Good Morning!
It’s January 1st, 2025, and I’d prefer to want you a really Pleased New Yr!
I discussed on Patreon yesterday that, in a way, I’m pleased to see 2024 within the rear-view mirror.
Frankly, it was a tricky 12 months for our household in some ways, however even amidst the challenges, there have been moments of celebration and pleasure.
Our largest takeaway from 2024 was experiencing the overwhelming love, kindness, and help from our neighborhood after my mom’s passing, my father and father-in-law’s (a number of) hospitalizations, and, particularly, the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
This neighborhood pulled us by, and for that, we’re deeply grateful. Thanks!
As we transfer into the brand new 12 months, I’m dedicated to retaining an optimistic outlook. On the radio entrance, I hope to activate new parks and summits and attend occasions like Hamvention, 4 Days in Could, and presumably one other QRP conference. I’ve a few radio kits I’d additionally prefer to get on the bench when issues relax.
We additionally hope to slot in a little bit of journey this summer time and restart our trip rental after storm repairs have been accomplished.
If you understand me, you understand I take nice pleasure in responding to each e-mail I obtain. I worth the effort and time folks take to achieve out.
However even in the perfect of occasions, maintaining with correspondence might be difficult. I usually obtain 12–24 private messages each day—some days extra, some days much less—and that’s along with routine emails from our household enterprise, organizations, charities, and so forth. It takes me a couple of minutes to answer every, so time-wise, it actually provides up.
After Hurricane Helene, I used to be overwhelmed by the outpouring of form messages and help from readers. It was humbling. Between storm restoration, household commitments, and operating QRPer.com, nevertheless, my potential to answer emails nearly disappeared.
I’ve learn each message, however replying takes time, and up to date hand soreness from storm cleanup and chainsawing has made typing for prolonged intervals tough. Compounding the problem, my SPAM filter has been overly aggressive, probably deleting 30%+ of messages from new senders.
Regardless of my finest efforts, my backlog has remained at over 350 particular person messages, and I do know some messages have been completely misplaced.
After discussing this with a good friend (who’s a public determine and struggles with this rather more than I do), I’ve determined to implement a correspondence moratorium for 2025.
This implies I’ll archive my present 2024 e-mail backlog and begin recent.
In the event you’ve written to me with a subject report or QRPer.com submission and haven’t heard again, please re-send it—I’ll prioritize these and get them within the pipeline.
For individuals who despatched notes of encouragement: please know I’ve learn and deeply appreciated each phrase, even when I couldn’t reply.
Thanks for understanding.
We’ll nonetheless be tackling storm restoration tasks properly into the summer time, however I’m longing for extra stability as my daughters begin their college journeys this fall (we’re so happy with them). Within the meantime, my household and I are extremely grateful in your kindness and help.
Right here’s wishing you and yours a 2025 full of pleasure, peace, and loads of QRP!
Finest & 72,
Thomas (K4SWL)
