In a cynical, dour mood, I might say this year felt like a series of tragedies with barely a breath between. In an optimistic, hopeful mood, I might say this year felt like a series of assuring reminders. Neither is true - in fact there is no truth about what the time means or why it fell into place the way it did. But it does feel like 2024 was a whole lifetime, crumpled together - great highs and great lows smashed together and compressed.

tragedies

In January 2024, Courtney and I decided to move down to San Diego in March. The timeline was quite short, and caused some financial and relational stress between us. Even though we were happy with the decision, it was a huge hurdle to move on from our life in Seattle and say goodbye to a lot of things, and people, we loved.

Once we made that decision and started to scramble to put everything together for the move, my anxiety spiked. I might have described myself as anxious in the past, but this was the first time I felt like I had “anxiety”. Before 2024, I usually could pinpoint what was stressing me out, and do something about it - either solving the problem or setting it aside until later. This last year I was met with anxiety about seemingly nothing, and unable to quell the feelings with problem solving.

We moved to San Diego in the last week of March. Our shipping crate, with all our stuff in it, arrived the first week of April. That same day, my mom called me. Amidst the boxes hardly unpacked, she told me my Nana’s health was deteriorating rapidly. We took a moment, got back to work and finished filling the kitchen cabinets, and then purchased tickets to fly right back up to Seattle. My Nana passed the second week of April.

We came back to San Diego with little energy to continue settling in. We painted a couple of rooms but the initial momentum was lost. Mid-summer, we were blindsided by a major health issue with Courtney’s stepdad. This meant that Courtney was taking care of him as a full time job since July and until the present. Although the day-to-day care is exhausting enough, there have been a handful of major scares throughout this whole process. Chronic conditions are so challenging to diagnose and treat.

reminders

Looking back from today, I read over this and sigh. It could have been worse, sure, but it was a pretty shit year. And yet the thing that makes me feel most “adult” about all of it is that I feel a little proud of how Courtney and I handled all of this. And I think about the things that have supported me throughout this year. There’s a lot to be grateful for.

As a child, especially growing up in a Protestant household, I felt pressure to be grateful. “Things could always be worse”! I was frustrated by this for a long long time. I was grateful, for a lot of things, but it didn’t ever seem like it was enough to balance out the shit parts of my life. I even wrote about this two years ago in another blog post:

Gratitude has been enshrined into modern society’s ethos over the last decade. I’m resistant to gratitude as a self-practice. Gratitude can be used by oneself to dismiss their own negative feelings. It can be weaponized by people who are rankled by others’ negative emotions. If mindfulness asks you to “think about the things you’re thinking about”, gratitude asks you to “think harder about things you don’t like”. American Gratitude asks us to think positive. A busy street suffocated with noise and exhaust might have a silver lining if you position yourself juuuuuust right.

I don’t necessarily rely on gratitude to counteract grief these days. But while reflecting on all the things that happened this year, I do feel a sense of “it could have been worse”, and it makes me grateful that it wasn’t. When I was a kid, “it could have been worse” probably just meant “I’m sure glad a meteor didn’t fall out of the sky and explode my house”. This isn’t really a consolation as much as it is a dismissal.

These days, “it could have been worse” means “I’m sure glad that Courtney and I were able to support each other throughout all these rough patches” and “I’m glad that my friends are around to listen to me vent about all this BS” and “I’m glad that I have this little moment, eating a California burrito, to help me for a single moment not feel crushed by the weight of what comes next and what’s happening just out of view”.

And even then, there’s so many things in 2024 that I’m extremely, extremely proud of, excited for, and overjoyed about. There’s a lot of things that just… happened, but may be a start of something greater in 2025.

gratitude

Not necessarily in chronological order…

  • I passed my written test and got my drivers permit!
  • Courtney and I moved to San Diego and have been able to enjoy so much sunshine
  • I started attending a video game dev group off-and-on
  • I got promoted at work (first time being promoted internally instead of via job search)
  • We went to the zoo in the evenings so many times during the summer (it’s lovely!)
  • I made this website
  • I’ve made big strides toward greater personal and professional efficiency (more to come in another blog post)
  • We started going to a financial planner and have been so much less stressed about finances
  • I have been able to have regular phone calls with friends from Seattle
  • I went bowling with my dad a handful of times, and have regular hangouts with him
  • I got my drivers license!
  • I started attending an artists group
  • I went on a bird walk with a group for the first time
  • I started learning Japanese again (after 10 years)
  • We trained for a 5K
  • We accidentally broke our training habit
  • We got back into our training habit!
  • We completed a 5K!
  • We wrote a blog post together on movies (and watched a ton of movies together)
  • We started looking to buy a house (and will close on one in two weeks!)

These are the things that have kept me floating this year and pushing onward.

what’s next?

We’re already nearly 8% of the way through 2025. I’m hoping for more of the same this next year. Maybe fewer tragedies. But even if they strike, I hope that I have some more good things to keep us afloat.