And thus ends another year, merely a turn of the clock, really, but we use it to first reflect and then greet the new day with hope and intent. I used to feel good or bad about my previous twelve months, but I’ve long since learned I view success or failure through the prism I woke up with on any given day. So, 2023. What’s today’s outlook?
A couple of years ago, I resolved to visit more destinations new to me, as I’d fallen into the habit of visiting Cabo and Barcelona over and over. And I’m semi-interested in going to every country, now that I’m over halfway there without having consciously tried. So in 2023, I visited El Salvador, which I hadn’t gotten to before when it was dangerous, finishing the last puzzle piece of Central America.
My other new destinations were Dominican Republic, Bonaire, Algeria, New Caledonia, and the most astonishing trip to Vanuatu. My overnight stopovers were (repeat) Panama City, (repeat) Sydney, and (new) Marseille en route to Stockholm Comic Con. Locally, I checked out Monterey and San Luis Obispo. Also, I couldn’t resist another weekend in Los Cabos or camping in Death Valley, which last time I went was on a bicycle. This time I more sensibly took a rental car.
My last trip of the year was to Tulum in Yucatan, because I wanted something warm, nearby, and easy. It is a morally complicated place with private resort walls along most beaches, raw sewage contaminating the aquifer and cenotes, and a lot more microdosing by expat digital nomads and full moon parties than any Mexican town deserves. In some ways, I felt like I was in the lost epilogue to the book The Beach. “Where should we go now that we’ve destroyed parts of Thailand with hipster overtourism, Alex?”
Other fun moments were seeing Jake Shimabukuro, checking out the Neon Museum in Las Vegas, trapping and neutering Bernie the tuxedo cat, speaking about Daniel Johnston alongside others at a Lower East Side gallery in support of Jung Kim’s photo book, watching my team dominate the Eisners with their dedication to fiction, showing up in a DC documentary for a few minutes, buying a used Prius, making a lot of pottery, and instilling in DC Comics a true dedication to National Bundt Day (possibly the only thing I’ll be remembered for aside from embracing the silly, leading to such things as Katie’s swimsuit issue and Reza’s Detective Chimp hardcover).
I did not intend for my life to be a list of what I’m doing when I’m not in my routine. But the extraordinary is what gets me through the routine, and what keeps me focused on acceptance and not on existential despair.
My relationship to employment is challenged on a basic level, probably because I spent too many years focusing on creative and freelance, which gave me a taste of freedom. Also, a taste of being broke and looking for health insurance, and as I’ve said before, the only thing worse than being employed is not being employed. And so the more I work, the more I offset that work with posing on the edge of an active volcano.
Don’t try this at home. Be happy your end of year lists are about your kids and family pet antics. It’s cheaper, if not quite as dramatic. Let’s make 2024 one to remember. With pet antics, preferably. Leave the volcano to me and my particular form of self-inflicted therapy.
Happy New Year from the end of the workday in Burbank.
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