A good friend called me the first week of January and said, hey, didn’t you use to write a big summary of the year that was and all your ambitions for next year? Yeah, I said, but I don’t really feel like it – I have a cold and a fever and don’t have the energy. Plus last year was a real shit year.

But then I thought about it. What’s the point of setting goals if you don’t hold yourself accountable? Noone else will, and there are always excuses, but owning your actions (or lack thereof) should be top of everyone’s ambitions. So…

Last year I had lofty ambitions. Then – after years of vague symptoms and low energy levels that I had put down to aging and Coviditis (the general inertia brought about the pandemic, even in those who weren’t hit by Long Covid or worse) – I was diagnosed with Lyme disease, which had lingered for so long it had caused neuropathy. One initial antibiotic did nothing to alleviate matters, so then I went on another one, and then another. All in all I was on antibiotics for close to six months, with all the inherent fun that brought. I’ll spare you the details, suffice to say it did nothing to improve my overall life quality. In the end it was worth it though; I now feel more energetic than I have in a long time, in spite of the harshness of both the disease and the cure.

The road back is long, and there is no guarantee I will regain full capacity, but just knowing I have fought back feels good. So I didn’t get to the point where I can run 10k yet, but I did accomplish other things:

I went to France twice, once to the Opal coast and once to Paris – both lovely outings; I went to Spain and had a good time in spite of being unable to paraglide; I took the kids to Crete (which was wonderful), and went cayaking with my brother in the Sörmland archipelago (dito), went hiking in the Ardennes, in Luxembourg and around Monschau in Germany, and saw the Christmas market in Aachen. All in all not bad for a convalescent.

I stuck to my plan to be more disciplined in my piano playing, and managed to learn a number of new tunes (if not one per month, as originally planned), and I read non fiction voraciously, totalling close to 40 books by the end of the year.

So I need to look beyond my ailments and see that you can get things done, can LIVE, even with limited energy. That’s not to say that I don’t hope for a better 2023 – I do! – but it’s useful to gain perspective. Don’t let the buggers get you down!