Opinion

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.

It’s not like me to write multiple blog posts in a single year, but hey, 2020 has been exceptional for all sorts of reasons. Years ago I had a custom of writing wrap-up posts every December 31, and since I’m going to be procrastinating on real work today anyway, this seems as good a time as any to bring back that practice.

First, a quick update, for those who read my post Not Really OK back in July: basically, nothing has changed. I’m no more OK now than I was then. Still ambulatory, still solvent, still pretty uniformly unhappy, and still incredulous at the number of people around me who reject both common sense and basic human decency, no matter how many others have to to suffer as a result.

Daily life continues to be very, very hard. To be fair, it’s certainly not as hard as it is for people who aren’t ambulatory or solvent, and in that respect, I count my blessings. Even so: hard. Owing to my introverted nature, I don’t mind solitude or the lack of in-person socializing. Indeed, what troubles me most is the fact that, conditions being what they are, I can almost never actually get any peace and quiet, any uninterrupted time to think, work, or relax. For example, as I write this, our six-year-old son is shrieking in the other room several times per minute, ignoring all entreaties by other family members to tone it down. This will likely continue until bedtime. That’s just one of many ongoing irritants that collectively make me feel like I’m locked in a cell and forced to listen to Easy Street blaring all day and night, if you know what I mean.

Speaking of said son: From a certain point of view, he’s handling this whole situation better than I thought he would, given his disabilities. Due primarily to my wife’s heroic efforts, he is in fact managing to learn a few significant skills and is making a nonzero amount of academic progress. He still has not-infrequent meltdowns, but it has been many months since he experienced an actual warp core breach, and that’s a tremendous relief. But he has still lost a tremendous amount of ground compared to his erstwhile progress in a real classroom, with in-person teachers and therapists. A few months ago, we thought things were moving in the direction of him being able to go back to school soon-ish. Now, not so much.

The virus situation here in SoCal right now is Not Good, and even when it was better, the powers that be showed no willingness to accommodate kids with special needs like our son. Although I’ve always been terrible at predictions, my educated guess based on available data to date (and the inevitable spikes in the weeks to come, following people’s dumb behavior over the holidays) is that our kids won’t see the inside of a school at all this school year. (I’d put the odds at maybe 25% for our fifth-grader, and 0% for our disabled first-grader.) As a result, I expect at least the first half of 2021 to be exactly as not-OK as the past nine months have been. Constant distractions and stress, far too little sleep and exercise, and continuing to fall behind in my work.

There have been some bright spots. Against all odds, our business somehow managed to bring in slightly more money in 2020 than in 2019. Assuming I manage to make some headway on this long list of new and updated books, bug fixes, and new features, 2021 should be an even better year. The U.S. presidential election seems to be probably maybe sort of resolved? There’s reason for hope, anyway, that some semblance of sanity and normality will return to the government in the near future. And we’re finally making some much-needed home improvements that should alleviate certain ongoing frustrations and anxieties.

We’ve also set the wheels in motion for a major life change for the family that, if everything goes as we hope, will kick in about a year and a half from now (mid-2022). I can’t really say more about that until machinery that is largely out of my control churns through a good portion of a fairly involved process, but by the middle of 2021 or so, I hope to have enough data to say confidently that The Thing Will Definitely Happen, at which point I can explain what the thing is and how it will make our lives so much better.

Meanwhile, there are big, important things I want/hope/expect to accomplish in the coming year. If 2020 has taught me anything, it’s to avoid using the meaningless verb plan, because boy oh boy did I plan to do some stuff this past year, and those plans counted for absolutely zilch. As I’ve probably remarked here in past years, I don’t do New Year’s resolutions; notably, resolve is more or less synonymous with plan. Nevertheless there are exciting things on my to-do list that strike me as having greater than 50% likelihood of actually occurring in the next 12 months, and if indeed they do, wow, that’ll be great, and those who follow my exploits will find out about them, in the usual places, in due time.

I have sometimes couched such intentions about the future using qualifiers such as “if the gods are smiling on me” (which, historically, they have tended not to do with any regularity). My grandmother had an expression: “Lord willin’ and the crick don’t rise,” which means roughly the same thing. In any case, strength and circumstances permitting, I will finally polish off this long list of projects, metaphorically clear the slate, and do a Big New Thing or two in 2021. Here’s hoping.

I wish you all a safe, healthy, and prosperous 2021. Unless you’re an anti-masker or anti-vaxxer, in which case I simply wish for you to come to your senses.

There’s a social convention whereby people say, “How are you?” as a dressed-up synonym for hello. It’s not really an inquiry about your well-being, just an empty greeting, and the only allowable answer is “Fine. You?” We all know this.

However, in recent months, quite a few people—friends, colleagues, doctors, my kids’ teachers, and others—have asked a different sort of question. Something along the lines of “So tell me seriously. How are you and your family holding up these days? With, you know, everything that’s going on. Do you need anything? Are you OK?” Words to that effect, anyhow. More elaborate phrasings meant to convey that the inquiry is sincere rather than perfunctory, and that an honest response is welcomed.

So I answer truthfully. And for months, the honest answer has been: Not OK at all. I, and we, are in fact doing quite poorly. Since you asked.

Well, then brows furrow and expressions turn more serious and more detail is sought.

“Do you have…The Thing? Like, are you seriously ill?”

No. So far, at least, no one in my family has had symptoms more serious than the occasional headache or allergy-induced sniffles. As far as I know, we haven’t come in contact with anyone who has The Thing. Physically, we’re fine.

“Oh. Well, did you lose your job? Do you need money?”

Again, no. In terms of money, we’re no worse off than before. We’re not rich, but we’re in no immediate danger of going hungry or losing our home. Financially, we’re fine.

I’ve been through so many variations of those two questions that I now just summarize: No, we’re ambulatory and solvent (for now, anyway). Moving on.

Further questions may involve an inadequate supply of paper products (nope, we have plenty), the lack of social contact (not a problem for us introverts), uncertainty about the future (no worse than usual, I suppose), or worries about extended family (everybody’s safe, thanks). And sure, we’ll make the usual complaints about the incompetent government and systemic racism and the ridiculous state of the world in general, the United States in particular, and especially that specific idiot right over there who’s not wearing a mask. But that’s no different from anyone else and it’s not why we aren’t OK.

So then we have to spell it out.

We have two young kids at home. One is ten years old and sad not to be around his friends and away from school, but he’s coping admirably with everything, and soldiering through the distance learning and the boredom. He’s not at his happiest, but he’s fine. We’re super proud of him.

Our six-year-old, however, is autistic, is non-speaking, has a bunch of developmental and learning disabilities, and has severe problems with emotional regulation, to the point that he is on two different psychiatric meds to reduce the chances of him hurting himself or others, both of which things have occurred quite a few times. He is also not yet potty-trained, and has had significant lifelong sleep problems, despite the interventions of various doctors.

And you know what? That is all OK, even though in some respects it also sucks. We love and accept our son, and we deal with the hard things, because that’s what parents do.

Or at least we were dealing with the hard things.

In the beforetimes, our son was not only in a special-ed classroom at school (with an amazing and caring teacher) but also had a full roster of specialists helping him out with his various areas of need: speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, adaptive physical education, and so on. We also, during some periods of time, had folks coming to our house to work with him, and the (very) occasional babysitter or respite provider for a few hours here and there of grown-up time.

But we’ve had none of that since March. And now that we know schools won’t be open for in-person instruction in the fall, we have no idea when anyone other than the two of us will be able to help care for him in any way. It’s just us, at home, all the time.

Our son requires constant—and I do mean constant—attention, to the point that we have to have negotiations about when one of us can go to the bathroom so we’re sure an adult is within reach at all times. Leave him alone for five minutes and we’re very likely to have a tantrum, broken objects, bruises, and oh I don’t know, how about swallowed cat litter? That sort of thing.

When his school switched to distance learning, teachers started daily Zoom calls and everyone was eager to give us long lists of web-based activities. Unfortunately, our son is unable to use videoconferencing as a means of communication. He can’t speak, he can’t type, and he understands only a fraction of what he hears. And he doesn’t have a conceptual grasp of someone on a screen trying to interact with him. We’ve tried dozens of times, and it just goes nowhere. He also has close to zero tolerance for all the screen-based educational activities, matching games, read-along stories, and other stuff the school district so eagerly pushes.

Where that leaves us is that any education, therapy, or other attention he’s going to get has to come from us, the parents. The best anyone has been able to do is try to coach us on how to be his stand-in teachers.

The thing is, the fact that we’re at home all day, every day, doesn’t mean we don’t have to work. We have jobs—jobs that require actual work to occur many hours a day if we expect to remain solvent—and we can’t do our work while also attending to our child’s every need during his waking hours (which, as I indicated, are far too many and not at ideal times). I’m now dangerously, desperately behind on crucial work projects and slipping further behind every day.

Even before the governor issued statewide guidance about under what circumstances schools may or may not be open, our school district announced that the 2020–2021 school year would begin with distance learning only, further developments TBD depending on what happens with the pandemic. And let me just say: in terms of public health, that is absolutely the right call, and I agree with it.

Except.

Not all students are capable of being educated remotely. Our older son is; our younger son is not. So for all the rhetoric that education is non-negotiable, as far as we can tell, neither the state nor the school district has any plan to address the educational and developmental needs of children like ours who absolutely, positively cannot and will not learn by looking at a computer screen and for whom parental instruction is not feasible. His needs are not being met, not by a long shot, and neither are ours.

Thus the irreconcilable facts are:

• It’s currently impossible (meaning unsafe and/or illegal) for our son to attend school or receive other in-person care appropriate to his needs.
• Our child’s disabilities make it impossible for him to learn remotely.
• We, the parents, lack the skills, the time, and the energy to meet his educational needs; and we desperately need to work.

You can see how that puts us in a no-win situation.

And, as a bonus fact, we are emotionally at the ends of our ropes. We have never gone so long without any quiet time alone (separately or jointly), and it’s driving us (especially my wife) positively bonkers. We’re perpetually anxious, grumpy, impatient, and agitated, but not for the same reasons as most people.

When someone asks how I’m doing and I say, “not OK” and then explain all this, the response is usually awkward silence followed by changing the subject. Because what can anyone say? What’s wrong isn’t a problem that can be solved with money or food or time or medicine. I have an intractable problem, with no realistic hope of a solution in the foreseeable future, and that is why I am not OK.

Of course, that’s not entirely true. Someone could solve my problem, and that person is the specific idiot right over there who’s not wearing a mask. Yes, you. You—and everyone else who seemingly care so little about other human beings that you would rather risk destroying lives than suffer the tiniest inconvenience or the barest slight to your image. You could fix this whole thing in a matter of weeks. You could, but the evidence I’ve seen so far suggests that you probably won’t. I may have no recourse but to stop wearing deodorant and washing my clothes. Then I can at least guarantee you’ll stay (much more than) six feet away from me.

I kid, but not really. Like many other people in similar situations, I’m very much not OK, and I’m surrounded by people who seem committed to keeping me that way.

Since you asked.