Year End Review

I'm going to take this last full week of 2023 off from blogging, so I was going to write a year end summary review piece for today. Except it turns out that I already wrote it. In 2022. I skipped a summary altogether in 2021, but I also wrote this year's in 2020. And what I wrote in 2019 is mostly still valid. The short version is that I'm doing okay personally, and I'm quite thankful for that, but I see a lot of people I know and care about suffering and enduring hardships of various kinds that I can at most only offer emotional support for.

I've seen many friends get laid off this year, some of whom are still looking for work 8 months later. We had to put our cat down because her liver finally gave out after a six-year battle against that. Our dog got an injury on her tail so severe that most of it had to be amputated. My brother's car died two days ago and he's got a root canal scheduled for tomorrow. I had a friend suffer a stroke just a few weeks ago. My younger cousin died from cancer over the summer. The comics industry lost the likes of Al Jaffee, John Romita Sr., Keith Giffen, Chris Browne, Leiji Matsumoto, Joe Giella, Steve Skeates, and Ian Gibson among others.

None of which even begins to touch on the ongoing attempted genocides being conducted in Ukraine and Gaza, the still-sliding-downward climate disaster, the stripping of women's and minorities' rights in the US that combined with gerry-rigged voting rules from the GOP points to the imminent collapse of the country, the continued insistence of billionaires that they're not ruining literally everything... There's almost nothing that isn't getting enshitified so overtly that you can't not see it.

But that said, my personal day-to-day life is going pretty well. My wife and I are both still able to work our day jobs from home; I even got a promotion early in the year. I was one of the judges for this year's Eisner Awards, which was a Bucket List item which never occurred to me to even consider as a Bucket List item. My wife and I were able to go to Jamaica to help celebrate her aunt and uncle's fiftieth wedding anniversary. And we attended one of Beyoncé's concerts, with my wife scoring tickets for seats literally on the stage.

Minor aside, since I happen to have these two photos. We had such good seats at the the Beyoncé show that you can even see my wife and I in some of the professional shots! See if you can pick us out here... I'll give you a hint -- when that picture was taken, here's what it looked like from my perspective...

This week is mostly going to be trying to relax around the house. Technically, we have to work, but literally half of my company is off this week. The other half (including me) have the first week of January off. My wife's and my tenth wedding anniversary will be later in the year, and we'll probably spend some time discussing what we should do to celebrate; we're thinking about international cruises at the moment. I've used the phrase "boatload of priveledge" in my year end reviews before, and it definitely applies here again. I try to be as conscious as I possibly can that I have a great many advantages others do not.

I hope things are going decently for you. I hope you're able to face whatever challenges you're dealing with. I hope 2024 is better for you than 2023 was. I think wishing people a happy new year is still setting the bar too high, so I wish for you instead that you have the best year you can given whatever specific circumstances you're stuck with. Please be honest with your challenges and don't be hesitant to ask for help; things have been in the shithole for several years at this point and everyone can use every bit of help they can get. There is no shame in recognizing that. Do the best you can when you can with what you have. The world is very much not fine, but it's what we have to deal with. I've tried reaching out to a lot of you over the past year, trying to afford you whatever help I might be able to offer, but consider this an open invitation as we head into 2024. If there's something I can do to help, don't hesitate to reach out.

I'll resume regular posting in January.

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