A 2024 Retrospective Ramble
Something I have noticed over the last few years as I’ve written less and less for pleasure or myself, but more and more for work, is that my ability to form what I consider a coherent thought has diminished. So much of what I do every day in my day job is corporate-speak or marketing-speak, which is certainly a valuable skill, but it’s not personal, challenging, vulnerable or anything that I think once made me a pretty decent writer.
So why have I been less able, willing, or focused on my own writing?
Well, sorry to invoke the dreaded C-word, but covid broke a lot of things for a lot of people and I am no different. In some ways, that time was surprisingly good for me. I was very lucky to be confined with a partner who is a GOOD partner, and we are equally lucky that the confinement was also good for our relationship in many ways. I know a lot of marriages and partnerships that did not survive lockdowns or adjacent issues which lockdown exacerbated. Communications suddenly became even more important at work and so my role and function had an extended period where it was appreciated and valued in a new way, and I was kept very busy in ways that felt substantial. And again like many people, as we emerged and started dealing with the long term effects of the pandemic and its second order effects (which we are going to be doing for the rest of my life), I took stock of life and decided to make some changes.
While I would love to say I had a moment of epiphany or spiritual enlightenment, mine was a bit more grubby. I had maxed out what I was able to earn and learn at my last job and so decided to pursue a new one with the unlovely but honest goal of upping my market value. I secured a new job and started the first working day of 2024 and that has taken up a lot of my time and attention this year. Then, we focused on travelling to see family over the summer, and then we had to plan and execute an unforeseen and unplanned move in the fall, which we have only just really settled down from.
All of which is to say, this has been a sort of boring, practical year. But it has also been a wild year politically and socially, which I have been observing and emotionally affected by. Wars, economics, the pendulum swings of Western democracy as it continues to flirt with fascism in the absolutely dumbest ways possible…there was so much that demanded attention, but not much that I felt I had to say that was meaningful or valuable. And I dunno…in this part of late stage attention economy capitalism, I found myself feeling that if I didn’t have anything interesting or original to say, the best course was silence. I could be wrong, but this might be the beginning of wisdom?!
Ever since covid, I feel as though I have been been processing things a bit more. My politics, my lingering religious…we won’t call it trauma but we will call it after effects, my career, my relationships, my priorities, my everything. I can’t explain why it’s taken me a couple of years post-crisis to do some of this work, but I suspect that I’m not entirely alone. In fact, I’m pretty sure much of the frustration, malcontent, and social strain that I feel and see around me are lingering effects of the myriad of traumas we have all experienced in macro and micro ways.
My siblings and my relationships have never been better…but we bonded more in large part as a result of watching our parents’ marriage end. My mental and physical health is more stable than it’s been in years, but it’s been partially due to an intense period of selfishness and self-focus which has made me a less present and available friend. My little family’s immediate stability and economic security seems pretty good, but I’m aware of broader forces social forces which gnaw at the edges of my confidence in the quiet of the night.
It’s been a weird few years, and 2024 has been no different. I just found that it was a year where I needed to think and feel more than I needed to write or speak. But as we edge closer to the end, I am finding myself needing my old outlets again. I feel the itch of unindulged creative urges. I feel the tickle of ambition for new goals or achievements. I feel as though I’m coming out of a hibernation after a prolonged period of forced hunkering down.
No idea what this means, but I do hope it means more writing, more videos, and other online shenanigans. The internet might be being eaten by AI (and we are all worse off for it), and the age of the blog may be long over, but I still find value in organising my thoughts and ideas on one. Hell, if we’re lucky, we may even see a renaissance of spaces where curation and editorial decisions and points of view gain some value and power back. I’m not holding my breath, but wouldn’t that be nice?
Anyway, hope to see you around more on this here corner of the interwebs.
