I was sick on New Year’s Eve. I was asleep by 10 something. I had a fever and a wheeze. It took away the ritual of passing from 2024 into 2025, and now it feels like it is still just 2024. I write this blog hoping to create that threshold that separates years and makes them real for me.
2024 has been the loneliest year. While I dated a few people this year, I have spent most of the year single. This has revealed a lot about myself that I have never had the chance to find out before.
While companionship and watching movies with someone would be pleasant, I have hit my stride alone. If I had met someone who would add to my life, I would have loved it, but luckily, I felt a sense of serenity alone that I didn’t think was possible.
I have never lived alone. I have always had at least one other roommate. I now live by myself and work from home, so I don’t leave my house until the evening if I leave at all. I take Rufus on lunchtime walks to break up the day. I dangerously love it. I force myself to leave and go out with people.
I had my car stolen a few weeks ago, and my isolation is even worse because of it. With the car, I could go on adventures far away from my apartment, hike with Rufus, or visit stores far away, but now I have to stay around my neighborhood or be at the mercy of someone else with a car—and their musical tastes.
I’ve been writing a lot more. Nothing is postable, but I am getting more creative stuff going. Maybe I’ll stitch something together and see if it can see the light of day. I used to hate trying to write while someone was in the house. I needed to get inside my head and rest the thoughts to translate them on paper.
I started a Substack to post stuff about my Infinite Fool Tarot cards. Since I have exhausted all the possible publishing avenues, I must look into self-publishing. Putting my money on the line into something that might not garner love is scary. I hoped the Substack newsletters would bring in more people, but it almost feels like it is shrinking. It is tough to beg people to like and read my stuff.
Because of the Substack newsletters and the redrawing I did of the tarot cards this last year, my visual art creation has taken off. I have returned to doodling. Doodling brings calmness and purpose to my life. It is a meditation. I used to be embarrassed by doodles, but now I do them as a ritual—just dumb little drawings.
I want to return to painting and drawing this year. A friend and I are trying to find a drawing class that suits our schedules. I want to draw figures. I have become lazy in my drawing and have not seen much progression for years.
I have also been trying to relearn to play the guitar. As some of you know, a dog bit off the tip of my thumb in July 2023. While it has been chiefly okay, a few things have caused challenges with the missing tip: opening any packaging and playing guitar. I have learned to hold a pick a little differently, making it awkward to play.
Therapy has taken a lot of interesting twists and turns. I have had to revisit a lot of early traumas that I had thought were closed or good that were reopened by my medical traumas when I had cancer. I didn’t start going back to therapy till 2023, so a lot of that trauma sat untreated and poisoned my brain. It felt like I was working on some of those issues like it was the first time and that the times before were just dreams. I had no idea that I was spilling toxic goo everywhere I went.
While it has helped tremendously the work I am doing in therapy, there still lies this inability to see the meaning in anything that darkens my vision. I have to put a lot of forced meaning in what I do so that it makes sense that I have to work 40 hours a week to eat and not get rained on. It becomes existentially challenging to be part of a country that willingly supports financially a genocide and even participates. I have difficulty working in an industry that profits so much on health. I have to have a job to afford to stay alive. This can make the meaning of life very hard to find.
I read a lot of books in 2024. I finished Pierce Brown’s Red Rising series, a grand sci-fi space opera. My favorite book of 2024 was Martyr by Kaveh Akbar, a novel about a newly sober Iranian immigrant who tries to find meaning and a higher power in his own story and the stories of martyrs.
One of my favorite albums in 2024 is Y’Y by Amaro Freitas, a Brazilian jazz musician. It’s a very folky Latin spiritual album that hit the heart. My other favorite album is The Way Out of Easy by Jeff Parker, ETA IVet, Anna Butterss, Jay Bellerose, & Josh Johnson. Still, I am a sucker for that Chicago indie jazz style ala Tortoise or Isotope 217.
I didn’t watch very many new movies this year. Probably the best film I saw was I Saw The TV Glow, a psychedelic coming-of-age story about a TV show that two high school kids are obsessed with. There was so much that reminded me of my school days when I didn’t quite understand how to fit in and kept liking weird stuff that others thought was dumb or didn’t know anything about. I always felt embarrassingly naked while everyone looked comfortable in their clothes.
I don’t know what 2025 has in store for me. I’m not sure if anything will happen. I always want to progress as a person and creator, to be loved and to love, and to be helpful to others. I’ll return to Oregon a few times this year to visit. Maybe I’ll throw in somewhere else that is exciting to see.
Here is to having a good year.