2021

This year could have gone a lot better, but also, it could have gone a lot worse, much much worse.

I don't know what's in store for next year. Britain is firmly committed to flushing itself down the toilet, it'll be another few months before I get half of a vaccine, and then three months before I get the other half.

I really don't expect anything to change for at least nine months. Maybe if we're lucky, we won't be in lockdown this time next year, but I'm not holding my breath.

In the meantime, I have an ADHD referral to look forwards to, I can practice more harmonica, and spend each day as I have for years now: being sad on the internet and punctuating it with pictures of my corvid buddies. That, and I expect to have bought far too many lenses.

One year on, we're not in lockdown, I did get two vaccine doses and a booster, my ADHD referral never appeared, and I have over 70 lenses and at least fifteen film cameras. None of that really mattered.

About a week after writing my post, I found out that my dad had died.

I spent that week trying and failing to get my dad to answer the phone. Eventually, my brother sent the police around to check on him. We got a "I'm not dead" email, and then a few days later, a neighbour found him in his bed, dead.

I'd been worried about it all year. I felt pretty lucky that he'd survived this long, and all things considered, I genuinely thought my sister, with her refusal to get vaccinated, was more at risk.

Even so, before lockdowns, before social distancing, I'd gone home to visit him just to make sure I saw him one last time, back in February 2020.

We talked for hours on end. He handed over his old film cameras, telling me "That's your inheritance." When it came to returning to London, I told him "I love you", fearing it might be the last chance I got to say it. He said "Love you too" back.

We're still not quite sure what happened. The postmortem was inconclusive.

Several months later, I finally had both doses of the vaccine, and dragged myself back home to help my brother throw things in the back of the van. The house was pretty much stripped bare, but I managed to rescue one or two items with sentimental value.

I made my last visit home in October. We did the funeral. We played two of the songs Dad told us he wanted played at his funeral. I said goodbye to the house, to the shitty village i'd left behind decades ago, and that was it.

Then I blinked once or twice, and it was 2022.

It's both been the longest and shortest year of my life.

January 1st started with a close friend in tears, telling me I was a disappointment. Meanwhile, the job I'd started in October had already begun to fall off the rails.

The month prior, I watched a senior employee burn out a new hire. Things just got more and more unhinged, and after taking a month off in July, I managed two more months before throwing in the towel.

During that time, a mutual online friend died in a rip-tide. A few months after that, another online mutual died from Graft-Vs-Host.

This year wasn't entirely made of bad news, though.

In October, a friend came to visit. We fed the crows, visited the duckpond, and even made it as far north as Cambridge. They came back for round two in December & January, and predictably, we went back to the duckpond.

Along the way, I grieved my way through ebay, one film camera at a time. I have a lot of nice cameras now though. Lenses too. I even took an incredible photo of two crows kicking the shit out of each other.

https://twitter.com/tef_ebooks/status/1362478633852502016

It really has been a year.

I really don't know what next year will bring, but I think 2012 me had the right idea. About ten years ago, I wrote:

I also woke up on new years day to find a message from myself, one year ago, “you have not got any further in life, have you”. True as it may be - I did try a little to improve things, and I don't regret trying - although i'm still dealing with the repercussions. On the plus side - i'm less at odds with my sleep pattern, I remember to eat food most days. I'm drinking and smoking less. I'm no longer a walking ball of stress.

I have no idea what I'd like to achieve for 2012 beyond surviving it. I imagine it will go much like the last three years - not taking any holidays - wishing I would travel more, failing - being miserable for no good reason - and destroying any relationship I find myself in. Can't wait!

I do want to leave the UK this year, visit America at the very least. EMF is scheduled for this year too, and hopefully it will go ahead. Maybe my long overdue ADHD appointment will appear, and I won't be told "You can't be medicated" again.

I do plan to get back into employment, although I know it'll destroy what little executive function I have left, putting me back into the decade long rut of never getting enough of my shit together to do much more than survive.

Frankly though, given the shitscape outside, survival is more than enough.

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