Last Catch Up of This Year!

Hello friends!

We made it to the end of the year, we survived the Longest night (in the northern hemisphere), and now we’re idling in the period just before a new beginning. I know I said back in September that Autumn feels more like a New Year than New Year’s Eve/Day but I didn’t expand on it.

New Year’s Eve and Day are like a new fiscal year only in emotions and debts. Right now, if I were more neurotic or productive, I’d be tallying how I did this year. Which new emotional hurts I’ve accumulated, the ways in which people lifted me or even better surprised me, and how I’ve maybe been a better person. Growth, accountability, the parts where resiliency had grown back. Heartbreak, friendship break ups, and personal fuck ups. The all consuming exhaustion of being sick, getting better, only to get sick again, and having to weigh the costs of seeing people vs the inevitable sickness.

It seems like this would make this year a bad year.

This year has been hard for a bunch of other reasons (genocide, horrific find out part of FAFO for not making better headway on climate change & weather, the change in pace from the creep of fascism to full tilt sprint, that trial in France), don’t get me wrong. It really seems like we’re living in the stupidest, most bland, least believable dystopia. I’ve probably mentioned to you that if you were writing this year as a TV series or story, some of the notes would be this is unbelievable nobody would react in this way, this is too much. Nothing about how things are going in North America or parts of Europe seem real or logical. As someone who basically got a double major in history and Indigenous studies, this seems like the most obnoxious cases of people not doing the readings. This is an open book test, and my dudes we’re failing it at unheard of rates. However it doesn’t mean that it’s over.

You see, it’s so easy to discount yourself. It’s so easy to just retreat into yourself because it feels like everything is too much. There’s just so much emotional damage in being a human, with ethics or morals existing in this stupidest dystopia. To me it feels like the panopticon of social media, the cultural ideas of a Protestant work ethic and Catholic guilt mutated into a new way of feeling super shitty about yourself, especially in terms of preformative activism. So why would reaching out to friends, or being around people who share some of your interests but not all of them, feel like a good idea? Because they like you. And their actual humanity feels warmer than the little hearts lighting up on posts. An additional bonus is they’re probably also seeking some kind of reprieve from the psychic damage of social media.

To go back to if this year is a bad or good year seems kind of reductive. I think you can have a good year where you’re absolutely the same person you were when you began it, and for some bad years the same thing happens, you’re still the same person you were when you started. I think a better question or ways of parsing your year comes from what moved you? What resonated so deeply you felt it in your bones? Was there a moment of unbridled joy where you reacted in an animalistic way? Did something drive you to tears, and who were the ones who came with the metaphorical blankets and warm drinks? Did you show up with the metaphorical soft things and drinks or did you show up with a guide for dealing with bureaucracy that the upset person needed? Were you gentle with yourself this year? Did you allow yourself to feel your sadnesses, to expand more fully in the things that brought you delight, and to consider the ennui of middle age? Did you eat and did you ask your friends if they ate too (in both literal and metaphorical ways)?

I’ve been really hard on myself this year. This was going to be the year where I was going to be Consistent and turn into a Productivity Mill. I was going to do all of the things. Things in the world were going to be incredibly different. I wasn’t going to go through anymore character development.

My friends those goals, those rigid goals did not happen.

And that’s okay. I mean it has to be okay to me because it’s not like I can successfully shame myself into becoming someone I don’t think I can be without drastically changing. And they’re not good metrics of change.

I did a lot this past year. I started this weird little newsletter and you’ve come along for the ride! Can you believe this is the most consistent things I started doing this year and kept on doing it? This is our 24th post. Averaged out over 52 weeks, it’s almost 1 post every 2 weeks. Which is huge! It’s scary and empowering and overwhelming and wild to me that I could do something like this. It moves me.
Which brings me to 2025’s intentions.

For 2025 I want to post more intentionally and consistently. What this means (I think) is 2 Catch Ups and 1 book review per month. Perhaps one day I can return to weekly Catch Ups plus having book review content but for the next year I think this posting schedule will fit better.

Book reviews you say?-I do. I did one book review this year and was nervous about it the entire time. Also I don’t know if they’ll fit traditional ideas of book review but they’ll be more I thought about this book and these other things, and maybe you’ll vibe with it too?

Those are my big goals for this upcoming year.

I will see you the week of January 6th!

What I’ve Been Watching

This is going to be a round up of my favourites for this year in what I’ve been watching and some (bad) Christmas movies I’ve watched recently.

Carol And the End of The World

I love this series. I love the narrative- how it’s told through the art but the music as well, the character development, and the ending (for how it works as a limited series). As a story it feels profound and fitting for the stupidest dystopia we’re living in.

It is brilliant, it is moving, it has an older woman as a protagonist and the easter eggs littered throughout the landscape are engaging. Please give this a chance, if you haven’t already.

X-Men ‘97

This is the X-Men I grew up on in the ‘90s. When my grandparents would take me to Northlands Park on the weekends to play the ponies (and where I learned how to do math), I’d watch episodes at the race replay centre. I love how they (this specific X-Men series) where able to pick up where they left off. The writing is amazing, there’s so many good little one liners throughout the season like Magnus’ threat warning “Don’t make me let you down” and the build up to the event in Genosha. X-Men is at its best when it’s able to be the allegory (with nuance now) and I feel like this season is pretty poignant for the political landscape we’re living in.

Hot Frosty

My win of Netflix holiday movies this season Hot Frosty! There’s so many actors I like in it (Ted from Schitt’s Creek, Dame Judy & Doyle from Brooklyn 99, Aunt Zelda from Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and one of the Mean Girls), and the B plot of this movie actually is kinda cool, so it’s better than normal. It does have a cancer back story for a main character and there are a lot of thirsty older women in it just as a heads up. Basically it’s an object come to life trope combined with a born sexy yesterday trope and all of the actors take themselves just seriously enough to make this movie delightful.

What I’ve Been Reading

Like the previous section this is going to be one or two favourites with one new thing I’ve read that resonated with me.

Everyone’s A Sell Out Now: So you want to be an Artist. Do you have to start a TikTok?

There are plenty of people who view this as a good thing. A society made up of human beings who have turned themselves into small businesses is basically the logical endpoint of free market capitalism, anyway. To achieve the current iteration of the American dream, you’ve got to shout into the digital void and tell everyone how great you are. All that matters is how many people believe you.

Over at Vox, Rebecca Jennings Everyone’s a Sellout Now makes me want to clap for being seen, and also for being heart rending. As an old millenial it feels antithetical to create yet another ‘persona’ of sorts to be successful in any kind of artistic endeavor when I want people to just interact with my art. Maybe I’m not palatable (which is fine). Maybe my art is way better or cooler than I could be as a person (which again is pretty fine). I’m still thinking about article a few weeks after I’ve read it. To be honest I think about probably more than I should because many of the jobs I’m qualified for are disappearing. Also, if you have to spend the majority of your time promoting yourself relentlessly, it doesn’t really leave time to do the art part, right?

Not Lost (Never Lost)

I was never built to go home, I tell the creature of light. I was never meant to go home. Perhaps you do not understand, since if you have lived forever, everywhere is your home. And anyway if I did, they would not send me back out. I would never fly again. I know it.

At the Psychopomp Premee Mohamed brings us Not Lost (Never Lost) a story about Voyager. I have a soft spot for space stories not necessarily about humans. Laika, Curiosity, Voyager and those European Space robots (Rosetta and Philae) on that comet all tug at the things that make me feel. This is told from Voyager’s perspective to someone or something they found about their dying wishes, and how much they cared for us in an indirect way.

The Year Without Sunshine

I was wrong about no one being willing to sell or trade propane. I netted four of those one-pound Coleman cylinders you attach to a camping stove, plus two partly full 20-pound cylinders like you’d use for a grill. Clifford cried when I knocked on his door with them—this would, he said, keep them running for another 40 or 50 hours. The power was generally out for two to four hours a day, so that meant another two weeks, probably, and I could watch Clifford do that same calculation even as he asked if there was anything people wanted in exchange.

Over at Uncanny Magazine, Naomi Kritzer wrote the beautifully hopeful and necessary The Year Without Sunshine. This is such a beautiful speculative fiction piece that feels more real than many others in terms of how communities could react to a huge disaster without government intervention right away. Everyone in the community has a place, has value whether that’s small children or disabled, housebound people because humans are social creatures and our ability to thrive is based on that sociability. I loved how instead of being seen as a burden, Susan is a valued, disabled member of the community, and how she is the catalyst that brings the community together more. This is a hefty short story at just over 10k words but it’s one I keep coming back to because I need it.

Small Mammal Update

Zorya loves the Christmas tree.

She lays on the fuzzy tree skirt, and stares into the lights. I think she is seeing colours and shapes beyond my comprehension. She hasn’t tried to headbutt the tree down, which I’m counting as a win. She also has not tried to climb the tree, I think Yaga’s been the only cat bastard to do that, but you never know. She likes how the tree gives her cover in the living room. For another week she’ll enjoy being the ambassador of the Yule Cat.

Yaga did get to wear a crown because she is the Queen of Teeth. (Also she's the one who's most okay with wearing clothes out of the cats.)

What I’ve Been Working On

I’ve been working on a webcomic script that one day might get to see the light of day. The other thing I’ve been picking away at is Bergamot and Bygones, a cozy game about revolution. Bergamot and Bygones is more likely to happen out of the two projects I have kicking around.

Other than that, a return to the academic grind in the new year.

Once again, thanks for reading and I hope you have a good new year!