Year in review, 2022

Look, it rhymes! Annoying, innit?*

Dear hubby took Grace out to the thrift store with him, giving me a blessed slice of uninterrupted time in which to write this. Sure, there’s plenty of unfolded laundry, and a stack of New Year’s cards that need to be assembled and sent out**, but I value the precious alone time I have in a 1,100 square foot house when no night-shift working husbands are asleep or autistic teenagers are home from school causing me to feel guilty about not cramming every available minute with structure. The rest of the crap, I don’t need privacy to do.

All that said — in memory of my old blogosphere where we used to post these meme/quizlet things to review the year that just passed — here’s a little Q & A on 2022.

1. What did you do for the first time this year? I got a tattoo, dude! I’m posting a picture now because, given that I was still wearing a down vest in May of this year, I don’t expect to show it off until June of 2023 at the earliest. Clearly it’s pretty amazing, and I kind of can’t wait for folks to see it when I wear tank tops, instead of the ugly scar I got it to cover.

2. What are you looking forward to in 2023? Now that things are (I guess) “back to normal”, I expect to enjoy my usual array of annual stuff, such as working the haunt, my silent retreat, summer vacay at the Maine cabin, and getting plants into the ground. A second, more reliable, new-to-us car is also making its way into our household in the next month or two***. Plus there is Yo La Tengo and Lord and Master Iggy Pop in concert this spring. Plus the knitting of new things and the drawing of comics that are as of yet unconceived.

3. Who had your back in 2022? This year, it was my long-suffering therapist. That I had to pay someone to buttress my sorry ass I know sounds lame, but there you go. It beats having to bother my husband and my friends with that crap.

4. How did you close out last year? What will you be doing this New Year’s Eve? Well, last year I watched the Greatest New Year’s Eve movie ever made (see below), and was planning on doing the same this year. I did, however, get invited to a party for NYE 2022, and since my mother in law was in town to hang out with Grace for a few hours, I decided to doll up and nip over for a spell. I kind of feel like it’s bad luck for the New Year to not watch The Movie, but for a fancy party instead I took my chances.

5. What did you learn in 2022? I am just not willing to do the amount of exercise at age 54 that will make me look the same as I did when I was in my early 30s. It won’t take the same amount of activity post-menopause to be that buff, it will take a hell of a lot more. Frankly, I’d rather be knitting or drawing or writing, even if it means not entirely sticking to the *ahem* minutes a week my internist wants me to get.

6. What kept you sane in 2022? The knowledge that no matter how dire our world situation right now, and though the current US President frequently falls short of the mark, at least certain people aren’t in charge anymore. That last part was kind of like my mantra.

7. What did you do on your birthday? I answered lots of nice texts and tweets and got one of the treasured paper cutout cards from my mother in law’s stash. Dear hubby took me out for lunch and then we went shopping for a sick new iPhone. (It’s not set up yet. I don’t dare start using it until my bomb-proof Otterbox arrives later this week. I am just not that lucky or graceful.) I got my free refreshing beverage from Starbucks and went to the Sequential Artists Workshop’s Friday Night Comics when I got home. All in all a lovely day.

8. What were some highlights of 2022? Well, I guess you’re going to have to buy my latest zine entitled, “Best of 2022” to find out, won’t you? It costs two whole dollars! I take Venmo, BTW, and shipping is free.

9. Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I didn’t make resolutions for 2022 but I did set an intention. The setting of my intention is between the Zoom group of friends with whom I did the intention-setting ceremony and me, so you don’t get to know it. Sorry.

10. What did you want and get in 2022? What did you want and not get in 2022? I got my work out there. I mean, it was nothing tremendous or anything that would make me a household name, even among arty-farty households, but I put my drawing and/or writing out beyond the confines of my drawing table. I was in two local anthologies — one was for something I wrote, the other was for two of my comics — and I sold a surprising amount of cards at a holiday sale this year. Additionally, I completed the NaNoWriMo of comics: SAWgust, in August, and got a page of my drawings and a statement in that anthology too. I mean, I set the goal of doing one daily diary drawing every day for the month, and I did it! Not every drawing out of the 31 was a winner, but there were some nice ones in the batch.

Oh, and I wanted a new sofa and we bought one, like regular adults do, firsthand and from a department store. I also got invited to a few of the Cool Kids’ Parties this year. I still feel like the people throwing them made some sort of mistake, and that I was going to overhear when I was in the bathroom some of the other guests say they didn’t understand how I got invited, but it never happened.

What I wanted in 2022 and didn’t get was the customary roster of civil and women’s rights — Roe v. Wade, for fuck’s sake!! — and even though dear old Mom reminds me that it’s human nature for one group to dominate another, I remain hopeful otherwise.

Best wishes for a warm and happy 2023, all.

*Way back in the darkest of ages (1992-96), I worked as a receptionist for a law firm. It was my first grown-ass job where I had to be alert and in pantyhose at 8:30AM. I had to, aside from looking cute and sounding cheerful no matter what fresh hell was going on in my life at the time, announce incoming phone calls by name and what number line. One of the other admin assists was named Darlene and though she herself was v nice, I used to cringe when calls came in for her because her line was number 13. “Darlene, line 13…Darlene, line 13”. Ghod. To make matters worse, there was a dotty older admin assist who used to conduct a pretend orchestra whenever I said it.

Oh well. The job, it got my knuckles off of the ground and kept the lights on.

**Because g-d forbid Ms. Has to Be Special and Different send store-bought holiday cards like a normal human being.

***I shall not talk about the death of the Buick for the notion will make me cry. It was my grandfather’s, and I plan to hang on to it until there is nothing left of it but a chassis and the transmission we paid $2K for this summer.