Sunday, December 31st 2023

I’m at a loss for words. Like I genuinely don’t know where to begin or what I even want to say. Every day for the past week, I’ve written this post up a different way and deleted it. One must imagine Sisyphus with writer’s block.

Last post, I talked about doing a lore catch-up type post. I’ve decided that I will not be doing that. I’m going to share some highlights, a simplified year in review, but this was a very intimate developmental year for me. The Alex lore is pretty deep, but I want to leave it all behind. The plan was always to take this year to figure my shit out so I’d be squared away for the years to follow.

I don’t identify who I am today in the context of the past few years. You can get to know me by what I have to say and what I do going forward. The context for my life, for who I am, is not what I’ve done, but what I’m doing and what I will do. I know that makes shit for sense, but I know what it means to me, and that’s all that really matters.

I hate to say “New Year New Me”, but yeah, that’s about it. I’m leaving the husk of my old self behind and moving on. I’m molting.

Anyways, here’s the Grapes of Wrath 2023 Wrapped

Zero clue why that came out black and white… not going to bother fixing it either.

I don’t want to do a recap of the months, as it goes against my yap session at the start of this post, so instead I’m doing a…

one word challenge for each month:

• January: Manic
• February: Delusional
• March: Drive
• April: Good
• May: Hope
• June: Perspective
• July: Fracture
• August: Granola
• September: Vigor
• October: Animal
• November: Healthy
• December: Appreciative

My favorite things that happened this year:

• I got off of the anti-depressants that I was taking for 5 years. Single best decision of my entire life. I never even considered that what I was experiencing could be the result of the side effects of what I was taking. My depression pretty much evaporated as soon as I got off of them.
• Reconnected with one of my best friends from high school. Didn’t see each other for 4 years, but when we got back in touch it was like no time passed at all. Love you brother.
• I reconnected and repaired my relationships with my family.
• Claimed the office cat as my own, brought him home, changed his name, didn’t like his new name and never bothered giving him a proper one so he became nameless. Moved away, not being able to bring him with me so I had to return him to the office for 4 months, but was able to bring him back home when I got back. Still doesn’t have a proper name.
• Lived in South Dakota for the summer. I could write a book about how much I loved the experience
  • My job was the absolute best I ever had
  • Custer State Park – easily racked up over 100 miles hiking there alone
  • Black Elk Peak – didn’t know this until I got home, but it’s the highest peak in the US east of the Rockies
• I drove through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Nebraska, and of course, most of Pennsylvania. See fig. 2 below for my opinions on all of the states I’ve been to.

General stats and trivia:

• I got bilateral tibial stress fractures from running while obese, lasted from May through October. Never broke a bone before, 5/10 experience, would do again I think.
• I only picked up 2 new scars, which is significantly lower than usual for me considering my trade
• Had 3 breakups; I’m up 2-1 in terms of who dumped who (cope)
• I stayed up for 3 days during a manic episode 💪
• I quit World of Warcraft after a decade / 2,500+ hours
• I changed up my musical palette; it’s gone from soft indie alt rock with the intention of attracting pale alt mentally ill women, to grunge alt / neu metal… with the intention of attracting pale alt mentally ill women.
• I got blackout drunk for the first time, and the second, and the third…
• Blogs created: 2, Blogs kept up with regularly: 0

Shit I got really into this past year:

• Lifting / bodybuilding
• Hiking
• Formula One, Scuderia Ferrari, Charles Leclerc
• white Monster / zero-sugar energy drinks
• Music: Deftones, Alice in Chains, Linkin Park, TV Girl, Daft Punk, The Districts, Joy Division / New Order
• Books: Can’t Hurt Me & Never Finished, American Prometheus
• Movies: Daniel Craig James Bond quintology, Mission Impossible septilogy, Ryan Gosling’s entire extended filmography; especially The Notebook… I had a literally me phase
• IPs: The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, The Hunger Games, Jujutsu Kaisen (surely Gojo will be back, surely…)

In general, 2023 was pretty good. Can’t really imagine it having gone much better. If I had a genie in a bottle, my wishes would be; a gajillion dollars, 40 lbs of lean muscle, and a shredded goth gym girl to crush me with……… but I can get all of those things with time and effort, so there’s no point in wishing. I’m quite happy. I really look forward to 2024.

That’s it for tonight. There’s less than 10 minutes left in the year, so I’m going to get off my computer and figure out how I want to end the year. I sincerely hope this year was as kind to you as it was to me, and I hope the new one is even kinder. Cheers

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No playlist this week. I do want to share a song that I think summed up my year though 🙂