The End Births A Beginning

 Traditionally, the week between Christmas and New Year's Day is a time of reflection. Not much else ever seems to happen during this time period. I realize, of course, that many people never reflect at all, and it shows. Our society has become fragmented by social media, with digital enclaves of suspicious people peering out over the tops of digital barriers, menacingly waving their Twitter spears at each other with unveiled hostility. All of the isms are very much still in play, and those who know the least continue to be the loudest. In Antarctica, a massive wall of ice dubbed as the Doomsday Glacier shows signs of giving up the ghost, unleashing catastrophe. The Omicron Covid variant is in the news, although many digital enclaves have their heads buried deep in the internet so they don't have to engage with reality. So yeah, the world is messy.

Personally, my year was pretty good. Work sort of returned to normal. I realized I don't really miss going to stores (although my online purchasing has gotten out of hand) and I've developed a habit of getting up early so I can go find birds. Speaking of which, my creative eggs are all firmly in the bird photography basket at the moment, but I have plans to get back into drawing, thanks to a couple of recent gifts from Willow. I've started using eBird to log bird sightings, and late in the year I decided to see if I could log 200 species by December 31st. This means I have two days to find my final three species, but I have a plan.

I don't have any walking or reading stats at my fingertips. I'm currently in the middle of Tad William's massive fourth "Otherland" book, with 700 or so pages to go. I turned 54 this year, and at some point recently, I realized that I could probably calculate pretty accurately how many more books I'll be able to read before I die (based on how many books I get through a year, and roughly how old my parents were when they died - although I realize that I lead a marginally healthier lifestyle than either of them did). The fact that my mom died in the middle of a book, which was left open on the kitchen table, sometimes haunts me. That said, none of us ever get to see the end of the story. It continues on with or without us. Our personal stories never really end either. Our connections bear fruit in the minds of others. Ideally, our inspiration outlives us. 

Unless, of course, we're among those who don't reflect and inspire, in which case we're more likely to be simply erased from history.

These stream-of-consciousness ramblings brought to you while under the influence of: Bernardo Devlin "Chroma"