So. This is it.
Post number 1300. A
challenge made, a challenge met. On fire
in October, shocked to near silence in November, rededicated in December. Forty posts in 31 days needed to get me to
the finish line--more than I had posted in the entire year two years ago.
Nearly ran out of steam halfway through the month, but
powered by a good old Facebook meme, here I am face to face with victory. Way to prop up a dead social media connection
with one that is only just turning the corner toward that same fate.
For this final post of the challenge, I'm going to go back
to a thing I did for several years awhile back, but haven't done since
2012. My New Years Eve entry will be a
retrospective of the year in blog, through the first sentence of the first entry
of each month. (With a bit of parenthetical commentary.)
Let's have at it:
January: "Five
days into a new year.
Already." (Well. Let's not get too excited about it...)
February: "I have been thinking about all
this hyper-hoopla surrounding the 2016 presidential race...particularly about
those lining up behind Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump—the darlings of the
far-left and the far-right." (Oh,
gawd...I can't even go there right
now...)
March:
"I googled 'negative
campaigning,' with an eye toward determining exactly when this became de rigueur in the American political process." (Already worn down by the shit-flinging, and
still eight months until the general election.)
April: " In recent years, aided by social
media, the term "introvert" has become a label...some kind of cross
between a psychiatric diagnosis and a badge of honor." (A wistful post,
remembering a best friend who faded out of my life.)
May: "My
'job' –that little business to which I have clung for fourteen years,
now—enhances the tone of opposition my life has always had, by choice or by
chance." (Pep-talk for heading into
the market season.)
August: "Thirteen years ago, I discovered a
place where I could indulge my compulsion to spatter words on blank pages--the
internet." (This is actually the
post where I decided to turn my back on the political fray...for about two
minutes, anyway.)
September: "Don't you just
want to put on a pith helmet and dark glasses every time you go on the
internet? Or maybe a hazmat suit..."
(More commentary on the ever-increasing ugliness of the presidential
campaign.)
October: "Sitting on my
“coffee deck” in the morning has become joyous and active again." (I love
October!)
November: "To all the great
players who never played a world series game, who never even got close, and all
the fans, young and old, for whom hope has sprung eternal..." (CUBS WIN!!!
But the end of the world was indeed coming shortly...)
December: " I wake up every morning, newly unbelieving of
the results of last month's presidential election. " (Well, isn't that stating the glaringly
obvious...!)
There you go. That's it. Goodbye 2016.
And goodbye "Coming to Terms"?
Nah. I don't think so.
Not just yet, anyway.
Apparently I still have things to say.
Happy New Year, my invisible friends.
It's going to be a challenge.
Hey--a challenge! I can do that!