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Top Comments: Farewell 2024, Welcome 2025 Edition [1]
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Date: 2024-12-31
Umm, brillig, didn’t we just see you yesterday? Yes, but in yesterday’s Penultimate 2024 Top Comments, our regular diarist cohenzee mentioned he is in Atlantic City ringing in the New Year, and rather than make the poor guy stop a winning streak to put up this diary via phone browser! (While I can and have done so many times over the past sixteen years, it definitely is NOT fun) you get me!
You’re already epecting this next bit… This will be my fifth New Year’s Eve Top Comments since joining the crew in mid-2007. I have been at this long enough I misspoke last night when I said I started in 2008, it actually a year earlier. mea culpa :). I wrote in 2013, 2016, 2019 and 2020. They were four very different diaries, as it turns out.
In 2013, I shared the story of Mr. Brillig, K2 and I going out for Ethiopian food at a new (and now our favorite) restaurant. I carried four takeaways into 2014, the TL;DR being (1) Say hi to people you don't know even if your kids cringe; (2) Try new things; (3) Always mind your voice and behaviour in public, because you never know who'll be sitting nearby; and (4) Listen to your loved ones. I still say hi to people I don’t know, and love to try new things. I ALWAYS assume if I am in public and am going to talk smack about someone/something, there’s a nearby set of ears. That fourth one, though… listen to your loved ones… in this era, sometimes our loved ones are spouting MAGA nonsense and listening is near-impossible. A goal of mine for next year is to listen not to the precise words they say, but what’s driving the statements. Maybe I can understand what’s made them this way, and I can in small ways chip away at the root cause. Idealistic? Of course, but that’s what NYE is for.
Three years later, we were staring down the impending inauguration of 45. We’re a lot more anxious this time because we KNOW what we’re in for, but we didn’t truly know then what 2017 would hold other than chaos. That year, I asked people to think of moments of Happiness. Of Joy. Of Accomplishment, Grace,or Love. Something that in the morass of difficult to swallow news (whether it be global, national, local and personal) made you smile, or stand a little taller, or gave you Hope. And people did. You’re probably sensing if you hadn’t years ago that I’m a hopeful idealist at heart, and believe in Good. The first four years of the orange clown didn’t take that from me, and while I’m battered after November, I absolutely refuse to surrender this piece of me to them. To him. I hope you do the same… the best resistance is refusing to let oppressors, bullies and fascists define who you are.
And then there’s the 2019 — 2020 bookend diaries. When I wrote in 2019, I looked back (see? I DO THIS!!!) at all the New Year’s Eve/Day pieces I’d penned. Here’s what I said then, verbatim:
I have to say, 2008 seems like a lifetime ago. Everything prior to Election Day 2016 does. But it was fun to revisit old memories, see what’s changed and what has not, and note that through it all what’s been most important to me are positives: family, friends, outlook. Not gonna lie, 2019 has been a slog of a year. But I look forward to 2020 in the same hope and optimism with which I’ve ushered in each New Year, and I hope you will too.
With the clarity of hindsight, I can confidently say 2019 Me had no f-cking clue what the next year would bring. As I wrote those confident words for a hopeful 2020, the World Health Organization China Office was informed of several cases of a pneumonia of unknown etiology (cause) with symptoms including shortness of breath and fever occurring in Wuhan, China. I do not have to tell you things escalated quickly, but on that New Year’s Eve five years ago, this weird pneumonia was not on my radar AT ALL. I marked the beginning of a new decade and my social media memories function tells me I encouraged everyone to vote like your life depends on it, because it does. I could not have chosen more appropriate words if I’d travelled back through time.
As I ushered 2020 out, optimistic brillig showed up once again to say As we’re all aware, 2020 had some… unexpected twists and turns. And yet if I am brutally honest, there were good moments mixed amid the COVID-be-damned dystopian cluster of a year. I mentioned the unexpected pleasure of having K1 home, because her first semester of grad school was online and so she was at home. I know she wasn’t thrilled, but we did have some fun in all that lockdown. I shared I’d been walking every day since lockdown began. Back in 2020, I averaged ~5600 steps per day (a little over 2 miles), and my fitness tracker logged 2047023 steps. This year, I averaged 8360 steps daily and as of 4:30pm Eastern have logged 3060085 steps. My 2024 Conqueror fitness challenge logged the step equivalent of 1305 miles as of midnight yesterday, and my 2025 goal will be More Than That. And lastly, I shared how my backyard had become a welcome refuge during lockdown. I still appreciate sitting out there in the warmer months (yes it was almost 50F today but that’s just wrong and I am not sitting outside on New Year’s Freeking Eve in New England!).
And here I am ushering 2024 to a close. In many ways, it’s an amalgam of my prior musings. College student and only-a-teenager-for-six-more-months K2 is an entirely New experience. We’re staring down the tunnel at the bright lights of the [I confidently can call it a] trainwreck that will be 47’s term. And much like he did at the outset of the Covid pandemic, Mark Sumner is writing about H5N1. I’ve spent the time since Nov 5th angry, despondent over my fellow Americans and afraid of what comes next. I’m still all of that, but I am still me. And I will continue to look for Hope, Love, Optimism and Joy in the future. I hope you do, too.
May 2025 be less bad than we fera, and may it be a good year for you personally. I’m grateful to each and every one of you who show up in these diaries, who send in comments, tell us when Top Mojo is wrong, and who make this an endeavor that I’m glad to continue. Now, let’s take a cup of kindness, then hop the fold and see what tonight’s Tops look like…
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