Looking To 2024 With Fear and Trepidation
Good riddance, 2023. To paraphrase "True Grit", "the love of decency does not abide in you".
The problem is, I said the same thing at the end of 2022.
That being the case, I no longer make noises about the next year being better than the last one. 2023 started out with losing a nephew, paused in the middle for the death of our dog, and ended with my wife and I both down with Covid. Those are just the highlights. We also had to replace our car, and oh, yeah--our microwave caught fire. Again. (It was just smoke.)
Then there was the sinus surgery which, it turns out, doesn't prevent Covid. Emily had to face the death of one of the horses she worked with. We didn't get a new book out in 2023, and had to push back the deadline on the one we're working on. Oh, and I had a biopsy on my TONGUE.
Surgery or virus? You decide.
Could 2024 be worse than that?
Yes. Yes, it could. I mean, it's an election year, so there's that all by itself.
This year a third of the people are going to pick a candidate to fight a different third of the people who the first third hate, and the second third is going to pick someone who they hope will be horrible to the first third, while the middle third do their best to ignore all of this, even though they're the ones who'll suffer the most.
It's politics as written by Joseph Heller. We'll call it "Catch 24".
(Hey, I just had an idea for a new novel!)
There's not much we can do about a lot of this, including the elections, once the graveyard votes are counted. So what are we to do about the world's current state of affairs?
Laugh.
That's right, you heard me. Laugh, even if it scares people.
Now, that's scary.
I'm going to make an extra effort in 2024 to make people laugh. I'm not going to guarantee health, or that my appliances will keep working, or that Congress will start acting responsibly. (See, that last made me giggle right there.) I'm fairly certain at this point that the Presidential election will be a farce regardless of who wins, so why not poke fun at it, too? Maybe, with luck, in the coming year I'll have another exploding lawn mower to talk about.
Okay, I don't want to go that far. Again.
But laughter often is the best medicine, at least for your brain, and I'm going to work on turning it into an epidemic. The laughter, I mean. Because we can't change a lot of bad things with the exception of politics, so we might as well feel better about them.
Maybe we'll even sell more copies of our humor books.
Well, let's not expect too much. After all, it's still the 2020s.
Remember, it takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown, and we're all tired.
The problem is, I said the same thing at the end of 2022.
That being the case, I no longer make noises about the next year being better than the last one. 2023 started out with losing a nephew, paused in the middle for the death of our dog, and ended with my wife and I both down with Covid. Those are just the highlights. We also had to replace our car, and oh, yeah--our microwave caught fire. Again. (It was just smoke.)
Then there was the sinus surgery which, it turns out, doesn't prevent Covid. Emily had to face the death of one of the horses she worked with. We didn't get a new book out in 2023, and had to push back the deadline on the one we're working on. Oh, and I had a biopsy on my TONGUE.
Surgery or virus? You decide.
Could 2024 be worse than that?
Yes. Yes, it could. I mean, it's an election year, so there's that all by itself.
This year a third of the people are going to pick a candidate to fight a different third of the people who the first third hate, and the second third is going to pick someone who they hope will be horrible to the first third, while the middle third do their best to ignore all of this, even though they're the ones who'll suffer the most.
It's politics as written by Joseph Heller. We'll call it "Catch 24".
(Hey, I just had an idea for a new novel!)
There's not much we can do about a lot of this, including the elections, once the graveyard votes are counted. So what are we to do about the world's current state of affairs?
Laugh.
That's right, you heard me. Laugh, even if it scares people.
Now, that's scary.
I'm going to make an extra effort in 2024 to make people laugh. I'm not going to guarantee health, or that my appliances will keep working, or that Congress will start acting responsibly. (See, that last made me giggle right there.) I'm fairly certain at this point that the Presidential election will be a farce regardless of who wins, so why not poke fun at it, too? Maybe, with luck, in the coming year I'll have another exploding lawn mower to talk about.
Okay, I don't want to go that far. Again.
But laughter often is the best medicine, at least for your brain, and I'm going to work on turning it into an epidemic. The laughter, I mean. Because we can't change a lot of bad things with the exception of politics, so we might as well feel better about them.
Maybe we'll even sell more copies of our humor books.
Well, let's not expect too much. After all, it's still the 2020s.
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Remember, it takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown, and we're all tired.
