Year in Review 2023
This has been an epic year, with such great heights: two absolutely "living the dream" type projects, and getting to spend time with Cristina ... and then ending with rather fizzle, unemployed with nothing on the horizon and it could still be another year until Cristina's visa is granted.
As is tradition, we will begin with travel maps:
That's 52,037 miles flown, which is almost twice the previous year, but substantially less than my record in 2017 of 83,230, and I think about the fourth-most for me.
Coming into this year I was on my third year working for Edmonds Honey, a job I was quite satisfied with. In February my parents visited and we went to Tasmania again and had a fun road trip to the eastern end of Victoria.
In May I went to Guinea for the fifth (?) time, and then six weeks in Ghana, for which I was well paid to teach beekeeping, more or less literally living the dream.
After two months in West Africa I flew, via a brief stop in Lisbon, to the United States in July where I first spent a few days in dad's hometown of Rochester NY and then in California, which is the first time I'd been home since 2019. Went on a bit of a roadtrip with my parents to Northern California to attend a cousin's wedding, saw many relatives. And it was nice to visit Davis again, where I had gone to university.
After a month in Australia I then departed again in August to spend time with Cristina in Colombia, whom I hadn't seen in 3 years, 11 months, 12 days, 9 hours, and 25 minutes. Had a wonderful two and a half weeks with her. Then headed to Chile for the world beekeeping congress.
September: About two weeks after getting back from that I was recruited on to the emergency response to the bee pest the varroa mite in the state of New South Wales. Absenting myself in the busy season resulted in me losing my job at Edmonds Honey. I regret having lost the job, I did really like it there, but I don't think I could have not taken the emergency response position. It is my strong inclination to participate in emergency responses if I can, from my first job as a lifeguard (101 rescues) to volunteering with the volunteer fire brigade (CFA) on fires and floods, and now there was a national emergency for which my very specific skill set were perfect. And I'd been well behaved and sat out the previous year, holding down the fort while both my boss and colleague participated for a week or two each. It had been my intention just to go participate for two weeks but when told I no longer had a job to come back to I ended up working on the emergency response right until they wound it down in November (one of the last two out of state staff). This job felt like living the dream: contributing to an important cause for the country and industry, traveling, working with interesting teams, valued and respected for my past experience, and very highly paid. I can't say I'm glad varroa arrived in Australia because it's terrible, but I could have wished the response had gone on for longer, I was having the time of my life.
And then, a sort of existential whiplash, I found myself back home without a job.
My dad was keen to do an ironman in Busselton, Western Australia, and I was at least conveniently free now, so at the end of November they came over and we went over Perth-ways together, which was a fun distraction.
Meanwhile throughout the year the legal case regarding the cow that totalled my car on the road in November 2022 slowly dragged on. It was tedious and obnoxious that the cow's insurance representative was denying liability, but on the plus side arguing with them gave me a bit of amusement and a glimpse of a return to my earlier more law related life. They quoted case law thinking to bamboozle me, I quoted the same and more cases back at them, informed them that their argument had lost track of the relevance of the other cows on the road, and that their argument was implausible to the point of absurdity. As they continued to quibble about details and profess not to understand how a repairable car is totalled I informed them they were vexatiously wasting my time and lo, thereupon they offered a pretty good settlement offer. I won! This is the super clif-notes version, I encourage you to read my longer version with my full sick legal burns.
As of last New Years I had 45,000 words written of "the book." Now I have about 56,000, which isn't great progress (+11,000) for a year except that for substantial periods of time I was too busy, with life and ... writing 50,000 words on Medium. I now have 317 followers there, up from exactly three in December 2022. With audiences bottoming out here in the wasteland that once was livejournal it's nice to have found another audience (though I don't see myself ever leaving here, and I greatly value those few of you who are sticking it out here with me!)
(and considering my entries average around 1000 words that's another 150,000 words I wrote this year ;) so while 11,000 in a year on the book may seem like I'll never finish, I just need to redirect a fraction of the 200,000 going to other purposes)
Next Year
The processing time for partner visas keeps changing, which I suppose means it's based on constantly updating information. When I checked in November it was "23-27 months" which would have been between this November and March, which gave me hope it would come through any moment now. Just now I checked again and it's "11 to 39 months," (the 50% to 90% processed) which is horrifying -- it both fills me with envy for those who were processed in 11 months and despair as 39 months would be another year and a half from now!!! On the plus side, we're now about halfway between 11 months and 39, which means we're presumably at the height of the bell curve, but with my luck it will drag out forever -- I've commenced writing my elected representatives. Anyway it is my most fervent hope that her visa is granted soon.
There are no particular jobs or projects on the horizon, but assuming this upcoming year will be like last it seems plausible that great things will come along. In the immediate term I'm just going to try to get any decently paying job (maybe the local icecream factory) and if nothing else comes along I should have saved enough after a few months to pursue the master's degree I've always dreamed of.
So in a nutshell, it has been an epic year, and a bit of a roller coaster, with such great heights .. only to leave me in the end unemployed and anxious about Cristina's visa.
(posting this now (the 29th) because for the remaining two days of the year I'll be on a boat. Life is hard ;) )