New Year's Resolutions, 2018

[kate_schaefer]

I believe that most New Year's resolutions begin, I don't usually make New Year's resolutions, but. So here:

I don't usually make New Year's resolutions, but this year I have three, two of them personal, one political.

1) I do not intend to overthrow the government; I want the government to continue, but with different personnel. My resolution: support democratic institutions wherever I find them. Oppose imperial executives on all levels. Ask elected officials to do their jobs rather than shirk from them.

2) Finish wrapping up my late dad's finances. At this, I'm close to done. Anyone who has dealt with a deceased parent's affairs knows that the whole process is full of weird difficult moments, emotional ambushes from shared history, good and bad. I'm so mad at him for this stupid thing, and then I remember that other sweet kind thing, and I'm crying over both of them, and they both get in the way of getting the minor practical thing done that I need to do before some deadline. Or that major practical thing. As I say, I'm almost done with all of these practical things.

3) Legally change my name from Susan Kathryn Schaefer to just plain Kathryn Schaefer. My parents never intended to call me Susan, so why did they put that name first? It sounded better that way, they always said, and it didn't seem like that big a deal. It wasn't, not for my first 46 years. For most of my life, it's been possible to just use the name one wants to use for most purposes, including medical insurance, credit cards, filing income taxes, buying and using plane tickets, getting married. It still works for credit cards and income taxes, and I don't need to get married again, but for everything else, people now, post-911, insist on using my legal name. This would be fine if they just addressed me formally as Ms. Schaefer, but they don't. It's not urgent right now, but I want to make sure that as I go into the uncertainties of old age, medical personnel address me by a name that I will recognize as mine even if I'm demented.

and while I'm doing this, 4) Keep on walking as much as possible, to build back up to five or six miles every day and eight to ten miles once or twice a week.

That's enough goals for now. Achievable, reasonable, useful.

Happy New Year, all of you.

Comments

[boxofdelights]

Those are good goals.

[kate_schaefer]

Thanks, and happy new year to you.

[wild_irises]

I didn't even know about the Susan ...

[kate_schaefer]

It's amazing how many people live their lives publicly known by different names than the ones on their legal documents.

[wild_irises]

My mother's given name was Tsepara (basically Zipporah), but when she was an infant, a neighbor told my grandmother that you couldn't call an American child that, so they always called her Isabell. And then when she got married, she changed her last name.

So when she got her first passport in her 50s, and she was no longer married, my uncle had to go testify that he had known her since she was a child and Tsepara Schulman and Isabell Notkin were the same person.

[athenais]

Very good goals. I've occasionally considered legally changing my first name to Lucy, but I've never looked into it. Maybe I will now that I'm not going to try to get my adoption papers unsealed.

[kate_schaefer]

Thanks. I immediately wonder what your legal first name is, but just as immediately realize that if you wanted to say, you would have done so.