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.
