Today is the darkest day of the year, which is fitting for reflecting on this garbage can of a year.

Like, on a surface level, it wasn’t bad. It was good, actually. Tenure, ultramarathons, record walking distance (or at least I’m assuming I’ll hit it unless my legs fall off in the next few days), discovering a love of watercoloring, seeing a ridiculous aurora borealis show in May, getting to teach my ASHA semester, all that jazz.

Good stuff.

But the bad stuff? There was so much more bad stuff; it just wasn’t as…visible.

I don’t want to talk in as much detail about it because it’s all I’ve been thinking about today and I’m already all worked up about it, but let’s just say that this year was defined by failure.

Failure after failure after failure after failure.

It was very hard to get through parts of this year, in part because I couldn’t really talk about half this crap and in part because it sounds so stupid when I did talk about it that it just made everything worse.

So yeah. Surface level, 2024 was great. Below-surface, 2024 rivals 2011, which was probably the worst year I’ve ever had.

Fun times.

Let’s leave it behind, huh?