Good morning everyone. Hello. Happy new year. 2024. Love it. It’ll be a great year, aside from all the genocide and fascism and whatnot. Freezepop made a new album in eight days. It is an electronica album. It is pretty awesome. You should go check it out. Last great American album of the year, to paraphrase Lou Reed.
New Year’s was lovely. Stayed in, did four different waves of visitors starting with a 4-7 dinner and kids new year with Ashley, Charlie and their son George. Jane and George got along like a house on fire. Utter chaos. Just found a baby carrot in the closet. No idea. We did the new years countdown in Animal Crossing in three different time zones. Watched a lot of videos on YouTube. Listened to the new Freezepop while Jussi/Liz sang along to vocals she’d recorded two days earlier. Drank too much. Kissed my wife at midnight after interrupting her from assembling flat pack furniture. A teenager made an appearance. A+ no complaints.
Regret my decision to commit to this today, so we’re gonna do the year-end meme questionnaire thing I’ve been doing since, god, 2000 or so or something like that. I will also do my once-yearly post to my Livejournal with it. My god I miss Livejournal it really was the best. Anyway here we go:
1. What did you do in 2023 that you’d never done before?
Built a giant greenhouse. Bought a second house. It is occurring to me right now I am absolutely terrible at remembering a whole year I need some kind of mnemonic. Drop my kid off at school.
Oh yeah start a swimming pool construction company and buy a farm lol.
2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Last year’s resolution: Take care of your health. Deal with your health issues, get them fixed.
I did pretty good! Here’s the thing, I cannot stress it enough. Just keep trying. Always be in the middle of doing something to work on your health. Has my tennis elbow recently entered its tenth month? Why yes, it has, but I am doing something. I am in the middle of a PT regimen and I have gotten an ultrasound on it and I have experts helping me and that’s all I can do. Just can’t give up. Slow and steady.
My cholesterol and blood pressure and neck are all good. I am 35 pounds off of my maximum weight. Could stand to be 20 more down but I’m getting there. Progress.
The other night I had a good idea for a resolution this year but I’ve already forgotten it. In reality, as much as I want to deny it, 2024 is going to be an absolute shitshow for politics and democracy one way or the other. I guess my resolution is to survive it. I need a plan. I seriously don’t have one and I need to work on that. My god, who knows where we’ll be next year.
3. How will you be spending New Year’s Eve?
For the past three years I spent New Year’s on Zoom. This year I spent it in person seeing the people I saw on Zoom the last three years so that was a nice improvement on the situation.
4. Did anyone close to you give birth?
I have a new nephew, my sister having had a second son, Rocky. Doug had a daughter named Lilah, with an H. It should not have an H in it but I am still happy for him.
5. Did anyone close to you die?
Man I want this question to go away. People die all the time, it is hard. No one I was currently, actively close to, so that was good. Old friends and enemies and carousing compatriots. One committed suicide by cop. One died whitewater rafting. God maybe I should keep a list or something it absolutely sucks when you can’t remember that a human friend died or which year it happened.
And Sinead O’Connor. I was not close to her but she was incredibly close to me. Still miss her.
6. What countries did you visit?
Lol.
7. What would you like to have in 2024 that you lacked in 2023?
Last year I said: A day without worry. One day where I don’t worry about work, politics, family, health. One day without headaches.
And I got it. That is amazing. I worry a lot less than I used to. I mean, I still worry a ton but not as much as I used to.
What do I want in 2024 that I lacked in 2023, hrm. Man, I have everything. I’m good. I’ll manage. Donald Trump in jail.
8. What date from 2023 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
My two-part Cure show at Merriweather Post, watching the first half of the show from the lawn with my wife and daughter, then watching the deep cuts encore alone, slightly high, from dead center, under the pavilion. Both manners were phenomenal. Just so great.
Last year when I wrote this, I was in the middle of a giant work drama that has taken a full year to unwind, and I’m not quite done with it yet. It was a lot. I will never forget it. Also I had to lay some people off this year and it sucks and I never like doing it and I remember each and every one, carry them with me for life, even when the person getting laid off doesn’t really care or is even relieved. I still feel it.
Finally seeing all of my coworkers in person again after years, and brainstorming with them all and coming up with brilliant ideas in person it was just so invigorating.
Jane starting school.
9. What was your biggest achievement(s) of the year?
I said this last year and it is still pretty much true:
I am not sure anything I did this year could be called an achievement. It was a year of hard work and incremental progress, from work to family to health to art.
But I also want to acknowledge GMHHAY, because sure it’s year FOUR now, but it’s really an awesome achievement. I am deeply thankful for you guys, proud of the body of work, and I think its about time I get to work on volume 2 of the published version.
10. What was your biggest failure?
We had some work setbacks that I feel responsible for and guilty about. I know rationally they are not my fault but heavy is the head that wears the crown. Some day I will be able to talk about it but not yet.
11. Did you suffer illness or injury?
The Thanksgiving burn from 2022 took nearly all year to heal but it finally did. The trigger finger issue came back but I got it fixed again.
I got tennis elbow in March and I still have it and it sucks.
12. What was the best thing you bought?
The house next door and then a super goth greenhouse to plop in front of it my god it is all so great.
13. Where did most of your money go?
On a house it really was insane.
14. What song will always remind you of 2023?
It will be all of the Dady Jane Dance Party songs for good and bad: Blackpink’s Ddu-Ddu-Du and Ice Cream, Taylor’s Look What You Made Me Do, Karma, You Need to Calm Down, Delicate and Me! (ugh). Caroline Polacheck’s Welcome to my Island. St. Vincent’s Los Ageless. Robyn’s Dancing on my Own.
15. What do you wish you’d done more of?
For years I said the same thing: See friends, travel, go to rock shows, go to movie theaters, spend QT with my family
I will strike travel and rock shows and movie theaters from the list. I’m mostly good without them, or at least I’m fine with much smaller doses. I still wish I saw more of my friends. Always. Even though right now they are texting me to go out and do things and I am too lazy to get off of the couch. Man I really do concoct a lot of cockamamie schemes while I’m drinking.
16. What do you wish you’d done less of?
I would like to stress less about work still. I mean, I stress a lot less than I did in 2022, but I’d like even more stress about work. I would like the evil monopolistic corporations to get their comeuppance.
I wish I got up at 6 AM less often.
I wish I didn’t drink so much in December after a year of sobriety. Time to kick that off again.
I am not a fan of arguing with toddlers I would like to do that less.
I would like to be cold less often.
17. What was your favorite TV program?
Man I watched way too much TV this year. Maybe Mrs. Davis, Succession, Silo or Legend of Vox Machina
18. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Politically I am very angry at a few people bordering on hate and some of them are even new ones.
19. What was the best book you read?
Doppelgänger by Naomi Klein was shockingly good, way better than I could have possibly expected, and I already held her in high esteem.
The runner up would be Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America's Imperfect Union by Richard Kreitner which sort of makes you feel better about our current state of dysfunction.
20. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Hrm. Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter. The Angelic Process. Oh. Young Fathers. Man. They rule.
21. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Emma, Jane, Bonnie, Val, Kristen, David, WITI Slack. Fake Slack, Nerd Group Elite, Nick and Meghan, Viridian dudes.
22. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Jesus where to start. Donald Trump and the entire Republican party. The anti-woke snowflakes. Elon. The Substack dudes. Certain other people who shall remain anonymous.
23. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
My greenhouse. Chores. Swimming Pool construction. My wood shop. Finishing the attic in the new house.
24. Compared to last year, are you:
Happier or sadder? Happier.
Thinner or fatter? Thinner. But not near as much as I liked.
Richer or poorer? Probably richer? Hard to say. Mostly the same though money has transmorgified.
25. How did you spend Christmas?
With friends in Boston and it was just great.
26. Did you fall in love in 2022?
I did not.
27. How many one night stands?
None!
28. What was your favorite film of this year?
I am so behind. Not going to theaters anymore is a real handicap to my cineaste aspirations. So far, probably They Cloned Tyrone
29. What did you do on your birthday?
It was great! Nick and Meghan and Sean all came to Chapel Hill and we had a party in the old acupuncture studio, now a speech therapy studio. On the floor with no furniture. Just the best. Oh and we went to Med Deli before it burned down. Oh yeah that happened this year. That was sad.
30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Revenue at work going up sooner
31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2020?
Truewerk goth
32. What kept you sane?
GMHHAY, Emma, WITI Slack, Fake Slack, Kristen
33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Anna Kendrick. Man it’s crazy how many of these questions have the same answer. Time is speeding up but also stopping.
34. What political issue stirred you the most?
The radicalization of the Republican party, the Supreme court, the fake immigration emergencies, Gaza, the impending election, the continuing attempts to steal the last election and the next election, Gaza Gaza Gaza
I said this last year, too: This list could go on and on I am rattling these off without even trying I could add fifty more it is absolutely insane how much of my brain this shit has taken up this year. And there is no going back.
35. Who did you miss?
From last year, all still true:
I miss my dad.
I miss Andy Shea. I miss Mike.
In terms of the living, I miss Abigail, Rachel, Liisa, Friendly Beth, Beth, Katherine, my mother and sister, Heather, Kelly, Jen (Even though I saw her last night and should really get off my butt and go see her right now), Jenna, Jamie. Drinking with Doug Pfeffer I miss that so much.
And this last year, I missed Jill a lot again.
36. Who was the best new person you met?
My new coworkers are great. Oh and I met Andre Obin on Christmas Eve that was swell.
37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2023.
Hope and Optimism are different things.
Six years old now but still works, probably the truest thing I’ve ever written:
Progress isn’t linear. Hard things are hard and things aren’t black and white. The world might be getting better all the time but it was getting better all the time in the dark ages too and that doesn’t mean your life is going to necessarily be in a period where things get better all the time or even at all. People who saw progress their whole lives died with Donald Trump in power and fascism on the rise. You always will need to do more. You can’t do as much as you should but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Guilt is both useful and useless. Most opposites aren’t opposites. Two opposites can be true at the same time. We try and simplify things but we lose the truth when we do. We almost never know what is really going on and we should stop pretending we do. Bobby Kennedy was an asshole but he did good things. LBJ was an asshole but he did good things. Nixon was an asshole but he did good things. The Bushes were assholes but they did good things. Obama was a good guy but he did bad things. Even Trump occasionally did good things. Parenting changes you but doesn’t. Life is fragile. Stop and smell the roses isn’t just a cliche. Health matters. Don’t take it for granted. I knew many of these things before this year but I am slowly merging them all. I have a new respect for those weird Jewish Rabbis who never take a stand but also take a stand. Ambition is good but poisonous. Slow and steady wins the race. Or it doesn’t win the race but it makes the race a victory on its own. Not winning the race is okay and probably even better. You can be special and not special simultaneously. The best skill is to know when to hold to conflicting views simultaneously and to know when that is wrong and they need to be resolved.
And a new one I learned just in the last few weeks: being a parent is one way your adult friends divide and drift, but so is all the weird neuroses we all let harden as we get older. Everyone gets weirder as they grow up it really is strange.
Happy new year.
My word for the new year is magic: I am not optimistic about the state of the world, especially in terms of the need for countries to face and act on climate change; the appalling situation in U.S.politics; and healthcare, with need for effective treatments / cure of Long Covid high on my list.
I have to replace optimism with non-strategic hope, and that's where magic enters. We simply must have some enormous, progressive surprises this year.
Happy New Year, lovely friend ❤️