Other than my reading list, which I maintain throughout the year, I didn’t manage to get a blog post up wrapping up 2024. There are many reasons for that. I decided to wait until today since it’s my 59th birthday and a good time to reflect on the past year.

I didn’t do as much geocaching in 2024 as I normally do. The main reason for that is what I now believe to be post-sepsis syndrome, which goes back to my near-death experience almost 3 years ago now. After finally confessing late in 2024 to my doctor that I’m just tired of trying to push through everything and feeling exhausted all the time, I’m happy to know it’s not “me.” I’ve been blaming myself for not pushing hard enough, being lazy, and everything else under the sun. I’d go out and feel like I just wanted to be home. I’d make plans and then cancel them; I just wasn’t interested and it felt like work more than fun. Still, I managed to knock a few more towns off my list of the towns of New England Challenge. I also closed the year strong, thanks to Adventure Labs in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. I was driving to Washington DC for New Year’s and along the way, I grabbed four series of Labs that gave me a whopping daily total of 478 caches in one day! My travels gave me a couple of new countries this year as well, which was nice. Will I find joy again in geocaching in 2025? I sure hope so!

I had a good year for travel, which might be my last for a while. I went on a cruise on Norwegian Escape with my BFF in February which was between our two birthdays. We had a blast and it was a Western Caribbean cruise with new ports to me for the most part. In April we went camping at Fort Wilderness before it was time for three of our kids and their families to join us at our Disney Vacation Club. We do that every two years, trying to get them all together. Maybe next time it will be all four of them! During this trip, we went to Tampa to see the Rays play as part of my Ballpark Chase of all 30 stadiums. Good thing we did!

In June I made a pilgrimage to London for the MLB London series which featured the Mets and the Phillies. I had a great time. We had nosebleed tickets but found open seats right in the back of the Mets dugout for both games. I had a blast and that second game was wild!

My BFF Catherine (above) celebrated a big birthday this year, and we went back to the UK in September to celebrate it. She’s a huge Beatles fan and that was the theme for this trip. We spent three days in Liverpool, thanks to a friend who offered up his place to stay, and I showed her the sights since I’d been there before. We went into John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s homes and took a great private tour which I found on Viator. The second part was a Disney Cruise out of Southampton which went to Hamburg and Belgium. I was disappointed when they canceled Amsterdam from the cruise due to strikes there, but Belgium was incredible! We toured Bruges and Ghent, and I would go back to Bruges again in a heartbeat. It’s so pretty there.

To close out the year, we decided as a family (my spouse, my son & myself) to take a cruise out of New York instead of buying each other Christmas presents. We went on Royal Caribbean’s Odyssey of the Seas and had a great time. We didn’t get off the ship except on Coco Cay, Royal’s private island. We didn’t suffer for lack of things to do and had a great time. I think Royal is a great line for kids as there is so much on their ships and Coco Cay for them to do. If I can pull it off, I’m going to take my granddaughter and son this summer on a cruise for her birthday.

Finally, I had finished a diamond painting for Catherine, but it was too bulky to transport all the way to the UK, so I had to deliver it personally to DC. We decided New Year’s was a good time for that, so that’s why I drove to DC right after Christmas. I did some geocaching on the mall there as well, and Catherine drove me over to see Mount Vernon.

2025 isn’t going to be as big a year for travel. In November 2024, my boss called and they are cutting back things with the people I work for. This is a huge hit for my family. With the post-sepsis syndrome, I can’t work outside the home anymore. I never know from one day to the next how much energy I’ll have. Working as I have up until now has worked for me. If it’s a bad day where all I can manage is watching for new reservations and processing them, I can sit and do that. If it’s a good day where I can get more done, then I play catch-up. My doctor has sent me for all kinds of tests and visits to behavioral health and so far there’s nothing tangible. I joined a few groups that talk about post-sepsis syndrome and based on what those people are saying I seem to have it. I’ll probably be looking into Social Security Disability, which is a long road. I’ll collect social security anyway when I’m 62, so it’s only 3 years we’re talking about. Still, it’ll be an uphill battle.

The concern with that is the great unknown of what’s going to happen to this country under another Trump administration. I have no idea what social security will look like in 3 years, never mind if I can get disability. I have to worry about the ACA being repealed and what that means for my son. He is on the autism spectrum and has Crohn’s Disease. He gets infusions of Remicade every 8 weeks that cost about $16k each. Thanks to Obamacare, he’s been on my spouse’s insurance and had about 18 months left on that. After that, our plan was to get him on state insurance through the exchange since that would give him the best coverage of the Remicade. If they repeal it, then what happens to him? He’ll never have a “great” job – he works at McDonalds. He has a pre-existing condition that most insurance companies wouldn’t cover. I’m terrified.

That’s without looking at all of the other things Trump and Project 2025 have talked about. I have to worry about my daughter-in-law, who is of Mexican heritage, and what they might do to her and my granddaughter. I’m glad I no longer have kids in school, but I worry about what their attacks on education mean for my grandchildren. I worry about my son in the Army and what he might be called to do by people who have no regard for the lives of the people they are supposed to serve. Part of me just wants to hunker down and crawl under a rock for the next four years. I’ve already stopped watching the news because I just can’t handle the anxiety it gives me. I find it hard to believe this is who we are as a country. I’m glad my father, who fought in World War II, didn’t live long enough to see it embrace everything he fought against.

One bright spot was being a Mets fan this past year. No, they didn’t go all the way, but it was a fun season! I hope to see them play a few times in 2025, and we’ll see what happens. My grandchildren watch some of the games with me at home and it’s become a family thing.

2024 was a roller-coaster and the future looks to be more of the same. I don’t know how much traveling I can do with no money coming in. We can survive, but it’s a hit. On top of it, I wonder what the hell happened to the country I grew up in. We used to care about each other – there was a sense of community. Now everything is about money and “nothing matters unless it happens to me.”