Boxing day is here, along with higher winds, and some freezing rain, ice pellets, and blowing snow! Such luck. I slept in until almost ten o’clock, but the kids were up early fighting over the new Meta Quest 3 VR headset, much as I knew they would. I have work coming on Monday at some point, for invoices to be filed (that I am aware of) and hopefully nothing big until after January fifth when everything settles back into our usual schedule. I do hope this weather doesn’t persist as we are expected to go to several different locations over the coming days. I’d love for this stuff to settle down, or at least keep the roads clear. We always seem to need to travel when the weather is terrible.
Although the bad weather is really just another layer of the off putting float we experience between Christmas and New Years. Just drifting around aimlessly not knowing what day of the week it is. No schedule to follow. It’s dark when I wake up, and if you blink it’s dark again and yet another day is gone. Very strange time of year. Unsettling even. Not that I want to spend nine hours a day working to guide me through the week, but I guess I should have set up some kind of DIY job, or task to occupy myself a little. I wouldn’t mind watching all three LOTR movies, but that’s an eleven hour task! I can’t focus on hobbits and dwarves, and orcs for that long. I know the stories too well to get lost in the fantasy like that anymore.
I drank a fair bit yesterday afternoon, which mostly contributed to my sleeping in until ten this morning. Not a tonne, but enough for me to notice. I had my wife drive us home. Better safe than sorry! I think if you added up the sparkling wine component of my drinks it might have equalled 1.5 full wine glasses of straight sparkling white wine, but I mixed it with a fruit juice, and Sprite too. Kind of a spritzer, mimosa type thing I enjoy at Christmas and New Years. My parents always called it a Bucks Fizz. Tasty little thing. At 11.5% it’ll get you where you’re headed without too much trouble, especially since they aren’t hard to drink. A lighter mixed drink for those of us who won’t drink straight hard liquor over ice.
This VR headset is going to get broken as I’ve heard both kids punch tables, walls, the fireplace, and door frames with those hand held controllers while inside the helmet. Won’t be long before we have to order new hand held controllers at this rate. Bang… Bang… Ouch… Bang. Not to mention possible broken fingers or busted wrists. Look for us in the ER over the coming weeks!
This year was pretty quiet work wise. I took up both wood splitting, and chainsawing larger logs to soak up some of my free time during the school day hours. I am fully prepared to stick to it this coming year too. I have secured a second PO from another client, so I have the certainty of at least some work in 2026. I know a third client will have two projects coming my way in the heart of the winter. One for late February, and another likely in March. First quarter will look strong, but those PO’s can stretch until June or beyond, so not as formidable as they first appear on January 1st.
Can’t spend it, until I earn it. A major lesson in self control. That’s not a fun lesson to learn early on as a freelancer. Getting out over your skis is a terrible position to put yourself in. Not when you end up working for nothing towards the end because you got greedy and spent the money before you earned it by doing the hours you are contracted for. If you look at the funds as just January, you might think you’re doing a bit of all right! But if you step back and think oh this might have to last until June, or as late as November then it tells a much different story. But with some planning, and a budget, and not having eyes bigger than your wallet, you can manage.
Soon I will begin gathering my 2025 tax information so that I don’t feel rushed come April. I need to calculate my Q3 hst soon anyway, and get that filed for the CRA. Fun times ahead for us all.
This site has done really well for me this year. I have a hard time believing I will continue to see these numbers, and this kind of growth. If I recall the viewers as gone up over 4,700, and I think the unique visitors is over 2,700 as well. The month isn’t done yet, but I don’t think we’ll see a huge crush of people trying to read my archives or download my two free books of collected short stories before the 31st. I’m happy, and kind of impressed with it all. Will be sad to see the counter go back to zero on January 1st, 2026 but perhaps I can spark some type of resurgence or creative drive that boosts engagement here. It’s a possibility rather than a problem.
I still underperformed my reading goals this year, by a wide margin. My eyes going on me, and needing glasses put a damper on my desire to read. I think I will search for large text reading books in the future so that my eyes aren’t the limiting factor. My back log of novels didn’t get touched. I didn’t even read all of the new books I purchased this year. I should get back on that, because I do enjoy reading.
I didn’t sculpt all that much this year, and I only made a small handful of wood projects in 2025 as well.
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 