It seems that 2025 is to be ‘the year of missing’ on many levels. Wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start again:
For many years, I would end each year with a renewal of my commitments and within the first month of the new year, set forth the pattern as it thus far unfolds. From there, as I like and wish, and spottily, I admit.
Indeed, 2025 has all the signs of being a year of missing in many ways. Initially, I was somewhat enjoying the return of the wood snake; the sign is generally well received though it has it’s opposition – all things in balance, or in change between balances. But it seems I’ve wound up on the wrong timeline and now I’m really struggling to figure out how to get back or across or tunnel to it or however it winds up needing to be, y’know?
In this timeline, I am going to be 60 this year. Imagine. Me. SIXTY. I definitely feel it and then some in my body, but my mind? Hah. Evergreen, it purports. Neuroscience says otherwise, but I’ll allow it, we’re still in recovery. (Long story. Another time.)
Quoting from the website chineseastrologyonline.com:
“2025 is the year of the Yin-Wood Snake. Yin-Wood is associated with grass, flowers, weeds, or vines that can quickly grow and spread. Yin-Wood likes sunshine and can endure strong wind, symbolizing growth, endurance, imagination, innovation, and brainstorming.”
My inner world is full of symbols and multiple meanings in layers that hold my self-created mnemonics and the structure of what others have labeled a ‘mind palace’. In this inner universe, meaning is encoded in all forms and all life; the pattern writ large across space time as well as within our own systems and cells and deeper still, beyond bone, into the control procedures that, in tandem with the local biome, edit our entire code base throughout out lives.
The quoted paragraph is encoded by culture, by language, by translations, by history, by economy, and any other factor with enough credible history to be brought to bear. For me, the cyclic and holistic and things to do with seeding and growing and moving between states of being are central. Not by choice or deliberation. I can’t seem to get away from it. Change, that is. No one can, really; but my life has been and remains a swirl of externally inflicted chaos that no one outside ever believes, but no one inside ever doubts again. (Now that I actually have a ‘one’ to so witness, my sense of security in my sanity has improved a lot.)
New growth, summer, sunshine, strong winds (of change!), imagining and beginnings and path-finding and more! Most people tend to focus on the upheaval that finally made actual change impossible to avoid or ignore anymore (*cough*) and that’s valid; I just prefer to stick to things I can do and thus keep from falling into that kind of inertia ever again, y’know?
Of course I say all of this barely able to move, sitting in a weekly stay room from which I have not departed but to see doctors for over a year (oh, and one birthday dinner out). I have been out of work since 2017, turned down for disability three times despite having an actual list of disabilities both legally and medically defined as such.
Because my health failed in 2017, my family lost its primary income. Because we lost our primary income, we lost our house (deed in lieu), downsized, and continued downsizing until we finally stabilized in a small town in the PNW.
An accident totaled our vehicle in 2021, but we were fortunate enough to find affordable housing near my partner’s work. Then, in 2022, my partner had a breakdown. As a result, they lost their job. Fortunately, they found another in a small town in the PNW; so we packed up and relocated.
Then, only four months into a union protected role, my partner was laid off. Suddenly, a full time job was ‘misunderstood’ and it was a temporary role, so union rights and benefits didn’t apply (they requested and had him removed from the union registration).
Problem was, we had just completed furnishing the place and now, not only were broke from paying the rent and utilities, but were going to have to break the lease due to loss of the only work keeping us going.
Worst of all? We had to leave all but what could fit in a passenger van paid for by my partner’s mother.
No, I take that back. Worst of all was the apartment manager saying they could easily satisfy any fees by selling the items from the unit we were leaving behind, only to send us off for collections for $1700 when we left over $5000 of furniture, bed frames, brand new mattresses (<2mo.), a one of a kind art work by a noted artist worth $1400 (on buyback to artist alone), and so much more… collectible books, gaming history boxed media and defunct games, couture suits and shoes from my consulting days (e.g., St. John, Lauren, Claiborne, Fluevog), custom hats from my time in arts collectibles, and MUCH more.
So they helped themselves to ALL of that, and then send us to collections.
Which is why we’re in a weekly stay because no one will rent to us with a landlord collection account on my partner’s credit report. Which they know, which is why they do it, because they are being vindictive and don’t care if we can find housing or not. (Losing the only job we had and being unable to find work and get paid before an eviction can happen is not our fault!)
But they basically helped themselves to what we couldn’t afford to take with us and then sent us to collections anyway, which is just dirty and low down.
Anyway… you got to turn the soil before you can sow new seed. Everybody knows this. (But honestly, I do feel we got turn’t a bit more aggressively than should be proper and rightful for vacating at the landlord’s convenience so they could rent the unit.)
ANYWAY… nothing but dirt and now it’s time to aerate and let it sit a time and recover. So we’ve basically been aerating like good lil taters in tatters and slowly saving up a small nest egg in hopes of being able to get to a piece of land or an apartment, whichever can happen first.
It’ll be years, regardless, and that assumes nothing else happens or goes wrong; to continue assuming that no longer feeling like something I can in good faith do. I lost over $160k in that house that I will never see again and it still makes me so mad because if I could have just sold the damn thing before it came to crisis, we would have been fine.
My health crashed, I lost my job, and pretty much immediately, we ran out of money. My partner couldn’t make up the difference (at the time, I was 90% of our financial liquidity) fast enough to save us. But the worst? We had only one person to turn to for help and they dictated terms that mean not only we had to leave the significant portion of our belongings behind, but they would help us get moved only on the condition that we would stop trying to sell the house and instead, give it back to the bank.
I will never forgive that person for their part in making sure we lost everything and had no choice but to downsize and have junkers take what wouldn’t fit (because we weren’t being given time to sell it).
We have downsized four times from our 3/2 home into a 1/1 apartment, then a 2/1 apartment, then another 2/1, then a final 2/1 before having to pack a van to partner’s mother (I have no family and it was this or homelessness).
Partner landed work in February 2024. Just had his first year work anniversary. We’ve been in the weekly stay for a year as well. But we’ve managed to save a small amount.
Maybe in another year we can afford to do better.
I’m still looking for work; if I could just get someone to hire me doing what I love (business analyst/product owner (CSPO)), things would work out fast. But no luck yet. I keep sending them out. Something’s got to give. After all, the only thing that doesn’t change is that all things change.
So, yeah. I mean, that’s not ALL that’s happening. My health is a roller-coaster. We’re both in hideous burnout. I still miss Daka and Dana (r.i.p. 2024). I still miss lost friends. And all the rest I’m supposed to be letting go.
Which I supposed means I’m right where I’m supposed to be – in the middle of a Yin-Wood Snake year that is gonna level the field down to dirt and make us all rebuild.
I feel for the folks who have never been through this before, but since it’s largely self-inflicted, I’m also going to just to get my business and let them see to their own for a change. I still believe and live ‘just because I can’ but frankly, I can’t right now, and it’s ok to take care of myself (or die trying, I guess?).
I have friends online and colleagues as well who know I’m amazing at this stuff. If no company can pick up what I’m putting down, that’s really not my fault at this point. I’m doing all the things, they’re just not interested.
Now tracing WHY they aren’t interested? Oh, who am I kidding? No one has ever cared about any of this stuff. Why should my experience be any different?
Fucking passive wood snakes. You know about passive wood snakes? I sure do, I grew up in diamond-backed rattle and cotton nose and water moccasin territory; hell, I am a wood snake myself, Chinese astrology wise, that is.
So yeah, 2025 is only mildly improved over the shit cake that was 2024, and you can trace that slide of craptacular proportions right back to 2017, which unsurprisingly is the seven year mark on the recovery wheel (it has eight). Current goal is to be homesteading by 2030. Let’s see, shall we?
If you’re inclined to help, you can do so here: https://venmo.com/u/YeshesOnline anything and everything deeply appreciated.
Hope you’re doing well and if not, that you’re at least better off than I am and it not, well crap, I sure hope that changes soon, truly.