Body Blows - a look back at 2023

Even though we are nearly two weeks away from the New Year, I've decided to try and write what has traditionally been the last post of the year now.  For me it's always been a brief review of what I've covered, accomplished and achieved in the past year.   Like the above meme says....I made it through.

Maybe it's due to seasonal depression, maybe it's due to my writing this blog for slightly over three years and my audience is still in the hundreds, not the thousands like previous blogs have been but I think this blog may be coming to an end.

Although the low readership that I have could be due to the blogging platform I use, which is neither supported by nor promoted by Google anymore.  However I love the ease and simplicity of this particular platform and see no reason to change it at this time.

This lack of comments and low readership are making me wonder if it's worth it.  Plus, if I'm being honest with myself, this blog has lacked focus as I seem to be all over the place topic wise.  I've covered personal matters, bits on the economy and finance, politics and of course, the environment and climate which is slowly becoming the main focus of this blog.

Dealing with the state of the environment is depressing enough, although there is hope on the horizon.  I plan on continuing this theme and blog in 2024, but this year has made me think hard about how and why I blog, and if I want to write about anything at all.

My Dad passed in early January which seemed to set the tone for the rest of the year.  His passing was not unexpected like my mother's death but we had just lost Susan's father in late 2022.  Throughout 2023 death seemed to always be near as various members of Susan's family passed, as well as my ex wife Teri at the end of November.  As I write this, I learned that a friend of ours just lost her husband today.   He was in his mid 50's as well.

Tipper

We lost two cats in this past year, as our youngest Bobble - so named because his head was bigger than his body as a kitten - and Tipper, my buddy, passed.   

In September of this year I decided to leave my job with New York Life because of pride and stupidity, only to find myself in a job that was less stressful but paid less than than I expected it would plus had a commute that was costing me fuel and time.  After the New Year I intend to put my best foot forward and find work that matters to and engages me.   Even if that means going back to NYL is some sort of different function.   

What I've done over the last several years can be done by a computer better and more efficiently it seems.  Even though I'm not an influencer I think I was one of the first of many to raise their voices concerning ChatGPT.  At the time I was talking about Bruno, I had only scratched the surface.  Now we are talking about AI in art, creating deep fakes of movies and historical events and even how it could be used to affect politics.

Philosophy seemed to be a subject I returned to again and again in 2023 as I wrote 13 different articles evoking philosophy over the last year.    Part of that was due to my finding a literary and artistic movement called Solar Punk, and falling in love with it.  

If I have one issue with the Solar Punk movement is that it is seemingly becoming insular, and utopian.  Sadly to obtain any sort of change, you have to work to make that change happen and part of that is understanding that there will always be entrenched powers to resist that change.  Real change only comes about when you choose the best ideas from the marketplace of ideas and are willing to act upon those ideas.  

That means that the movement has to be willing to change too but frankly some of the ideas I see being batted around are just pie in the sky stupid.  Many in the "Solar Punk movement" identify as Anarchists.  While anarchism does raise some public awareness of an issue, it seldom is effective at affecting real change, and the movement seems stuck in this gear without having a clue of the realpolitik.  

To say that the feedback I received when I challenged them on this philosophy soured me on the group as a whole would be an understatement.   I still believe in the ideals of solar punk, but they are repeating the same failures of other "utopian" groups before them.  

However, I'm getting off topic.   I may start writing some "solar punk" fiction as I've a short story/beginning of a novel bouncing around my head.  That's a commitment however...and I'm not sure if I'm willing to give up the blog to commit full time to such a project.   I wrote an unpublished novella that took months to write, and me getting up at 5 AM every day to work on it.   While I received good feedback on it from various sources, it was a major commitment and I am unsure if I am willing to commit such an act again.  

What makes that story interesting to me is that I lost all interest in it once the story was told, I wasn't willing to put in the editing work and other work to see if I could get it published.  

Art of any sort, and I am not calling myself an artist of any manner, has a wonderful ability to bring about change in unexpected ways.  If I continued to work on this story, would I be willing to put the time and effort into getting it published?  Or am I more in love with the idea?

After all, the whole idea behind this blog is to put ideas out into the world, even radical ones.

I did find myself being a bit more radicalized than I expected.  A post to an environmental forum I frequent got me thinking about violence in the name of environmental defense; and although I'm a pacifist....I could see some justification for it.  We simply do not have the time anymore.  Given the very real possibility of a dictatorship in America, and sadly that is not hyperbole, I have to wonder if violence can be justified.   

The more research and reading I did, and I've always had an interest in environmentalism, the more concerned I became.  The Canadian wildfires didn't really affect me personally but again got me thinking about air quality issues and even if it was moral for me to take a vacation.  

I ended up stepping away from blogging for nearly the entire month of August of this year because I was realizing that writing about the environment and other issues was affecting my mental state.   Nor was I particularly happy with the state of my job at that time...and stepping away helped.  I briefly considered taking courses to become a Master Gardner but decided against that as well.   I may still go down that path but it is more of a commitment than I am willing to take at this time.

All I know is that I just feel that I've been biting off more than I can chew, and it's time to possibly become more focused.  In fact, I only have one gardening project for the coming year planned and will consider that a success once completed.    

The New Year always means a new start.  A new beginning.  

How that looks for me hasn't really been defined yet.  However I feel that scaling back and concentrating on the home life is what's going to work in this coming year.   

So Seasons Greetings and a Happy New Year from your favorite Mouse to you gentle reader.  I just hope your 2024 is a wondrous one!