random thoughts – Day 2,115 (Wednesday) – goodbye 2025

Final sunset of 2025, through the trees.

It’s the last day of 2025 and I’m not entirely sad to see this year be done. The overall theme for this extra challenging and stressful year seems to have been “What. The. F&*k.” I watched what I could see of the setting sun from the dining room window and hoped the incoming year will be calmer. 

The year opened with the cloud of the recently delivered news the bank that claimed for 35-plus years would be “the last independent bank standing” was “merging” which we learned was code for “being acquired and disappearing.” Early communications about the branch network being “safe” avoided mentioning the plan for back-office departments. The life-changing thunderhead overshadowed the first half of year (and beyond).

To add more spice to an already spicy time, my unfortunate ice incident of February resulted in a broken wrist, surgery, and no driving for eight weeks which meant that even though 99% of my body parts functioned, due to living near absolutely none of my dance sisters, I couldn’t get to either of my dance groups. Thanks to the digital marvel of remote work, I was able to continue working from home and a couple times, got rides into the office for meetings.

A week after the wrist surgery, the official initial notification arrived that I was one of those chosen to soon be jobless (along with most of the marketing team) at some still undetermined date. It had been my general plan to work at the bank until full retirement age and then either scale back to part-time hours or retire and sell the house in Lowell. It was a rough plan, with two years to be fully mapped out. The merger and job loss notification accelerated parts of that plan and derailed others.

With no job in Lowell there was no reason to also be jobless in Lowell and stressing over the mortgage payment and flood insurance. The house was put on the market in early June and by the last weekend of June (right before the finally announced official merger date) an offer was accepted. I had looked at several houses, and on July first (first day of unemployment), made an offer on the perfect house in the correct price range which happened to also be next door to Mom’s. This part of things could not have been better scripted and proved that sometimes things do work out.

In addition to packing, moving, and unpacking, the entire summer (and fall) were spent looking for a job. Unsuccessfully. The new morning routine still involves scouring through job postings, customizing resumes and cover letters, and sometimes still having to retype all the resume info into an online application that can take an hour or more. I have received the exact same seemingly AI generated rejection letter countless times, sometimes right after the email stating the application was submitted. The HR robot overlords work fast! 

About the time I was ready to come up for a breath of air and maybe take a day at the beach, the excruciating pinched nerve in the neck came along to really jazz things up. It was complicated by a major “event” with the local healthcare system that affected their communications, appointment scheduling, x-rays, and basically everything. It was a couple months of waiting for medical appointments, going to medical appointments, waiting for diagnostics, and physical therapy. The follow-up for the MRI done in mid-December is still weeks away, but maybe that is a good sign.

In October, as a fresh kick in the teeth, the same week the first unemployment deposit from the state hit my bank account, a letter arrived stating that the bank had appealed my unemployment insurance and I need to prepare for a hearing at a still unscheduled future date. Details are minimal to nonexistent, but the best guesses are that the payments began prematurely. Not that I control the state’s purse strings, I’m just following the instructions provided in a bank-sponsored workshop and on the state-run website. But hey, a hearing should be fun!

Not to be outdone on the physical front and speaking of teeth, the first week of December I broke a tooth. That set off the latest dental adventure, notable for being more expensive out-of-pocket than either of the physical ones, thanks to the insurance industry and the geniuses who decided vision and dental care should be separate coverages than health care and everything should cost an arm and a leg.

Kiki!

The challenges were frustrating, expensive, and life-changing, but the year still finished with solid victories. There is a comfortable (paid off) home in a nice neighborhood with helpful neighbors. The joblessness allowed for more time spent with family and Kiki (the best cat in the land), and time to recharge and start making plans for the next chapter in the new year. Maybe I’ll find a job in some new and exciting direction. Maybe I won’t. 

I’ll be okay. 2025 was a tough year, but I’m generally adaptable and also tenacious and full of Finnish Sisu so I usually (eventually) land on my feet (except that time in 2025 when I landed on my wrist). Sometimes I just have to get really pissed off first.