A New Year & Decade Begin

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A New Year & Decade Begin

Motojicho.us
Published by Nevada Motojicho in This & That · 4 January 2020
Tags: This&That
*This is an excerpt from the Turtle’s Diary - January 04, 2020



I’ve been writing and reflecting these first few days of the new year.  I’ve written pages and pages of nothingness that will never be published.  Some thoughts will most likely get cut and pasted as new unpublished titles to sit and wait with all the others, of which there are already too many.  I haven’t got a problem filling pages, I have a problem staying focused and remaining concise in thought.  That's another story.

Nonetheless, I’ve been writing about the past and trying to look forward at Daniel's and my future.  I hate scrolling backwards in time because doing so means revisiting too many memories; sometimes it’s hard, even when the memories are good ones.  What’s not hard is the physical scrolling, I have a file folder that represents each day; inside the folder is pretty much all that I did, thought, wrote, or produced that day.  I’m organized for someone so disorganized; well, it’s not so much being disorganized as it is having too much on my plate, and not knowing when to stop adding.

Scrolling backwards over the last decade, I see it was filled with change from beginning to end.  The recession hitting Las Vegas back at the end of 2009 created major changes in my job and refocused my career’s final decade starting in February 2010.  My position at work was cut but I was made an offer, I could remain in training and development but instead of being in the human resources department, I’d be at the office of emergency management and homeland security; I'd be their training and development coordinator.  It was better than losing my job, but this was a whole different type of training development than I’d ever experienced, and I'd been in the field for more than 20 years.

My job was tremendously boring because it provided very little creative process.  I made this giant poster to hang on my office wall showing each step in the development of an exercise.  One could pretty much create a brand-new training by cutting and pasting anything from one exercise into the other.  By simply changing the objectives or lessons learned, you could create a brand-new final report for any exercise you repeatedly created.  It was terribly boring.  Sure, you had the ability to dream up new scenarios like anthrax or a plane crash, but the process of developing the training was the same as the previous exercise developed, conducted and reported upon in the past.  The job was additionally stressful because, as part of a small team of employees, I was additionally filling the role of the department’s compliance officer.  That included a whole headache of other duties.

It was a continuous nonstop 11-hour a day job that caused me to develop stress-induced diabetes.  So severe that I was shooting 3 different types of insulin (3 times a day) and dropping 3 different kinds of oral insulin (also 3 times a day).  I was putting on weight from the amount of insulin that my body was retaining and I gained more than 60 pounds at one point.  That weight didn’t come off until after I retired and was able to dump the stress.
Stress will kill you… somebody said that once.


Social nudism was also somewhat limited over the last decade due to the job above – workdays were long, and I was always on call over the holidays, so we couldn’t plan to go anywhere even if there was somewhere to go.  Add to that, Las Vegas has limited nude resources and/or events to attend thus making social naked time rare in this area to start with.  Nonetheless, we’ve been able to squeeze in a few hiking trips and naked pool parties with our local club but not much more than that.  They are not a very active club which is a bit more than disappointing.

Since retiring, vacation photos have changed from typical Yellowstone, San Antonio and Hawaii to those of us at nudist events and venues which has been encouraging.  After retirement, more out of town events became accessible and Daniel also began feeling more comfortable in his birthday suit in social settings among others.

For a number of years, Daniel experienced body image issues after having hip surgery and having the resulting scaring.  He also experienced physical stature changes from his multiple sclerosis which causes his shoulders to hunch a bit; this adds to his discomfort.  But after retirement, life seemed different, less stressful and freer even for him.  So much so that I was certain he was going to participate at this year’s Body Freedom Event in New York's Times Square and get naked, but he got sick and hospitalized instead.

That’s how the decade ended for us.  Last September while on vacation, instead of getting naked on Times Square, Daniel threw up all over it.  He was taken to emergency and diagnosed with esophageal cancer.  Who gets that anyway?  We had just finished going through a scary previous year where a medication conflict caused him to experience cognitive memory issues to the point that we feared he was experiencing early Alzheimer’s.  After only months of resolving that conflict, we get this scary thing that nobody gets.  No warning whatsoever; one day you think you’re going to be free and naked in the middle of Times Square and the next thing you know, you’ve got cancer.  Two different kinds of cancer at that; both stage 4 (esophageal and pancreatic cancer).



Life changes after you or someone you love gets cancer.  I can’t imagine how it feels inside of Daniel’s head knowing what it’s like inside of my own.  There’s a commercial on TV about some kind of DNA testing that’ll help your oncologist choose treatment plans, it shows a woman’s entire life flashing images in her head – that’s what it’s like for me; I’ve only got the my time with Daniel flashing, but he has his whole life prior to me flashing too.

The little things in life that didn’t seem important suddenly are, and things that were, suddenly aren’t anymore.
That’s how the decade ended for us, but we’ve had the last 3 months to figure it all out and now we’re just going to move forward.  The treatments are working and Daniel’s doing amazingly well – and so says all his doctors.

Yes, he’s a skinny ass who only weighs 130 pounds but hey, I remember weighing 130 pounds when I was in high school and nobody thought a thing about it.  We have a positive attitude moving forward, and Daniel has that sparkle in his eyes that he’s always had for as long as I’ve known him; its spiritual to me and I believe it will all be okay.

We are encouraged also by that stats that continually change in our favor.  The chemo that Daniel’s being given is a mixture of 4 different chemo drugs and is now focused on the pancreas.  His prior regiment was radiation that included a different chemo drug that worked on his esophagus.  His new treatment plan (and the results thus far) are so encouraging that Daniel’s made vacation plans for the next 5 years.  He’s included a few naked resorts too.  In fact, he just said the other day that once the weather warms up, he’d like to go visit De Anza Springs again.  He liked the staff there and feels they would accept him Donald Ducking to hide his feeding tube.  Of course, they will, and I can’t wait for the weather to warm up for us to go.

I see my priorities changing in this new decade; some already have.  People, places and things all have a different importance to me now.  I'm sure more thoughts will come so, in the meantime, enjoy your naked day!

*The Turtle’s Diary is a collection of thoughts, insights and stories based on a turtle’s true life experiences – gained by the misguided trust in others.


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