Because I'm a very visual person, I started putting a symbol at the beginning of the title of each month's addition. One year it was an asterisk, another it was an exclamation mark... you get the idea. This way I could scan the list to find all of the pages for a certain year quickly.
At the end of 2024, I got some business-changing news. My most steady client had to cut back and I was due to lose more than half of my income each month. However, as I had a feeling this was coming, I tried to be optimistic. If you know me at all, you know this isn't natural; however, I had been wanting to branch out. After getting this news, it was no longer a choice. I decided to be optimistic about where I was going.
In addition, my husband was studying to get certified as a paralegal. This was his major in school and he worked as a paralegal for a while after graduation. Then, for various reasons, he didn't stay in the profession, which meant that he had gone several decades without doing paralegal work. He wanted the certification to prove he was still able to do it.
So, I went into 2025 full of hope. It was going to be "my year" in my business. I was ready to get out there and make some money (and hopefully help others along the way). My husband was going to pass the certification test and get a really good job. For once, the pressure wouldn't be on me to make money as he should have a pretty good salary in that scenario.
To help keep that hope alive, I chose a dollar sign to start each 2025 entry.
The year started off with a bang.
I met with a friend who is also the head of a writers' professional group after telling her I wanted to pick her brain on how and where to start finding the writing work I had lost.
I was floored when she offered me an amazing opportunity. The writer's group she was in charge of was starting to publish books. They were also having various staff write a book for a series of books on writing.
As an honorary staff member of the organization (because I'm their official photographer), my friend offered me the chance to write a book in the series with some type of photography angle.
What?! I had wanted to write a book since I was a child. This was an amazing opportunity.
However, the deadline was only a few months away, and I was trying to build up my paid work while working on it. It was a frantic, though fun time.
I was able to join my local Chamber of Commerce through a barter - photography work for the membership fee. I just knew loads of work in my suburban city would come my way as I was the only full-time photographer who was a member of the Chamber. I joined the local merchants' association and worked hard at networking with them and the Chamber, as well as attending other networking events.
There were successes. My book was published. I made a substantial amount at one shoot. I started writing and shooting for other publications. My husband was studying for his test.
It was working out as expected... at first. However, two things happened that ended up changing my entire year.
In January, my 87-year-old mother fell.
That's not unusual in itself. She falls a lot. I joke that we should get frequent flyer miles at the ER. But this one caused her elbow replacement (actually the second one) to come out of the bone that goes into her shoulder. She was in horrible pain but had been told that if something happened to the second replacement, nothing could be done. There just wasn't enough bone left to attach it to in order to do it again.
She spent months in pain, simply trying to learn to use her left arm and deal with the pain.
Though it would change the entire course of 2025, for months it was just (literally) a pain to deal with.
From April to June, my 26-year-old daughter moved back in with us. You can go back and read some of that story in earlier blogs. Just know that it took a lot of adjusting on everyone's part to make it work.
During that time, I was able to work some but it was difficult as the move was a major deal.
But back to Mom.
In April, she found the one doctor in our state who would take on such a surgery. We were able to get an appointment for mid-May. At every appointment, we held our breaths, expecting to hear that he couldn't do it.
But he could.
Her first surgery was in July. This surgeon had told us he would have plans A, B, C, and D - all of which he came up with after consulting with some of the top surgeons nationwide who do this kind of surgery. I don't think he knew we would end up with Plan E.
Halfway through the surgery, he came out of the operating room to talk to my brothers, my husband, and me. He told us that there was only one thing they could do - take out her current elbow replacement hardware. From there, we had a choice. We could either let it heal up, which meant Mom wouldn't have an elbow or a functional arm, OR we could take a few weeks for her to recover and go back in to do a total elbow-humerus-shoulder replacement.
We chose the latter.
This was when I became a caregiver - and when work became secondary.
The second surgery - about a 10-hour operation - was in August. She had to stay in the hospital for about a week and was at a rehab hospital for almost two more weeks. I was with her almost the entire time. I tried to work some from the hospital, but it didn't go well. She needed too much help.
However, she made it. She was extremely weak and needed a LOT of help at home when she was discharged, but she did it.
Then her arm became infected.
They went back in and did a third surgery - a "clean-out." This was in September. She was again in the hospital for about a week and spent another week in rehab. I was there the majority of the time, but I needed to work some, so I tried to do both.
Resulting tests showed that the clean-out worked. She got over the infection. But, for some reason, the wound wasn't completely healed. She had been opened up from her shoulder to her wrist, and about a 4-inch-long part wasn't healing.
This led to the fourth surgery - a debridement. They were hoping that they could cut away the tissue that wasn't healing to give it a boost.
She didn't have to stay overnight in the hospital for that one. Woo-hoo! Her surgery was on Halloween, and it was nice to be home instead of back in the hospital.
All of this wiped her completely out. Her body kept betraying her. Other issues throughout the four surgeries made everything harder.
What this meant for me is that I was able to work less and less. I lost all of the momentum I had been gaining. In fact, I made nothing, nada, ZERO in September.
It's been two months since her last surgery. That wound is finally healing. She's been able to use her walker for the first time in months. Part of this improvement was that she ended up going on hospice for pain management.
The ironic aspect of this part of the story is that after she decided hospice was a good idea, she found out she has lung cancer.
She doesn't want treatment, so there's no need to get a biopsy. As a biopsy is the only way to show what kind she has and whether it's fast-growing or slow-growing, she isn't technically diagnosed with cancer. She's technically on hospice for heart issues (though they know about the cancer and will address it as needed.)
With that news, work again became secondary. It took a lot of meetings to get her started with the hospice program and I had to be at all of them. She may be much more ambulatory now but she's at a huge fall risk and so it's more nerve-racking to leave her alone than it was before.
This past month I made $25. Oh - and my husband never was able to finish studying for his test because of everything that happened. (He was the secondary caregiver as he was the only one who could pick her up when needed).
I'm at a loss of where to go from here. I'm still needed as a caregiver too much of the day to really focus on work. Add to that, my back issues have gotten worse. It takes everything in me to complete a full event now. Writing is a better option, but writing opportunities are few and far between.
I have a few more days that I can procrastinate on any decisions, justifying it by knowing that the world is on hold for a couple of days. Businesses are about to close for New Year's Eve and many will stay closed tomorrow. Friday will be spent with issues that I've had to wait to deal with (medical bills make up most of them). Monday is my target day to try to figure out where to go next.
One thing I wish I had done when I started writing this blog is to get subscribers. I've looked into it since but never figured out how. But I do know there are a few who read this blog at least occasionally. As 2025 ends, I thank you - and anyone who has read any of my blogs. I hope I was able to encourage you through all of my ramblings... or at least let you know that you aren't alone.
Let's hope that 2026 is much better (at least for me).
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