Two Decades of Bloggy!

Twenty years ago tonight, I guess I was bored.  You could maybe say the same thing about tonight, just in a radically different context.  There are all sorts of things I could do, but forcing myself to slow down and write a bit, even vaguer-than-usual drivel, isn't a half-bad exercise to engage in from time to time.

I usually save the long-term reflection for New Year's Eve (even if in practice I tend to actually do more of it on New Year's Day), but it's hard not to notice patterns.  With almost any focal distance I choose to look back with, I can see that my life has changed quite a bit recently.  In particular, I've noticed that I've tended to mark this middle part of recent decades with a higher degree of uncertainty and change.  And yet, I've also been reflecting on just how deceptively busy the month of May always seems to get, no matter what else might be happening on a macro level.  Is it something persistent about my social environment, or is it just everyone wanting to do stuff now that the weather's more consistently nicer?

Anyways, I've often complained at this time of year that it's been getting increasingly difficult to find the good-quality, free clipart which is of course the primary ingredient in bloggy cake.  In recent years, it feels like that difficulty curve has spiked.  And this year, it was damn near impossible.  Most anything new worth considering is well behind a paywall, or at least a login.  But I scrappily managed.

It had occurred to me in a textbook "shower thought" yesterday that, nowadays, a bloggy cake could theoretically be baked with a fairly straightforward prompt into a generative image diffusion model.  But there's just no way that the result would taste as good, and besides—all the detailed piping might not even end up being legible.

And yes, despite the em-dash in the last sentence, I've written all of this myself.  It's not at all a sign of outsourcing to a large language model, and if you've been here long enough, you'd know that.

Some things you've just gotta bake yourself.

Happy birthday, Bloggy!

2025

Hmm.  If I felt as though 2024, at its outset, was shrouded in mystery, what then is 2025?

In spite of the significant setbacks I faced throughout 2023, I started 2024 with a pretty clear sense of purpose and direction.  But life had other plans.  By March, efforts to try to smooth out the previous year's sine wave were stalling out increasingly often, but I was still maintaining a positive and hopeful attitude without too much trouble.  Then the second quarter walloped me pretty hard.

Family deaths and the associated grief will tend to do that, of course — two of my three remaining grandparents passed away just over a month apart (my paternal grandfather on 8 April and my maternal grandmother on 9 May).  But once one already has enough to mourn, every additional little thing can really just compound the sadness and grief, in all its stages and forms.  And while repeatedly processing grief alongside family does, itself, entail more than its fair share of those "little things", often the world doesn't think to hold off on adding just a few more.  By mid-June, I found each proverbial straw increasingly straining, and it was becoming clear that it was about time to disconnect and reset.  Somehow.  Whatever that means.

Sometimes though, it seems, you really do have to try turning it off and on again.  Even as a loose metaphor, it can be an enlightening exercise.  Although I have long known full well that it rarely actually solves any underlying issue, it can definitely provide new perspective — or at least just buy a little extra time to deal with it all and gather more data to better inform next steps.  I feel very blessed to have been able to provide myself the opportunity for such flexibility.

Now I've not usually been one to rush toward shedding aspects of the Old Year, and I'm not about to change that, but I've definitely used this reset so far to be a lot more intentional about how I plan to bring certain things along moving forward.

In doing so, I seem to have bought myself just enough space to regain the confidence to approach the rest of 2024 from that slightly different angle I needed — still quite gingerly, but ultimately stumbling upon some new pathways.  And, in a sense, that extra breathing room has helped me make effective use of the recent autumn months, setting myself up to more readily benefit from any more favorable circumstances that could arise in 2025.

Ya know.  Despite … (sighs and gestures broadly) … everything else.

So, although I probably now have an even fuzzier 12-month horizon than the fuzzy one I thought I had a year ago, I nevertheless enter this New Year quite grateful: For old friends who reached out to connect me with something new or to help distract me with a smile on some of the more painful anniversaries, but also for new friends who are helping me to finally start expanding that fuzzy, fuzzy horizon.  And since "adapting" might as well be the word of the decade and the only real constant is change, my true priority remains simply to honor myself and my experience with kindness throughout each twist and turn.

And at least in that regard, come whatever may… I think it just might be a good year after all.

Aw, man, I did the thing again where yesterday's retrospective post leaned a bit heavy on the prospective side, and now this one's gotten kinda sappily vice-versa.  Oh well.  I never promised consistency.

Random tangent: For most readers, 2025 is the only year in our lifetimes that can be mathematically expressed as the square of an integer (in this case, 45²).  The last time was in 1936 (44²) and the next won't be until 2116 (46²).  Somewhat more uniquely, one can accurately write (20 + 25)² = 2025.

Wrapping Up and Revving Up

Well, there's not a lot to say, and it took a while to get to this point, but ultimately it's clear that 2024 turned out much better for me than 2023.

Not nearly as good as I'd been hoping — and certainly still with its share of downswings and disappointments — but, in the end, it still held more ups than downs, and I'm leaving 2024 feeling pretty good.

It has certainly been an interesting year, and 2025 promises to be interesting as well.  Hoping to keep the positive juices flowing well into the New Year.  We shall see.

Random tangent: Apparently ABC's Puerto Rico party was reliant on many generators following this morning's near island-wide blackout.  The show must go on, I suppose.

A Quick Birthday Greeting

I'll be honest.  It's been a rough few days of a rough couple months of a rough year.  For a lot of reasons.  Right now, my body, mind, and spirit all are in much need of some solid rest.

But still… it wouldn't be 14 May without bloggy cake, however hastily made.  And at this point, I think this blog is old enough to understand that that's what counts.

Happy nineteenth, Randomness.