2022 CAN BITE ME.
Yes, there were good moments and happy things, but God. Fucking. Dammit.
The hard things were Really. Fucking. Hard. this year.
Pulling this thing together this time has been a much bigger struggle than it really should have been. It feels more pointless than previous years to be doing this mundane survey of banal questions again. But I do it for me and for some tiny shred of normalcy when so little feels like it will ever feel right again.
2023 is the year of the Rabbit.
There are not enough bunnies in the world to make me look forward to what this year has the strong potential to throw my way.
I will, however, try to pile on the bunnies, because I do love me some rabbits. (There are more bunnies in this house, but these are just the ones that were easily accessible when I decided to take a picture.)
I truncated the list down to just the years because more than a decade’s worth of The Year of… titles was just getting excessive.
That said…
2022 was The Year of…Not Much Else Really Matters Because My Brother Died…
IT WAS NOT A GOOD YEAR.
And that was BEFORE Joe died. Things kicked off with people—plural—in the hospital, a multitude of health issues for them (and others), and coming to terms with the reality of not-good outlooks for people I love. It all just kept compounding until everything came to a screeching halt in November.
There were good things and happy moments, and they’re worth focusing on, and I’m trying.
But I’m tired. I’m really fucking tired.
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1.) How did you spend New Year’s Eve?
We ordered pizza and ate ginger cookies. Bob played more of the Baldur’s Gate 3 early access and I worked on house plans while watching Rudolph’s Shiny New Year and other Christmas shows I hadn’t watched yet. So…pretty much like any other Saturday night.
2.) What did you do last year that you’d never done before?
Bob and I bought our first new car together. It only took us fifteen years.
3.) Did you keep your new year’s resolutions and will you make more for next year?
There has never been an official proclamation to do so, but I kept up my monthly Last.fm stat posts. I even wrote a few non-Last.fm stat posts.
4.) Did anyone close to you get engaged or married?
My cousin, Jessica, got married in 2021, but finally got to come home from Ireland (her husband is from there) to celebrate with her side of the family, so we went to their party. I also found out that my cousin, Lacy, is married, but I’m not sure exactly when that happened.
5.) Did anyone close to you get pregnant or give birth?
Additionally, I found out that Lacy and her wife have a toddler. Not a new baby, but news to me.
6.) Did anyone close to you die?
Fuck this fucking question. My brother Joe died. Two months later and it still doesn’t seem real. I don’t know if or when it ever will.
7.) How did you earn your keep?
Trophy wife thirteen years running.
8.) What countries places did you visit?
We trekked a solid 70-some miles (one way) to go to my cousin’s wedding way out in farm country. That distance certainly felt like a road trip.
9.) What would you like to have this year that you lacked last year?
A cleaner house. I’m pretty sure I say this every year.
10.) What dates from last year will remain etched upon your memory and why?
I always pick some innocuous date that I won’t actually remember, usually surrounding music or somesuch. But I will always remember November 4th, 2022 as being the worst day of my life thus far.
11.) What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I wrote a really long thing about a really pointless thing and it entertained and amused me far more than it had any right to, and I will take those all-natural dopamine rushes as they come, because God knows I don’t get nearly enough of them.
12.) What was your biggest failure?
Not rewriting the lingering bad questions in this survey.
13.) Did you suffer illness or injury?
I was finally diagnosed with a thyroid problem after years of suspicion and inconclusive blood work. Stress wreaked a lot of havoc on my whole body, which feels both like illness and injury.
14.) Did you ever encounter the police?
Nope. But the mega church campus across the street always has half a dozen cop cars hanging around any time they have services. Why does a church need so many cops on site?
15.) What was the best thing you bought?
That new car truck SUV is pretty sweet. I procured some really good new music. Bob bought an electric tea kettle that he uses almost daily.
16.) Where did most of your money go?
Cars. Repairing one and buying another.
17.) What did you get really excited about?
New music. I should say a new car, but the whole experience was far more stressful than exciting. Though as time goes by, I am more and more appreciative of that new vehicle and its fancy features and THINGS THAT WORK.
18.) What do you wish you’d done more of?
Cleaning my house.
19.) What do you wish you’d done less of?
Grieving. There has been a lot of grieving.
20.) How did you spend the holidays?
Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve we went to Amy’s. Christmas Day we stayed home. There was a looming cloud over all of it, but Christmas Eve did have a lot of cathartic reminiscing with cousins about when we were kids.
21.) What are your goals for the new year?
Putting away laundry. I don’t think I’ve actually put laundry away since before Bob started working from home. I do laundry when it needs to be done, but it never gets put away. We just forage from laundry baskets until clean clothes are at critical mass again and then the cycle starts all over. I have no idea what we actually have for clothes or what might need to be replaced. This is why I say I’m pretending to be a housewife. I am certainly not good at it.
22.) What was your favorite TV program?
We finally got a Netflix subscription so we watched The Umbrella Academy, Stranger Things and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. (I was not prepared to be wrecked by the end of season three of Stranger Things.) Bob watched Better Call Saul. I watched Green Eggs and Ham. I also got my money’s worth out of my Boomerang subscription watching Scooby Doo and other decades-old Hanna Barbera productions.
23.) What were your favorite books of the year?
I started some books, but I didn’t finish a single one.
24.) What was your favorite music from this year?
O.A.R., Matt Nathanson, The Killers, and Panic! At the Disco all put out new music.
25.) What song will always remind you of last year?
Panic!‘s Viva Las Vengeance wedged itself pretty solidly in my brain for months. Probably because shut-up and go to bed is kind of the whole of my insomniac existence.
26.) What were your favorite films of the year?
The new [to me] movies that I watched weren’t really worth writing home about. I re-watched a lot of old stuff because it doesn’t require a solid attention span. I watched all of the Scooby Doo movies available on Boomerang, and a few dozen Christmas movies that I have amassed over the years.
27.) What did you do on your birthday and how old were you?
I turned 43 this year. I had my usual onion rings and bismarks. We don’t really do much to celebrate as it is, but I was not in much of a mood to celebrate at all this year considering it was only two weeks after Joe died.
28.) What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Joe not dying for one. Better health for people I love. Less festering bullshit in the news.
29.) How would you describe your personal fashion concept?
Pajama pants and hoodies forever and always.
30.) What kept you sane?
Bob. Definitely Bob. More than ever.
31.) Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
The usual music makers.
32.) What was a valuable life lesson you learned this year?
Logically knowing and understanding that there is little place for logic in grief really doesn’t do you any good when you are taken out at the knees by it.
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Onward and upward.
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Close in the Distance Jason Charles Miller |