A Year in Avidities, 2022 edition

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It's been a general practice of mine over the years to scoff at year-end lists, but now that I've done my own, scoff-free, I see the value: as the newsletter is a useful clearing of the deck for the week, these lists are the same for the year – though don’t expect me to to start expressing my hopes and resolutions for a time of change blah blah blah in the new year yadda yadda yadda.

Anyhow, as "wrinkle" seems to be my word of the week, a bit of a wrinkle in my version of the list: my list is a hodgepodge of things I've allowed into my brain (or released from it) this year and is indifferent to the actual release date of said thing.

And now, in no particular order…

Timekeeping LOVE, resurgent

Bit of a cheat here but what the hell: 2022 has been the year that I let my lifelong love of watches and timekeeping out of its shell so I might as well combine the three elements of that love of timepieces into one thing. From CW&T, the SuperLocal 24-hour clock proved its bountiful utility within the first hour of figuring out how to use it while my one-of-ten-made-that-week Solid State watch now alternates with my Casio Dick Tracy yellow GA-B2100 G-Shock as my everyday watch. Also, the G-Shock/Nintendo Super Mario Bros collab is a work of staggering genius. Probably won't wear it as it's a limited edition, but I do love it – and love that I love it so.

RESERVATION DOGS, Season One

An ensemble as good as any I've seen in stories that teem with heart, laughter, tears – sometime in the same scene, always permeating throughout. I now admonish Kirby at least twice a day to not be a shit-ass. A-ho.

Attendance Cards

From Lynda Barry's MAKING COMICS, a daily discipline that I've adapted to my own needs, a daily curtain lifting in this space drawn in 4'33 (after John Cage's piece - Barry did tell us to write the time frame of a song, so that's the one I chose) as a way to get me ready to suck and to eschew perfectionistic tendencies. They've replaced the daily text posts and are, I think, a more apt look into my sketchy, 0530 mind. Will hopefully get back to going through her book and doing and sharing the other wonderful exercises inside Barry's treasure trove sooner rather than later. Direct influence on incoming weekly fictions.

The January 6th Committee

Hate that it had to exist but grateful that it did – and that it was populated by such thoughtful and thorough members fully aware of the weight they bore on their shoulders. The hearings were as riveting and sobering as any government proceeding that I can remember... and yes, I've got a physical edition of their report coming, which I will read in its entirety: I may be more than a decade out of the era when my life revolved around the indexing, understanding, and synthesis of government documents, but I still dutifully read each notable release. They don’t get much more notable than this.

WEDNESDAY, Season One

Take ADDAMS FAMILY, mix with VERONICA MARS, and add in the insane talent of Jenna Ortega (and one of the best supporting casts this side of RESERVATION DOGS) and you have pure magic. Jenna Ortega's performance here brought to mind the first time I watched ORPHAN BLACK and had my breath taken away by just how fucking good Tatiana Maslany was in the role(s). P.S., favorite dance scene since...

The Death of Twitter…

Was Twitter responsible for nearly all of my career circa 2009-2013? Yes. Did I let Twitter exacerbate some of / many of my worst mental fuckeries? Yes. Did it become a replacement for smoking in terms of addictive substances (and far less fun?) Yes. Did I make some amazing and now lifelong friends? Yes. Do I miss it now that Elon Musk has used $44 billion as kindling? Nope: if some rich asshole wants to waste more money than I can conceive of and his entire reputation to self-immolate in a firestorm of bad decisions and faux conservative outrage, be my guest. A valuable lesson in why I've invested so much mental capital in this space: create your garden in the digital ether and own it, cultivate it: it's the only way to protect from the whims of people with more money than you. Everything else is barely subletting.

… and the rise of mastodon

Own my own instance? Check. Following new and fascinating people? Check. Reuniting with old Twitter friends? Check. That feeling of being part of something new and exciting? Check: though it functions as a social mirror – an enhanced mirror, certainly, but a mirror – of this space (I have posts there set to delete after a month), Mastodon is wholly its own piece of remarkable, and to see its stratospheric rise (I had been there since 2018, off and on) has been one of the best examples of the good guys winning that I can remember. This is its moment – and, though it’s clearly going through some growing pains, I’ve bountiful faith that it will rise to the occasion – and then some.

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

As I told my grandfather when I dropped off the Blu-Ray: no matter what you expect, it's not what you expect. Few films are capable of that – EVERYTHING delivered that and more. Michelle Yeoh is a goddess that walks among us.

House of Marley turntable

Finally settled on a turntable to play my growing vinyl collection – and House of Marley's Stir It Up turntable (paired with Edifier's R1280 speakers) turned out to be more than a brilliant-sounding and beautiful-to-behold machine, but a sleek transport into a world of physical EarBliss.

POWERWASH SIMULATOR

A soothing blend of first person shooter and OCD cleanliness mixed with a deliciously weird story set in a town filled with weird people (via in game text messages every 20% you clean) near a volcano on the cusp of an extinction-level event. Currently available on XBox and Playstation, but a Switch version is coming, which I will also buy, because I want to powerwash things in portable format too; expect the Switch version, if it arrives next year, to be on this list again.

Mario Question block Lego set

Mario's second appearance on this list and the first set assembled in our annual Christmas break Lego bender. Easily one of Lego's best sets, a masterful feat of plastic and rubber band engineering in a delightful package that uses the iconic properties of the Lego brick to its full potential as a work of art. Partway through the Jazz Quartet set and, had I finished that before this writing, it most certainly would have joined the Question Block here.

My Comics Organization Project

A relatively recent development / impulse to reintegrate my decades of comics love and collecting, two periods of, rather, into one and bring them home to the Paintshop. The shelving will be replaced at some point by handmade shelves that my grandfather has undertaken as a project in what will be his 97th year. Now that I have a place for them to call home, a third era of comics collecting and reading will commence. Only took ten years after I wrote [(a/my/the) book](https://parentheticalrecluse.com/comicstoryworld) on them.

DICK TRACY MONTHLY antique mall haul

Speaking of resurgent comics collecting habits, a spur-of-the-moment trip to an antique mall at the far end of a roundabout – totally off the subject, but, having spent ten years getting used to roundabouts when I lived in Massachusetts, I'm more than a bit amused at Ohioans' trepidatious acclimation to them in their own neck of the woods – yielded (no pun intended) the above sub-headingly-eponymous haul of Golden Age DICK TRACY MONTHLY comics, the first from that holy period of comics that I so adore and now actually now own.

Velociraptor toilet paper holder

Need I say more?

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This year has been exhausting, yes, but it’s been the last ten years – ten years of caretaking, of life-as-performance, of striving for something that was never going to come – that’s felt like a gauntlet. With all of that over now, I can feel the stress and anger vanishing, bit by bit. Learning what to do with the extra mental energy. For now, relaxing and taking my time in my time - and not feeling guilty about it.