Looking Back From The Future
December 31, 2023, 11:00 PM EST
2023.
What a year.
Unexpected. Some good. Some bad. Some disappointments. Some nice surprises.
Some great days. I wish I could put those wins in a jar to turn bad days into good ones.
Some of those hopes, looking back, it’s funny.
How the hell did I not see “that” coming when it did? Why the F did I worry so much about that thing that felt like such an awful something? A bad habit of filling in the blind spots with worries from undone and unresolved things. It takes up all the room for all the good things I did do, got done, and happened. I almost lost sight of it.
Every year.
What did I want at the time, on December 31, 2022?
Let’s see.
What was on the wish list last year?
Book #1, “Box of Stars”, all those edits and rewrites. You took your sweet time but you kicked it out of the nest at last. Pride over the first born.
Book #2, “Harvest”, all those edits and rewrites. A more playful one, it went easier.
Book #3, “Retrieve”, draft finished, Blues Brothers’ mobile style. Whacking the top, “this baby can handle 100,000 words” right before it has to be taken to the garage.
Book #4 had no name, showed up before the leaves turned.
Some meet and greets. A different sweetness than solitude.
All those works that went through “hit send”, even when it didn’t feel like great at first, felt good after. Even if it broke an axle, it worked out, it’s still out there.
All those people who did things you admired, something they wrote, made, or did. You told them how much it meant. Including the people who signed up for your Substack, at times half-fed (so few emails) and yet over-gorged (archive), who were promised treasures “From The Future”.
Those times you treated yourself with more reps and steps, another serving, another five minutes. It added up. Just enough to feel good about. Moar!
That place with the thing you wanted to check out with that person. So good. Again!
The old stuff you took from a drawer and dropped in a dumpster. Relief. Less!
The taxes done, last of the big things closed, sold, left over from losing dad. Closure.
More books shelved between the bookends, more stories stored between the ears.
You finally went to go see about someone. It’ll work out but that comes in 2024.
I left out so much but it was a real, for real, year.
2023 was a good year.
I hope everyone else’s 2023 worked out the way they hoped.
Have to go, time to get ready for another countdown.
Looking back a year ahead of time. Genius. Makes me think actually. I might do the same. Happy new year to you. Looking forward to reading all you release.