The Year in Review

I love traditions, but I hate being predictable, so I am a bit ambivalent about posting this cliché, offering a look back at 2024, something which every other blog (all twelve of them) is probably doing today.

However, 2024 was a momentous year, not only for the world, but me as well, so I feel sorta obligated. As a favour, and to keep you all from foraging for razor blades or taking a fatal dose of mince pies, I’ll leave the momentous happenings of the world aside and focus primarily on myself, which is appropriate because, as you know, it’s all about me.

To get this out of the way, I will start on the sombre note: 2024 was a year of loss. Going back to the end of 2023, I lost my Aunt (the last surviving sibling of my mother), and in this November just past, I lost a good friend (I hadn’t seen him in decades, but we were very close for many years), my younger sister (who I also had not seen in the past decade), and a woman who’s children I grew up with, and who was like a second mother to me. So, yeah, a lot of loss.

The good thing to take away from this is, I reconnected with my older sister, who (you guessed it) I had not been in touch with for some time, but who I now text on a weekly basis.

On other fronts, I finished two decade-long projects (The Talisman series and The Patriarch Diaries) and am now at work a new Not-Going-To-Take-Ten-Years-If-I-Can-Help-It book.

But mostly I am thrilled to report that I am starting 2025 feeling much better than I did in 2024. Last year at this time I was a week into what turned out to be The 100-Day Cough, which eventually encouraged me (against my better judgement and personal philosophy) to seek out a doctor. This precipitated a string of events that culminated in me taking four different pills every single morning for the rest of my life.

This, however, has made less of an impact on my day-to-day than the sudden and inexplicable subsidence of my hip pain. I wrote an entire blog about this, but the gist is: my hip, for the past ten years or more, had been giving me various levels of gyp. This also figured into my doctor entanglements, but prior to the suggested therapy, the pain disappeared, and my hip now functions at 100% (okay, 96.7%, but that’s quite an improvement, with no doctor required).

And so, I am stepping into 2025 pain-free, in closer contact with my remaining family, and in hopes of having a new book completed and (perhaps) being published by a real publisher (or, if not, I’ll do it myself). I’ll also be turning real 70, instead of the practice 70 I turned last year. Despite that (or because of it) I am determined to avoid turning this into an old man’s blog.

That’s my 2025 promise to you: no (or very little) discussions of hearing aids or medications or the extra fees being old incurs (or the many Senior Discounts it attracts: what I call Longevity Awards). I fervently hope I am able to find enough material in the day-to-day foibles inherent in modern society that are relatable to people from twenty to ninety, without mentioning the latest medication or suspicious ache that people of a certain age bore each other with every time they gather together.

I wish good things for you in 2025. May it be a year filled with blessings, good friends, and exciting adventures.