What's In A Year?

What’s in a year?

The calming, numbing passage of days and nights. The questions asked in brightest daylight, the questions concealed with all one’s might.

The waiting, between the then and now. And endless wondering of how we came to where we are now.

The rising of the sun and the setting of the moon. And the lingering knowledge that it will be Christmas soon.

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Last year I spent my New Year’s Eve dancing the night away with three dear friends. Only one maintains that title, through unpleasant circumstance, but they are far from me this New Year’s night. Instead I shall spend my time with others. In company once thought lost through the steady march of years between where last we met and where now we are now.

But I am left wondering, questioning as the final days before the end of the year tick steadily away into oblivion, what have I gotten from this year aside from older, thinner, and a renewed love for stretching?

We are asked, this Yuletide, to remember the moments that defined our year. The moments that made us sit up and pay attention. The ones that, looking back on them now, made us who we are as the year comes to a close.

Firstly, I want to reflect on the first moments of 2024, the hours I spent doing something so completely beyond my standard comfort zone. To those of you who don’t know me well, greeting and good tidings! My name is Alex, I’m currently concluding my 27th year on the goodship planet Earth. I am an extreme introvert with what I have since learned is a silly amount of social anxiety. I’m also undiagnosed but certainly neurodivergent in ways that make club nights difficult. Extremely difficult.

So why do I look back with such fondness on last New Year’s Eve? Simple, it’s because for that night I finally got to live an experience I had always wanted. I was, for a few hours, the man I wanted to be. Confident, well-dressed, and able to dance while enjoying the atmosphere of the place I occupied.

It gave me hope that I could do that more, that I could learn and train myself to be more comfortable in those places and with those activities. I had grand ambitions for 2024, most of which I was unable to fulfil. But now I am making a list, checking it twice, and learning ever more about myself and how to be the man that not only I’ve always wanted to be, but also the man that everyone else always thought I could be.

Holidays this last year were exciting! I only took the one, a tenish day trip to Ecuador that I have spoken about before. It was the first time I ever went on vacation with pre-existing friends, and it was an incredible experience. I do lament the absence in my life now of those friends, though our paths diverted for ultimately good reason. But why do I reflect on that now, staring down the cocked double barrels of the new year?

Because I learned that I am able to do such things with people for whom I care. I enjoyed myself immensely on that trip. And forged deeper connections with those friends than I expected. Funny stories abound from that trip, and memories that will last a life-time. But it gave me confidence that, if the intentions and energies are correct, I would be able to pull off the miracle of everything going well again!

Something that I genuinely worry about whenever people I know say “I would love to travel with you some day!” Because my version of travel is a rather solitary affair.

Museums and long city walks aren’t high on all person’s wish lists. And my complete disregard for shopping tends to put me in mild conflict with the plans of others. Why, I think, would I wish to spend my hours in a foreign land, looking at brands we have at home in a mall almost indistinguishable to what we have at home? Madness. But I have learned to have faith in my ability to compromise.

My work is something that I struggle with. For the most part, it’s interest. I struggle to care about any job in any way. And I struggle more to understand how people can be so driven and dedicated to their work. Not to say that I don’t believe in the work my job is doing; between the two positions I’ve held this calendar year, I would say that both are important and both make a big impact.

But it is the tasks and day to day are something I struggle to care about. Struggle to motivate myself to do. One of my goals for the new year is to train myself to care. To train myself to enjoy the act of getting work done, even if I don’t enjoy the tasks. My personal philosophy on work is that it is something we have to do, an obligation because without it I wouldn’t have the comfortable, pleasant life I enjoy now.

Difficult, though. Very difficult.

And things have gotten more difficult to care about in my new role. I love my team, and think the project on which I work is a spectacular one that will have tremendous positive impacts on our community partners. But I just don’t want to do the tasks. Don’t want to tap tap all day long, watching my life go by. But, the sad part is that there is nothing I’d rather do.

So that is part of my resolution for this new year. Learn to enjoy these things.

And, of course, discover something I’d rather be doing if all else fails.

Stoic philosophy, one that I resonate powerfully with, teaches us that we can only control our reactions to events and emotions. It also teaches us that a happy life is one in which we are not spun about by our emotions. In Freudian terms, it seeks mastery of the ID through the skill and determination of the Ego. Hopefully by intentionally re-discovering my love of reading and pondering philosophy in 2025, I’ll be able to join the ranks of people who examine their lives, and find them to be pleasant.

One of the challenges related to my mental health and enjoyment of life is that I am now, for the first time since university (go Gaels!) living on my own. That is perhaps the largest life change that has impacted me this year. And the one with the greatest chance for catastrophe.

But I am learning.

I’m older than I was last time. More aware. More mature. Less optimistic.

That last part is, I think, important. In general, I am the platonic ideal of a pessimist. Everything will be awful all the time, and the good bits are pleasant surprises. But, for some reason, when I was in school, I had hope. And it was that hope that killed me.

Not in the standard, “stop the ride! I want off!” Method of hope taking us out. But rather because I had hopes and dreams related to my time in school (all of it wasted by the way. 5 full years. Thanks trauma and social anxiety. Appreciate that). I desperately wanted to live the standard, almost stereotypical university life.

For various reasons I was unable to. Sadly. And I allowed that to destroy me. Allowed my expectations, the promises that had been made by well meaning family and flagrantly foolish media, to destroy me. I don’t have those illusions anymore.

But instead of replacing them with delusions about myself and how no one will ever like me as I did when I was younger, I am instead trying to replace them with truths. Truths about my capabilities, about the fact that I have friends and even got asked out on a date a little while ago. I had to say no for personal ethical reasons, but that had NEVER happened before. So I must have some positive qualities, right?

That is the biggest thing I’ve learned this past year I think. Not quite self-confidence, I still don’t know what that feels like. Not quite any measurable sense of self-esteem, still have almost none of that. But rather, that there are deeper truths. That the people who isolated and rejected me, myself first and foremost on that list, were wrong. That I have these qualities and traits, and that other people can see them.

I think it was courage. Mostly.

Courage to see the truth and allow the risk of people still being horrible anyway. Courage to acknowledge that it had nothing to do with me. Courage to give up the blame.

Many people get confused by that one. The question of courage to give up the blame. But I understand it as something like this: I’m afraid that if I’m not at fault, then they’re right and I’m inherently unlikeable. I’m afraid that if I’m not at fault, then I can’t get better. I’m afraid that if I’m not at fault, then I’ve been living a lie I never willingly entered for over 20 years. I’m afraid that if I’m not at fault for being unlikeable, then I’m instead at fault for wasting my life.

And that question of wasting my life is another thing that I often struggle with. I haven’t wasted it. Even my earlier mention of university being 5 wasted years was patently false. I moved continents. I made and lost friends with incredible people. I saw amazing and tried amazing things.

None of it was wasted. Mistakes were made but I enjoyed so much of that time. Looking back, 2 of the pre-covid years were so much fun! Even as I was the closest to jumping off the planet I’ve ever been. And the 1 complete write off of a year? The one where I barely left my room and failed all of my classes? That was emotional burnout. That was the evidence that I was not ready for the world in which I found myself but that I still tried.

That’s not a failure

That’s not a waste.

That’s not a horror.

And neither am I.

That’s what I learned this year. Neither am I.