On 2016, six days later

Jerry Holkins over at Penny Arcade wrote this the other day, and it crystallized a couple of things for me:

And… yeah.  That’s about right.  Not only was 2016 the worst year of my life, even before we take into account anything that took place outside of my immediate household, its nefarious and evil aspects spilled over into the end of 2015 and the end of 2017.  At the end of 2015 I had a Health Event, ending up in the hospital twice.  I was on medical leave for months and resigned at the beginning of 2016.  I figured I’d be employed again within a month.  Two, at the most.

It took six.  And I haven’t had a weekend off since, and three days a week I work eleven-hour shifts, barely get to see my wife, and effectively don’t get to see my son at all.  And my income is, well, we’ll say unstable.

I’ve sold one book (99 cents!) in the last two months and haven’t written a single word of fiction since July.

Oh, and my mother-in-law is in hospice and probably has less than a week to live.  It could very well be today.

And that’s before the part where we installed a fascist in the White House, a fact that overshadows every single other bad thing that happened outside of the walls of my home last year and that I have been firmly in a state of I Cannot Even for weeks.  I was talking with an old friend about it the other day; it’s really odd to know you’re in a state of denial, to recognize it and not be able to do anything about it.

My job is dependent on the economy being functional.  I need to be preparing for Armageddon over here, in what may as well be a completely literal fashion.

Nothing’s getting better this year.  Nothing at all. As much as I’d like to endorse that last sentence up there, and I really want to, I don’t know how to protect anyone from what’s coming.

Fuck 2016.  Fuck it to death.  And by God, by the end of this year I’ll probably be looking back at it with nostalgia.