New Year Cleanup                                              02/09/24
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Moved a  slew of phlog files  to the stasis folder,  old phlog entries
from 2021 and 2022. This will  of course break any external references
to those phlog entries, but anyone actually interested in that content
can quite easily find  them in stasis. Well, stasis is  sort of a mess
actually... just not sure I care to do anything about that.

It was hard  to let go of 2022.  Some part of me wanted to  keep it in
the main phlog  folder, as if moving it to  stasis was somehow letting
go. I'm not ready to let go of that year yet. I tell myself it's fine,
and that's sufficient, I think.

The other big  cleanup I need to  work on this year  is medical bills.
They're so messy,  no matter how hard  to try to keep  them clean. I'm
technically  a self-pay  account, which  means I  get to  see all  the
nitty-gritty stuff they usually only  send to the insurance companies.
I  have a  health share,  which the  medical billing  folks insist  on
treating like  insurance, so  I get the  actual internal  format bills
from time to time. They're a joke, crammed full of rubbish line items.
There's a tension between insurance and hospitals, both are constantly
fighting to out-obfuscate the other.

Fighting is not  really a favorite pastime of mine.  But sometimes you
have to. A  physical therapy bill came  in a *year* after  I thought I
had paid  them off. They insisted  there was another bill,  and it was
past due (of course).  I told them to shove off, that  I had paid, and
that they had told me I was paid  up a year ago. They insisted. I told
them that  they needed to send  me a full, itemized  bill, and include
the dates of billing, dates and  amounts of all payments, and dates of
treatment consent  notification. They  went silent  for a  few months,
then sent  me a new,  lower bill. I told  them that they  still hadn't
sent me the itemized bill and other info, and that I couldn't pay them
until I saw it. Months later I get  what I want, and pay a tiny amount
that was actually due. Even with the savings, it hardly felt worth it.

I also  cleaned my office for  the new year.  But then I took  apart a
desk, started a couple work projects with hardware, and re-arranged my
radio gear.  It's messy again. It  was really only clean  for a couple
days.

For the  first time since  I can recall, I  started the new  year with
some  of those  resolutions  that  people talk  about.  The thing  is,
they're not some  flash-in-the-pan feeling for me; I  still feel them,
and I plan on feeling them all year long. They're year-long goals. One
involves our  garden. Another involves physical  activity. Nothing too
unique, but philosophical for me anyway.

Be well in 2024, gopher.