As it turns out, a lot of my natural impetus to write in my blog was fueled by unemployment. Or rather, the existential dread of living in a currency-based society without means to acquire said currency. Things have been more or less good, that mythical state of being where life passes without much notice, and it’s only when things aren’t so good that you pay attention to how good you had it.
That sounds a lot more like I’ve been up shit creek than I intended. I still think, I still live in the mindspace of someone who’s both stagnant and fading in the wake of so much professional aspiration crumbling in the face of the gatekeepers’ unrelenting apathy. I suppose unintentional doom-musing is part of that.
I spent the final hours of 2024 as I do each New Year’s Eve: at home, comfortably alone in the physical realm, an observant wallflower in the digital. One screen playing CNN’s NYE coverage, with my frequent conversations with myself interrupted by laughter at Cohen and Cooper’s polished camraderie. The other screen? Always a social video game: World of Warcraft, Garry’s Mod, or this year Grant Theft Auto Online.
I love the holiday season. All the colorful lights, the promise of winter’s chill, the corny Hallmark movies (yes, and while I only watched part of it in an animal clinic waiting room, I have to recommend ‘The Christmas Charade.’) But it’s as much a time of contemplation and reflection as it is celebration, and New Year’s Eve has always epitomized that. The year ends, and while that date in and of itself means nothing, it’s been sculpted by our society into a milestone we can use to mark progress, take stock, and wonder about what comes. I’d even go so far as to argue that the delimitation meaning of endless time into structured segments is what lets us have the most basic framework to actually consider the world around us.
2025 is such a strange thought to entertain for me. Twenty-five years since 2000, a year I do remember quite clearly. In fact, it’s probably the earliest my memories go (reliably, at least.) We’re as far from 2000 as we were 1975 in that year. Twenty-five years ago in 2000 was just coming away from the end of the Vietnam War. It was a world without 1980s fashion. The internet didn’t exist. As clearly as I can remember Diablo II being on store shelves and NYSNC being the hottest band, people in 2000 just as vividly remembered their quarter-centry past: the relatively new music group Queen, and Pong, the first major video game ever to achieve widespread appeal.
Time’s traveled much since 2000. Right now, in my first NYE of my 30s I sit here with a can of LaCroix and a trash bag of leftover Popeye’s, bare-assed on my midnight front porch and content with life, I wonder what life will be like in my mid-fifties, reflecting on the halcyon days of 2025 in the first moments of the new 50’s. At the very least, I hope that I’ll be sitting on a porch I own and not rent. Also, for it to be too cold for me to sit bare-assed.
My New Year’s resolutions: Watch more movies. Spend less time aimlessly web-browsing (fuck you depression) and appreciate the finer, simpler pleasures of life more. Fresh air on a crisp day. The sound of rain drops. Big women. Other than that? Everything’s coming along. I can’t complain, and life’s making that steady climb forwards, sometimes up, but never down for good. Just a dip in the road every now and then.
