It’s hard to escape the inclination towards reflection and retrospection at the end of the year. Everyone’s posting their best nine photos from Instagram, thanking everyone else for a good year, and sending off wishes for the next one. Some people are talking about what a rough year they had, and others are just happy to survive.

We’ve all had rough years. 2005, when my dad died. 2011, when my mother-in-law died. And there was The Year Everything Stopped: 2020. But generally I’ve stopped judging every year as Good or Bad, Great or Awful, OMG Amazing or WTF.

I think now of years as chapters of books, or even books in a series. When I read a book series, I tend to forget which book is which. If it’s something I’m really engrossed in, I usually read the books in quick succession, often forgetting that this character appeared in that book, that this big plot twist actually happened in book 3, and so on. And so with the months of 2024, I forget when it was that I got sick, which month it was that I went here or there, when I met with so and so.

All this to say that I went over my 2024 planner, and wow it was a super hectic year. 2024 retrospectives (and other long overdue commentary on random things) coming up in the next few posts!