I decided I’m allowed to post some thoughts/ideas from the previous year in JANUARY if I feel like it. Sorry to all the media corporations that post their year-end lists in November, my brain doesn’t work like that.
Also errata isn’t at all the correct word here I just like the sound of it.
I don’t remember if 2022 was the year I started digging into/getting serious about mantra meditation. Maybe? Anyways it was a big thing for me this year. Cultivating non-effort. Strengthening the tools to clear my mind, to be able to sit and think about nothing. Still a work in progress but one that I find immensely rewarding & helpful.
I sort of learned to use Garageband this year but I’m still so bad at creating & editing music. Sort of feels like I’m on a plateau with it, not sure what to do about it. Absolutely do not feel like (nor am capable of) spending hundreds of dollars on “better” software.
Definitely the year of annoying health problems. I wrote an email newsletter about it and completely forgot to mention my arthritis and anemia. How’s THAT for continued brain fog due to (probably, if my doctor ever writes me back, healthcare in the U.S. SUCKS A LARGE AND LEAKY BAG OF CORPSE BUTTS) long covid.
Speaking of which hang on I’m off to get some blood drawn for yet more tests that will prove nothing.
OK I’m back and only slightly woozy.
Books I read, another good topic. I deleted Goodreads a while back and have been using Storygraph for at least a full year now so I’m fairly qualified to say that Storygraph is kind of the worst, and I hate using it. Why is it so hard to see what I’ve read in the past year? They do nothing interesting with your data, and the social features are non-existent. GR was never great but it did some things well. Anyways after a lot of frustrated tapping I found a list of books I read in the past year nothing really jumped out as super memorable, that’s all I have to say about that topic. Congratuations to Storygraph for winning the yearly award for Worst App I Begrudgingly Support Financially.
I started volunteering at the food pantry in my neighborhood. I go every week and it’s the best. Fun & interesting people, hard work, doing something actually in my community. Not a lot of men working there so it’s unlikely I’ll make a new IRL friend there, which is a desperate ongoing need in my life, but other than that it ticks just about every box.
I thought my favorite song that I Shazam’d from a TV show or movie would be a good end of year list topic, and I think it was Judee Sill’s Jesus Was a Cross Maker, which was used in an episode of Minx, but I can’t find any evidence that I actually Shazam’d it, so whatever. Another one in the memory >>> data pile. Wait I found it in the app but not the linked auto-generated Spotify playlist. *jazz hands* The Internet.
But if I think about the music I listened to this year and had to describe my favorite song without the use of devices/lists/internets/etc the only song that would definitely come to mind with no external prompting is Barbra Streisand’s version of “Much More” from The Fantasticks, which was a on very early pre-fame recording of hers that finally got released in the past year. Whatever that says about me I’m fine with.
OK wait I’ll go through my Spotify list for 2022 and pick out some good songs:
- Yeah definitely Jesus Was a Cross Maker and Much More*
- SMiLE by DOMi & JD BECK
- Andor Main Title themes obvs (esp Episodes 2, 4, 7)
- Clouded Yellow by Michael Gordon*
- SAOKO by ROSALÍA
- Why I Came to California by Leon Ware*
- What’ll I Do by The New Birth*
- Chubb Rock Can You Please Pay Paul The $2200 You Owe Him by Prince Paul et al* & **
* Putting older songs that I heard for the first time in the previous year on the best songs of the year list is me being very true to me
** As of this writing Chubb Rock still owes Prince Paul $2200
I think I heard about the Chubb Rock being a grifter thing on a podcast (likely What Had Happened Was) so I’ll say something else about podcasts here: I like Pot Psychology and Fun City. I listened a lot less to Questlove Supreme because he doesn’t let Phonte & Laiya ask enough of the questions and I get frustrated. Also (and once you hear this you can’t unhear it) he starts every single sentence with “I’ll say…” Just say what you’re saying. I’ve asked Anil to mention this directly to Questlove.
This got me thinking about apps which got me thinking about Brands so here are some things I value: Protonmail, Mastodon, 1Password, DuckDuckGo, Duolingo, MorseMania, Oak, Overcast, TV Time, Spyderco knives, FXD workwear, Burton jackets, Sertraline, Aveeno, Vaseline lip therapy, Native plastic-free deodorant, using the Target app to navigate the store, Apple Notes.
Definitely a big theme of the past year was Continued Serious Interest in the Career of David Boreanaz. We did a full watch of Bones back in the first year of the pandemic, and this year started watching Angel for the first time (I like it) and I also got very serious about Seal Team. We won’t probe too deeply into the enthusiasm with which I have devoured 5+ seasons of Seal Team and instead we’ll just say I’m driven to be a David Boreanaz Completist. I will say that as a heavy drama Seal Team is not his best work, because he’s pretty under-rated as a comedic actor, and he got to stretch those muscles more in Bones (and Angel, here and there). Could I go on and on and on with Well-Considered Opinions About David Boreanaz? Email a bitch and find out.
What else. Favorite things I drank would be a good topic, but that would involve going back through photos and trying to jog my memory about all the random locally-sourced kombuchas and probiotic sodas and low-orbit energy drinks and whatever. Definitely I continued to enjoy Gatorade Zero this year.
Finally the big theme of 2022 as we all know was Experimenting with Gluten-Free Grains. Buckwheat was the run-away favorite, with sorghum trailing in last. Sorry, sorghum. Still: watch your back quinoa. Nothing is sacred.
I can’t think of anything else. I could easily do some linking to past projects to be like Look What I Did but I get so bored of it. I miss my cat.
bye, c u l8r