Okay! I’m gonna write about this past year right quick.
My family grew by one with the birth of my nephew, Henry. He’s still kind of a shriveled little guy but his cheeks are huge. Extremely pinchable, the poor kid. My niece Abby is in the terrible twos? She’s several handfuls. And the other girls, now eleven and fifteen, both need more personal space. I hope my brother moves to a new, larger place so the kids have more room to run around. I’m glad my parents and his girlfriend’s mom are around to help, but they’re older and tired and I think deserve to chill a bit at this stage of their lives. I’m not sure what the best solution is but I hope it goes well for my brother and his suddenly big family. My other brothers are doing well. I said I’d never move back to L.A. but the secret is I would, yes, for my family. I still have the strong sense that I’ll get real lonely when I hit 40 and want to spend more time with them in L.A.
Oh man, did you pay attention to politics and the world in general? I did for the first time in my life and it made for a real pissed off year for me. Not just at the shitty policies that conservatives shoved through, because I lived through the Bush era with full memory of it, but at the gross audacity and ineptitude of the president and his shithead brigade. Like, I hate that I fell into it, but I wish the absolute worst upon him and his family. I want them to suffer so they know what it’s like. I made calls upon calls and donated to liberal candidates who had the right idea. I hope 2018 is a reckoning.
I had some grand plan to keep up with writing fiction, but I just noticed that this past September’s short was the first I’d written in two years. And I don’t know what to do. I still have these memories of people digging the work and saying I should do more with it, so it’s like letting down people who believed in me. I’m still very much into comics and would love to get confident enough in my drawing to create some short comics. Maybe I’ll sign up for more classes this coming year. Something to force some work outta me.
Kate Beaton, my comics inspiration for years, is helping her sister fight cancer. Check it out if you’re a fan.
Social media, Tumblr included I reckon, allowed me to keep up with lots of people. It gets weirder for me every year to be a passive audience to someone’s life and thoughts, but I’m still glad to know how people are doing in some small way.
It was a good year in ways that relate to money which is a bummer because money dictates so much of what we do. I pushed to get a job as release manager because I’d been a QA lead for years and years, and because I’d been a producer already and “producer” was kind of a loaded job title for me. So I made up a release manager job and we made it official! And I didn’t get a raise immediately, but eventually, and my sigh of relief filled the room. I mean, Jesus, all I’m gonna do with the extra money is give it to credit card companies, but it’s enough that I can see a future in which I’m not in debt. And all of this is because I work with supportive people who fight to get as much as they can for everyone who works at my company. I hope 2018 continues to be as great as this last year for everyone I work with. They deserve it.
Also work-related: I got to pitch a video game prototype, and it was something totally outside of my realm of comfort. I mean, a physics-based puzzle game in which the player is a living ventriloquist dummy? It’s like the stories I remember the most. It feels like, “what the hell was I on when I came up with that?” But it was great to develop the idea, do the research, write the documentation, collect the reference material, talk to people about it, and then get runner-up during the selection process. The fact that it got that close was kind of terrifying because I got that close to actually having to do the thing. And it was cool, man, real cool. I’ll gladly pitch again if I get the chance. I’ve already bubbled some ideas to the top.
My personal life was… stagnant. I didn’t lose any weight this year, which is something I want every year of my life. My brother Cris gave me a paleo cookbook for slowcookers, since I don’t have a kitchen, and it’s perfect timing. No dairy, no processed grains or sugar, limited red meat. It feels right and I think 2018 will see me get back in shape. The question is will I maintain? And I gotta say, being 35 and fat is not fun at all. I need to keep it off for good or I’m facing a rough middle age. I took a literature class and it was great as always, so I’ll do it again starting in January. I’m satisfied, though not happy, with my level of socialization. (That sounds clinical.) I like being alone but I still get the occasional pang of loneliness. I can only shrug my shoulders because what’re ya gonna do? What am I gonna do.
I’m excited to post my year of new fiction in a few days. My brief assessment is not enough short stories, better variety of movies, and not enough video games. I’m also excited to see what 2018 brings. Fiction is just great and I often learn more about being human from experiencing fiction than non-fiction.
I, too, wish Fresh Pizza met Raven Goth.
I hope 2018 brings you something good.