Year

Sometimes I feel like 2024 was a terrible year and I’m just grateful to have gotten through it, and then I try to think about what was the bad thing that happened to me, exactly? Sometimes I feel like it was a quiet generative year and I will use it as a springboard into greater things in 2025. Sometimes I feel like it was a quiet year and it was a personal failing on my part that I didn’t take advantage of that. Sometimes I feel like I’m still in panic mode from the three years that came before—I am not at all over the pandemic, the isolation of lockdown, the two layoffs and three jobs, the move, etc., etc., etc. Small problems that would have—maybe??—been blips in 2019 felt less blippy in 2024.

BUT it was not actually a terrible year. Our condo is coming together nicely and we are adjusting to being homeowners (ie., we got some rugs and Mark’s parents fixed the toilet so it doesn’t wobble). I spent the entire year employed (I think on the last day of the year I can say that, though I am so unlikely to ever again feel secure at a job that even this feels like a jinx) and met a tonne of cool people in the magazine space and learned a lot about government advocacy. The cats are still alive, despite some scares, and are doing well enough to have completely trashed our Christmas tree—I would rather have both but if I have to choose, cats>tree.

What did I like about about 2024, other than the fact that I stayed employed and my cats didn’t die and my toilet no longer behaves like a playground attraction? I liked my friends, those that I saw and those that lurked in the shadows, waving and messaging from afar. A few even came to visit, which was extra nice and shows that people can come to North York (Please, come to North York!! We’re friendly, the food is good, and the toilet is normal!) I liked creating this newsletter, in a year of creative rejection—it was something I could do joyfully and easily and people let me know they found it joyful too. And it was a fun project to do with my old friend, linguist-in-chief Anne-Michelle Tessier, who was once the editor-in-chief of a magazine I was a section ed for, and how wild is it that we are doing this again? I still like Mark, hero of this space, and beloved main character. I read a lot of good books, as both the previous and some future post about my reading year will attest. I finished that novel again, the one I keep finishing and that is never good enough. I hope I will get to finish it again sometime, and that it may yet become good enough. My family remains outstanding.

Sometimes a year is just a span of time and I can’t quite register any great triumphs or disappointments. 2024 was certainly the year I got into The Mountain Goats, a band that has been around more than 20 years but I had never heard any of their music until this year, which proves that I don’t like music from MY youth so much as I like music of a certain vintage (they are still making music, but I don’t seem to like the newer stuff as much, bearing out my theory). They have a song called This Year that goes “I’m gonna make it through this year / if it kills me” and I listened to the song MANY times before I got the joke.

Listen: I cried on the bus again this year. I hadn’t done that in a long time. At least I wasn’t crying about myself this time but about street protests the bus was moving through. When I tried to make eye contact with the man sitting across from me, just to signal, yes, we see this, how hard is the world, I thought he was connecting, but then he stuck his finger directly into his nose, right up to the knuckle. So—we’re all on our own journeys, I guess. I guess that is what that story amounts to?

In December I reached out to a bunch of people I admire and have volunteered a little bit with in the past and said, “Hey, can I help you, can I do more?” I hope some of that works out and I end up being able to do some useful things (and I’m happy if anyone wants to send volunteer opportunities my way). Because how hard is the world, and how important is connection.

Thanks for connecting with me in this space. I’ll get back to writing about books and being silly in the next one. Wishing you joy, peace, and whatever you wish in 2025.

<3

RR