a prelude and an epilogue

 We have once again survived another journey around the sun. (This is, of course, constantly true: every moment, another cycle completes, depending on when we draw the line; we are perpetually surviving in our battle against the onslaught of time.) Some years that feels like more of an accomplishment than others.

I realized recently that it's really the first day of the new year that I like most; the late-night celebrations, the "last X of the year," are all part of the ritual, of course, but there's something more compelling about starting the year off right. Spend a day in quiet, doing something you enjoy, get some rest . . . does it matter if we make promises, or keep the ones we make? It's about taking a moment to change your mindset, and your mindset matters so, so much. Optimism and resolutions and hopes for the new year are an important part of that: if we give up before we start we'll never get anything done. That, I think, is what has always drawn me to the new year.

It's also a fitting time to make the sort of changes you could do at any time but have been putting off for whatever reason. So: I have mentioned my desire to consolidate the countless scattered selves the internet makes of my presence online, and to retire this blog. The solution I wanted to do was to build up a domain and put things there and . . . maybe I'll still do that, but for now, I think I'm going to start doing what I do here over at my cohost. It's a social media site that is not designed for infinite growth and gaining market share and all that capitalist bullshit, and God knows if I was looking for a following and growth from the sort of shit I post online I have been doing it wrong.

This place has served me well over the years, shifted in shape and form several times. I've met people through this place, discovering me from back when the search engines' algorithms would still allow you to discover tiny blogs by googling very specific phrases, back when there were more than three websites and discovering a new one was something you'd do. I used to watch which search terms were leading here; I'd get some weird ones (my old favorite was always "public places to make out") and some more expected (we used to be a pretty highly ranked result for the phrase "dreamers often lie").

I wrote about memories turning into stories recently, about the burden of carrying our memories with us, but there are good memories, too. I'll remember the people who came through here, and there are some stories and poems on here I'll always be proud of. Memory is a burden but it is also something magical, something that lets us revisit the people we used to be, the times we used to live in, the ways our lives used to intersect. And that stands preserved for the intrepid explorer to revisit, should they so desire.

In the meanwhile, I am vaudevilleghost over at cohost, and I've written some haiku over there. There will be more soon, or soon-adjacent. Thank you all so much for reading.