Year 48 almost done. Year 2024 almost done. I can’t remember whether I did an end-of-year post last year. Maybe I forgot. I forget.
It’s been a few months since I posted here as well. I guess it’s been a few months since I posted anywhere. For many years, starting sometime in the 1980s, I was always “posting” public stuff somewhere. Because I wanted people to see it. Because I made friends that way. Because the network loved me, whether or not any particular person did.
But it’s been a few years since things felt that way. In the age of social media, the network no longer loves anyone, and I’m not special enough to change that. So I don’t post as much as I used to. And I don’t meet as many people as I used to. Old instincts die hard, but I guess twenty years on they have finally died.
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I’m in a big house that’s not mine, alone. That’s been most of my life, and it’s still the day-to-day. Probably it will be until the day I die? Not sure.
The kids aren’t here, they’re with their mom. Somehow the timing always seems to work out that way for the end of the year—kids with mom for New Year’s Eve, then I pick them up on New Year’s Day.
The tree is still up. The house isn’t too messy. I spent half the day working. I’m not sure I’m in the right frame of mind for the last day of the year, but I’m not sure what the right frame of mind for the last day of a year is, anyway.
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So what happened in 2024?
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Obvious headline item, got a dog again.
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Had a lot of puppy blues for a long time, though those are mostly gone now.
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Felt most of my friends continue to get farther and farther away.
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Continue to not really know what to do about that.
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Continue to not really know how to live once you’re not in the higher education system any longer.
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Did a lot of my own automotive work.
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Played a lot of Elden Ring.
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Worked an awful lot.
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Not sure what else. That’s pretty much it.
At some point in the past, I remember hearing research coming from the psychology community that adults are least happy with their lives in middle age. So I think that’s me and I think that all of this is normal.
There are these people that you really care about and that you spent many years really loving, but now it’s been decades since you really spent any time together and your lives have gone in their separate directions and they’re far away (or you’re far away) and when you get together it’s not quite comfortable any longer or you don’t know what to say, and that’s if you even get together any longer, which in most cases you don’t.
But new friends are also difficult because frankly you just don’t have a lot going on. Your life takes on this strange automatic quality. Some guru somewhere I’m sure says that you shouldn’t let it do that and you should live consciously but honestly that just makes it more painful since in fact materially you must repeat, day after day, the same things, for many decades in a row, even though they frankly don’t have that much to do with you in any practical way, because that’s modern life. It’s also Marx and it was a good insight, but he didn’t really know what to do with it after that and neither do any of us.
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The kids learned this year that I have a couple of half-finished novels sitting around and they really want me to finish them which is ironic because I don’t think I’ve ever cared less about writing than I do right now.
There are actually very few things that I care about right now apart from my kids and my dog and the fact that I worry about my kids and their schooling and teenage life and I worry about my dog and dog health and the fact that she’s waiting on first heat and will soon need a spay.
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It’s harder and harder to access what I really think or what I really do. Autopilot makes things that way; you start to lose track of the things right in front of your face.
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We did go to a football game this year, even though it’s the worst year that the team has had in decades.
We didn’t manage to camp this year, as we had a small puppy that wasn’t fully vaccinated yet throughout the prime camping period.
We did fish but we didn’t catch anything. Utah isn’t like it was when I was a kid; there are very few wild areas left.
Daughter is trying to switch schools. Son decided he didn’t like guitar. Daughter got her black belt. Son’s voice dropped.
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L—, I miss you even if I don’t know what to say to you. The same goes for you, A—. C— I’m sorry for not calling you more. Thing is, I haven’t kept myself up mentally. I don’t have any thoughts any longer. I think those should come back as retirement gets closer? I don’t know. I know that right now I mostly don’t think anything.
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What am I looking forward to in 2025? I’m hoping that I finally start to make a dent in some financial stuff. There are a lot of things in my life that were very costly that happened years ago, and they have been the dominant truths in my life for a long time now. In theory, some of those debts will finally start to be paid off in 2025.
No that doesn’t really mean I’ll be able to save or start a business or anything like that, as all of that cash is earmarked for other debts. I am a typical American in that. They told us to go to college so that we could become slaves, and we did. It is what it is.
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What will I do tonight? Will I stay up? Probably not. I’m tired and I’m a bit worried. Likely dog is just about to have her first heat, but I’m not sure. Watching out for UTIs and so on.
Have been on PTO for weeks, but have been working anyway, because these are the Americas, and we lie. We say we are taking time off but then we work, because we know that both are expected: it’s expected that you take time off for mental health, and it’s expected that you work through it if you want to justify your salary. That’s just how we roll.
We are a peculiar culture and I’m not all that special any longer. I don’t know how I feel about that, either, but I know that it’s true. Once I was pretty special, but I gave that up for Lent because special largely = painful and because I tend to like Catholic stuff.
Enough said.
Goodbye 2024, I won’t know whether I loved you or hated you until I get farther away and can look back from a distance. But in either case it’s sentimental in some way or other to watch you go.