Joe Kissell

It has become my custom over the past several years to write an annual blog post, summarizing the salient events of the previous year for the benefit of the very few people who are interested. (I keep thinking that one day, I’ll get back to a more regular blogging schedule, but that day will not be in 2025, for reasons to be discussed.) I also keep their URLs handy so that, for an example, when Take Control Books customers ask why it’s taking me so !@#$% long to finish a new book, an update, a bug fix, or whatever, I can just say: read this.

Back in 2020, the most severe phase of the pandemic, I explained how our family situation (in particular, a child with a challenging disability) made our lives unusually difficult and made it extra hard to get anything done. The following year, I described why and how we moved to Canada, a process that unfolded over most of 2021. A year later, I offered an update to say what an improvement that move had made in our lives. Last year, my post was rather perfunctory because I felt like I didn’t have any substantial new developments to discuss. I did, however, make a bonus post on my 57th birthday in January to make up for it with what I think is a pretty interesting story.

My summary of 2024, which I’ll expand on ahead, is basically:

• A few really good things happened
• Nevertheless, I’m at a pretty low point right now
• I’m not optimistic about 2025, and I don’t just mean for the obvious reasons

Good Stuff¹

First and most importantly, our son Devin (now 10) is doing dramatically better. Earlier this year, after a long, multi-step process including about a year on a waitlist, we finally got him in to see a pediatric psychiatrist here. She recommended a class of medication none of his previous doctors had ever even mentioned, and it has made all the difference in the world. He’s now much calmer, able to focus, and progressing so well at school that they’re planning to promote him to a different school with a program for kids with less intensive needs. All this has made our lives bearable once again. I hasten to say that “bearable” is not the same as “good,” and we all still face significant hurdles. But after years with no appreciable progress, I can’t overstate how significant this is.

In August, I attended my 40-year high school reunion in Pennsylvania. I’d never been to one before, and it was weird being around so many old people. (Um…) I had hoped to see some of my closest friends, including people I’d gone to school with since kindergarten, but most of them, like me, left town as soon as they could and never looked back. However, I had some wonderful conversations with old friends who did show up, and I got to meet and talk with dozens of people I’d never known at all. (As all teenagers know—and my 14-year-old confirms—you can’t just walk up to someone in your school who’d not already in your friend group and strike up a conversation. But 57-year-olds can definitely do that, and I did, over and over, all day long. It was great.) I learned some fascinating things (as well as a number of pieces of sad news) about my classmates. I’m really glad I went.

(As an aside, during that same trip I spent some time in libraries and a local archive, turning up some new information about the story detailed in 57 Coincidences, which I’ve updated appropriately.)

I moved to Canada as a permanent resident three years ago this month, and this morning I did something I’ve been waiting all that time to do: I submitted my application for Canadian citizenship. Processing times are currently averaging seven months (down from over two years during the pandemic), so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I could not be more enthusiastic about this decision, and it’s also important to me, symbolically, to have taken this step before January 20, which, you know. If everything goes well, I could be the proud owner of a Canadian passport before the end of 2025, and maybe (although it’s looking less likely by the day) I’ll even get to vote in the next federal election.

A Series of Unfortunate Events²

You’ve heard the expression “death by a thousand cuts”? That’s a bit like how this year has felt. It’s not that any one thing was, by itself, catastrophic, but rather that the cumulative effect of many smallish problems has put me in what I’ll understatedly refer to as an extremely uncomfortable position.

For example, more than once this year, a virus has knocked me out for several days. (I’m fine. And yes, I’ve had all my shots.) My mom and Morgen’s dad have both had significant health problems. Our cat, Zora, who turned 20 in June, was diagnosed with cancer. (She’s still kicking, but I’d be very surprised if she sees 2026.) Things went wrong with our car. We got a new furnace and heat pump, and are having our basement redone (good, other than the cost), but the various contractors involved have not been, shall we say, 100% dependable, and the disruptions to our household have been—and continue to be—pronounced. Several pieces of software I’ve been working with (in the role of consultant, tech writer, or both) have been delayed over and over and over again, partly as a result of bugs I’ve found (and yes, I do get paid for doing that, but still). Weird random issues have popped up with our servers, requiring me to drop everything for hours or days to fix them. There’s been an endless string of interruptions (appointments, meetings, school-related events, and so on) involving our kids. And on and on…I’ll spare you the rest of the list.

All these may sound like the sorts of ordinary, day-to-day distractions that we all face all the time, nothing to see here, move along. And for the most part, they are. But it’s the cumulative, cascading effect that’s so overwhelming. Maybe a problem in March means that a thing I was going to finish in April doesn’t wrap up until May. But May was already fully booked, so that stuff is pushed back to June, which was also fully booked (and you can see where this is going). Meanwhile, a dozen more small problems happen in April, May, and June even as I’m trying to recover from the problem in March, and pretty soon the things that absolutely, positively, without fail had to occur by no later than September are maybe, just maybe, going to be possible by next March. Or would have been, without the issues that occurred in October, November, and December.

Now here’s the problem. These things that keep getting pushed back are the ones that produce income to pay the bills and (cough) save for retirement. They aren’t optional, and it’s not enough for them to happen “eventually.” As I fall further and further behind, the real-life consequences are adding up in a big way. At the same time, every effort to pay off this temporal debt only makes it bigger.

I have plans—big, exciting, important, life-giving plans—for after I’ve “finished my homework,” by which I mean the books I’ve already committed to write or update and the (checks notes) 216 items on my Take Control to-do list. At the beginning of 2024, I thought I might get to that point by the end of 2025, and projecting out further, maybe I’d be able to retire by, say, my 66th birthday in 2033. At the end of 2024, well…I couldn’t even guess.

I’ve started saying no to everything I can possibly say no to. Requests to speak to user groups, take on another writing project, beta-test new software, volunteer for the thing at the school, whatever? Sorry, but no. Anything that does not move me materially closer to fulfilling my existing obligations has to be a pass. Even so, working as many hours as I am physically and mentally able, every single day for the next year, will not be enough. Barring, of course, some Very Surprising Thing. I do not expect to win the lottery, because math, but I do acknowledge that very occasionally the weird random things that happen can have a positive outcome.

Apart from that, until I encounter a better idea, I will slog away as best I can, but without joy. You can see how that being all I have to look forward to for the next many months is not conducive to my mental wellbeing.

Future Shock³

Then there was the whole U.S. election and what will result from it. Usually, when my preferred candidate isn’t elected, and I kind of go, “Too bad, but we’ll have another shot in x years.” But we all know this isn’t one of those situations. However bad you might think things are going to be, I feel confident in saying they’ll be worse. (And if you don’t think they’re going to be bad, well, that’s hilarious.) I don’t know whether the United States, or indeed the world, will recover from what’s about to happen, and of course Canada is flirting with making exactly the same disastrous decision. So I’ve got that background existential dread going on, but that’s just a part of my feeling of pessimism about the new year.

I’m old enough to remember when the average person regarded honesty, compassion, dignity, hard work, and integrity as virtues. When telling the truth, helping people in need, owning up to mistakes, and working together to make life better for everyone were seen as both normal and obviously positive things. Sure, there have always been bad actors, but now, the “good guys” have largely conceded defeat, leaving the “bad guys” to redefine “good” and “bad.” The new default morality appears to be: that which helps the richest people become richer is good, everything else is bad, and people who think they can still behave scrupulously are idiots.

And yeah, I know, there are still vast numbers of good people (going by the old definition) in the world, and I’m sure you’re one of them. There just aren’t, apparently, enough good people to stop the bad people from runing everything for everyone.

When I was at that high school reunion, several people said to me, “Oh, I remember you. You were one of the smart kids.” I’d reply that when they told me that in high school, it wasn’t a compliment. That was the rationale my classmates used to put me in the “not one of the cool people” box, to exclude me and even ridicule me. Being smart was, somehow, a negative thing, from the point of view of people who didn’t consider themselves smart, because it didn’t match the self-image they wanted to have. And today, I see an analogous phenomenon happening across a broad swath of the population. People have literally turned “woke” (as in “aware of, and concerned about, social injustice”) into a negative, an insult, a thing to be scorned and avoided. They’ve decided that ridiculing fairness, equality, compassion, and even facts is more appropriate to their self-identity.

Of course, the rich and powerful manipulated them into feeling that way, because it serves their interests. But the result has been that enough people have reversed the polarity of their morals to put the world on a fast track to unrecoverable damage. It breaks my heart, and every time I look at the news or social media, the situation looks even worse than before.

And so, it’s not my personal struggles or the actions of a handful of politicians that give me grim feelings about 2025. It’s the fact that “bad is good, and good is bad” has become the new normal. No amount of retirement savings can make me feel OK about that.