain active and healthy. It’s also good physically, particularly if you use skills (like photography) to get out and move around.

In January I’ll drive down to Ash Meadows Wildlife Sanctuary for a project I’m working on down there. The Girl will go with me. We’re going to drive back through Death Valley, then through Owens Valley. I’ll use the trip to do a little geocaching and make some images. The Girl will do her usual things — looking for rabbits, peeing, pooping, and sniffing… and keeping track of me.

In January I’ll end my Year of Firsts. I think I will celebrate on 19 January 2014. It will not be a celebration of Wife’s death, but a celebration of her life, her passage into whatever is next for us, and my survival of my first year without her. I will have experienced each of those special days that were important to us as a couple, felt the loss, felt the absence of my friend and soul mate, and survived.

My friend Jim wrote to me “It’ll suck less, but it’ll still suck…” He’s right and that simple statement is something I held on to all year and will continue to hold on to in 2014.

I expect there will be several Texas trips in 2014. I need to show my face to potential partners and clients.

I expect to make at least one trip to Denver to see Older Son and DiL, one to Rolla, Missouri (to see Wife’s family and some of mine), and a trip to the east coast to see Daughter and her family. I’m hoping to make those road trips because road trips are healing to me. I want to take the Girl as well. She’s an excellent traveler. I will also take my cameras along with me.

I expect a Sony A7r will be in my future sometime in 2014. I think my Sony NEX-5N is an excellent camera; surprisingly so. The largish APS-C sensor is as big as most dSLRs in a very tidy package. It has some quirks, but as a box to hold a sensor it’s very good. The metering and exposure systems work very well and it makes accurate exposures. I really like the electronic viewfinder with focus peaking. Because the camera uses manual focus lenses in stop-down mode, the EVF increases the gain so the viewfinder is bright and easy to use. Focus peaking makes getting critical focus much easier than an optical viewfinder (at least for me). Depth of field is relatively easy to gauge. Although Sony’s line of lenses is restrictive and their zooms plainly suck, use of vintage glass through adapters make these little cameras something very special.

I am expecting the Sony A7r to improve on my NEX-5N. It has a full-frame sensor and more pixels than I need. It will mean that cropping will be much easier for those captures where I just couldn’t get close enough. It will be an interesting pairing with the Pentax medium-format film camera, as well as the Nikon film cameras.

I will be developing my black and white film using caffenol, a coffee-based developer. I expect that work to “develop” in a couple more weeks. I have the chemistry in the house and only need a couple more tools to make it all work. Those should be delivered in a few more days.

I plan to take a weapons training class sometime in 2014. These classes are very good for me physically and mentally. Knowledge of use of firearm and blade for personal defense is critically important in a culture that celebrates violence. Although it’s unlikely I’ll ever experience an assault, the probability is not zero. It would be irresponsible for me to be unprepared. My personal view is that such unpreparedness is akin to eschewing insurance.

I worked out that I am on-track to fully retire in ten years. I could partially retire in six more years. I examined both worst-case and expected scenarios for my retirement portfolio and I should be OK financially. Of course, the end of the world could happen and break those plans. But that uncertainty is part of life. If it happens, I’ll figure out how to deal with it.

I am sure there will be other new things for me in 2014. One thing about life that’s interesting is that no matter how well it’s planned, shit happens. Sometimes it’s good shit and sometimes not. But, shit happens.

Enough ruminating for today and for the year. Happy New Year! Be safe, enjoy, and be blessed!

I intended to write something this weekend, but chores got the better of me and I didn’t get it done. I’ve been thinking quite a lot as Christmas approaches. You see, Christmas was Wife’s holiday. I think she lived for the season. She loved to give gifts at Christmas.

As I reflect on the year past, it’s clear I’ve been dealing with the fallout from losing a spouse. There was more than just the business affairs to handle. There was an accumulation of 40 years of stuff, much of which I no longer want or need. So, in parallel to dealing with my emotions, my grief, I spent a lot of time dealing with things. Many of them were donated to charity. In fact, most of them were.

I’m approaching the end of this phase. I’m also approaching the anniversary of her death. It’s not an anniversary to celebrate, not in the normal sense of celebration. I will, however, celebrate her life and remember her. As my friend Jim says, “It sucks less, but it still sucks.”

I sense the need to move forward. I’m not really moving on, because that implies something I am not doing. These changes didn’t come by any choice, but by circumstance. I’m not leaving Wife behind because she’s no longer here. I am, however, prepared to move forward to whatever is next for me.

I’m still working out what that should be. For one thing, my expenses are reduced and I’ll be saving more of my pay. It’s time to get serious about padding my retirement account so I’ll have funds to draw from when the time comes I cannot (or don’t want to) work so much.

For another thing I intend to pursue more art. I am working on my photographic skills. As the chores around the house are reduced, I’ll feel free to do more weekend trips. I want to drive out to the coast and spend some weekends out there with a camera. I want to drive up into Oregon and Idaho, and maybe Washington to explore and make images. There will also be some geocaching to do as I wander about. I have a lot of Nevada left to explore.

I might face a change of engagement some time along the way. Work has been slow this year. There are some projects in the pipeline that should provide me with chargeable time. I’m hoping that 2014 will provide enough work to justify my continued employment. If it doesn’t, it will be time to think of a change. I’m not OK with drawing pay and not having enough to do.

In any event, I’m ready to move forward. I want to do some things besides working here at the house and staying home most of the weekends. It’s time.

During the last few weeks I followed the last travels of a Jeff Parker. Jeff was a BMW rider and was part of the internet BMW riding community. He’s well known to many of the long-time denizens of that eclectic and curmudgeonly group.

A few weeks ago, Parker announced he was diagnosed with Stage 3 pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer is bad. Stage 3 means it’s time to bend over and kiss it goodbye. There is nothing to do but be comfortable and meet one’s end.

Parker elected to give things one last go. He decided to do a four-corners ride. That’s long-distance rider slang for the four corners of the lower 48 states of the U.S. It’s not a ride to be taken lightly. It’s certainly not a ride to be taken lightly when one is dying from pancreatic cancer.

But ride it he did. He posted to the list a couple-three times with updates on progress. A few days ago, somewhere in Arizona, he could not go on. The pain was sufficient that he was no longer fit to ride. He called a few folks from the BMW Anonymous Book (a publication with contact information of BMW riders but no names), met them for supper, and asked if any of them could/would help him finish the ride.

One of them could. So, Parker rode second seat the remainder of the way to the last corner of his ride. He then put his benefactor on an airplane, went home, and went under hospice care. He was comfortable and calm when he posted his last message to the IBMWR mailing list.

I don’t think anyone minded that there was not much of the obligatory BMW content. Parker wrote to say he finished his ride, literally and figuratively. It was his last post.

His daughter posted to the group yesterday late that Jeff Parker died from his cancer.

So what, one might think… people die everyday. It is true that everything dies, at least everything living. We all come to an end sometime.

The cancer is rather close to home. I lost Wife to cancer last January. But I am impressed by Parker’s approach. He saw his end coming and did something deliberate. He decided to go for a motorcycle ride. It wasn’t just any motorcycle ride, but a four-corners ride to all four corners of the continental U.S. It’s about a 10,000-mile ride.

It’s not something to be undertaken lightly. It’s physically and mentally challenging. Parker decided to do it while dying from pancreatic cancer. That’s both deliberate and ballsy.

He finished the ride before the cancer finished him. He had help at the end, but it still counts. He had the courage to take on a thing he wanted to do, but had not done. That courage speaks volumes to me and I hope to others.

Godspeed, Jeff Parker.

This weekend I really stayed on task and worked through four more boxes of fossil records. There remain only two small cartons of papers that are stowed on the staging table in the garage and a small carton in my living room that I think contains photographs. I will probably break open the photograph carton tomorrow and see what is in it.

I ground cancelled checks, statements, and tax returns dating from 1972. I think Wife kept every bit of paper that came into the house. I threatened several times to just deal with the old records myself. But her fear of losing something that was important overruled my desire to clean up after ourselves and she just became too anxious for me to proceed.

I refused to do it with her, because I knew she would agonize over every decision. I didn’t believe the job warranted that. She knew what I thought. I wasn’t argumentative about it; I just thought it was something that needed to be done.

Well, with her death the job fell to me anyway. I am determined to get through all of that old stuff and deal with it. Most of it (over 90 percent) will go away. A few bits and pieces will be kept and those are mostly things that have her words on them. I do miss her words.

As I worked through all those papers, I recognized a lot of things and places from the past. There were receipts from favorite eating places, records of trips taken, records of work done. As I passed them through the grinder I couldn’t help feeling that I was grinding up the record of our lives. That familiar old feeling of melancholy came over me many times over the weekends as I worked on this humongous project. It felt like I was grinding up not just my life, but our joint lives.

I can say I don’t like how that feels. I already feel the loss of Wife deeply. No day passes when I don’t think of her at least once. When I’m at the office, I expect a text of telephone call asking about my day or when I’m coming home. I honestly think that’s part of the reason I now prefer to work at home. When I’m here at the house I know she won’t be calling or sending me a text. I know that she’s gone and not coming back.

On Saturday, I found myself thinking “I really don’t like feeling this way. I’m going to have to find a way to deal with this and move on.” Heh… I wish it was so simple.

Yet I recall one day during my clinical depression thinking nearly the same thing. That time I got up and started moving around. It marked a watershed in my recovery. I wasn’t done with the depression (or it wasn’t done with me), but I began my recovery that day and moved forward most days after that.

I think new things are coming for me. I’m going to finish this job. I have a few more cartons to deal with after I finish the last three that have unknown contents. But I know the contents of the remaining cartons. For them, it’s a simple matter of opening them and dealing with the contents. It will not be so difficult as the fossils nor will there be the same sense of history associated with the contents.

I need to make another pass through the books in this house. I can eliminate half of them or more. They should go to someone who will read them and wants the library. I might want to read many of the books, but I no longer want a physical library. I want a lot lighter load.

Furthermore, I want that load to comprise the things I use and will use. That’s a fairly short list and I think I can reduce my material possessions by half or more and still not quite be there. But I can work on it.

I have a target to work towards. That’s a good thing.

A few years ago, well many years ago, I moved as the point man (of my family) to Lubbock, Texas. I was a new assistant professor of civil engineering. After I got myself settled in to an apartment, I began searching for a church.

This story (dead link) reminds me of my search. Go read it, then come back.

Did you read it? Good. A long time ago I reflected on my search for a church in Lubbock, Texas. I arrived early in 1993, got myself situated in a small apartment, and got started on my duties. Wife and kids worked in Mississippi to ready for the remainder of the move. As point, I started a search for a church.

My modus operandi was to dress in my not best jeans, an old flannel shirt, and go visit a church on my list from the telephone book. I had a big-ole ponytail and a neatly trimmed beard. I would enter the church a few minutes before the service and watch how people treated me.

Mostly I was ignored. I would find a place near the back to sit and then participate in the service. I was evaluating the teaching and music as well as my reception.

Again, I was mostly an invisible person.

After a few weeks, I visited Lubbock Bible Church. We like Bible churches because they tend to stick pretty close to the Bible. They can be a bit intellectual and a little less practical, but that’s sometimes the risk of solid teaching.

Before I could get out of the church my first visit, I was literally grabbed by the pastor’s wife. I was also greeted by a number of congregants. This was a unusual in my experience and a positive sign.

The pastor’s family took me to lunch and we were acquainted. I found our church. We were there for more than ten years before the pastor retired and things changed, and not for the better. We left soon thereafter and bounced around there in Lubbock and then again once we moved to Carson City.

I haven’t been searching for a church here. I’ve been focused on dealing with the things left undone before Wife’s death. Once I get through all of that, maybe. I haven’t made up my mind yet.

The object lesson of the pastor-as-homeless-man is well-taken. It’s an excellent lesson and needs to be learned by anyone who says they are Christian. I remember.