No matter how you slice it, 2016 has been an extraordinarily crappy year. Maybe it’s the work of an angry and vengeful god. Maybe the Mayan calendar was just a few years off and now the end times are upon us for realsies. Or maybe we were just due for a year filled with tragedy, untimely death, and civil unrest.
Either way, I’m calling it. 2016 is dead to me.
via GIPHY
I’m officially beginning 2017 four weeks early. And to kick it off, I’m starting on my new year’s resolution early as well. I usually don’t bother with them, but when you consider how soul crushingly terrible this past year this has been, it can’t hurt to try something new.
Two days after the election–which for me was like the rancid cherry on top of the turd sundae that was 2016–Claire and I moved for the third time this year. Yes, we’re still traveling, though we’ve just about had our fill. There’s always a lot of mixed emotions whenever we move followed by a brief period of excitement for living in a new place, followed by a longer period of anxiety as I try to figure out what to do with my life.
This length of time usually lasts until I can get my bearings and find work, usually around a week or two tops. This go round hasn’t been so easy. We’ve been in San Bruno for three weeks and I still can’t seem to shake this funk. It could be a number of things, but what I think is really going on in my crazy brain is that after all this traveling, I don’t have anything I can point to and say “I did this.”
I mean, there are a few little things. I’ve arranged a lot of music for my students and myself. I wrote a few articles for the indie paper in Corvallis that I’m proud of. My aforementioned novel is still in progress, though it’s a mess and unfit for human eyes. I’ve even started to learn basic coding and began working on a music theory game but that, too, won’t be suitable for consumption for a long time.
One thing I can say for sure: I’m a creative person. I need to make things, even imperfect things. Hell, even low-quality things. But where I’ve failed has been in sharing these things I make. I don’t have a good reason for not sharing. I probably just want to shelter myself from criticism, but what good does that ever do? And what good is a great idea if kept to oneself?
This brings me back to my resolution, which is this: I’m going to produce and share something once a week, starting with this blog post. It may not be the next great American novel or song that makes Bohemian Rhapsody irrelevant, buy by God, it’ll be something I made.
Happy New Year, everybody. It’s gonna be better than the last one.
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