you have carried them so well
Truth and Beauty are wonderful words, but shrapnel is shrapnel, and at the end of the day, I am alone with the things I have done.
The road is long, and I am weary.
There have been a lot of mornings this year when I have woken up with that feeling you get on a long hike when the fatigue sets in and you realize there are still many miles of difficult trail ahead, when the muscles in my shoulders and back are screaming in protest at the weight of my backpack and I find myself saying to myself: "I don't know how much longer I can do this." But the trail is long and we're burning daylight so I shift my pack, and lift one foot to cross the other, and take another step. And another. And another.
We have reached the end of 2024. For me personally it was not particularly bad, as years go--rocky in places, and I do still wish I were writing the year in review I had wanted to on Cohost, but I am also so happy to have this blog, to have finished Case by Case--but you and I both know that this year was always going to be, at best, a reprieve before what awaits in 2025. I don't know what will happen, but I know that it will be difficult, and we will need all our strength.
The road is long, and I am weary.
Every year our burdens grow heavier, as we carry the past with us. The weight of our regrets, the weight of what we have lost. Every now and then I find myself thinking of some of the amazing people I have met, people who shimmer like asphalt on a summer day, people who I could spend a lifetime just listening to and call that a life well lived, and with whom I have since parted ways, and I can feel the inexpressible weight of them, the crushing void that was left in their place. It should be impossible to carry on, but I shoulder my pack. I grimace with the weight, the soreness that I worry will never fade, now. I shoulder my pack, and I take that next step. It's all I know how to do.
So, to each and every one of you reading this: thank you. I cannot express how much it has done for me to know that my voice is heard, and I hope I have given you something of value in return. And if you find yourself struggling with the burdens you carry, know that I am proud of how far you have come, and that you are not alone. You are never alone.
The road ahead will be long, but we have truth and beauty on our sides--and solidarity, your hand in my hand, to give us strength to keep taking that next step when our feet seem too heavy to lift. I am fortunate enough to be able to share this road with so many people who scintillate like the ice on a winter's morning, who make these burdens so much easier to carry.
my five year plan is to maybe go out for ice cream this afternoon?
And so, let us turn our jaundiced eyes towards the future. I have decided to dedicate 2025 to trying to finish old projects--writing projects left half finished, video games I started and abandoned, movies I have been meaning to revisit--but also to seeking the new. I love movies and music but I have been pretty lax in exploring those art forms in the past year. And, naturally, I will do my best to write about these here. I'm hoping to at least have a new movie and album a month for you, and maybe more. (By "new" I mean "new to me"; I've seldom been drawn to new releases just because they're new; there's so much cool stuff out there and I am excited by connections, by artifacts of times past, by the things that other people love and want to share with the world.)
And I'm going to try to get some more short stories out there. I have one I've been working on, as well as a longer story that I might share some pieces of; and, of course, you can look forward to seeing many more essays on here, and to my as-yet-unannounced successor to Case by Case on Mondays.
So, a very happy 2025 to you all. I will be spending the evening in the company of good friends, which has always been my favorite way to start the new year. Wherever you are, I hope you are able to do something that you love tonight, and start your year in comfort and happiness.
Happy new year, friends. Let's give them hell.