2023 was a strange beast of a year. It marks some of the best experiences of my life, but also, if not the worst experiences, at least some very bad ones. So I don’t know what this post will be like, I’m thinking it might lie somewhere between coherent and incoherent, but here goes.
Cycling is one of my absolutely favourite things to do, but also, I’m stricken by extremely bad travel anxiety. I haven’t done a multi day cycle since August 2019. Covid hit, and then, my bike developed an unfortunate tendency to just, keep having mechanical problems, over and over again. It was like that for the entire Summer, and now that it’s too cold to cycle anywhere far away, the bike has, decided to behave itself. So I’m hoping I can get in at least one multiday cycle, a 3 day adventure would be great!
My astronomy has been in stagnation since 2021. 2020 was the best year of astronomy I ever had. 2021 was also great, I found Uranus and Iapetus. But, 2022 was essentially a box ticking exercise. I have set myself the goal of finding at least one new astronomical object a year, and I did that in 2022, but it was an object that didn’t look very interesting, and there is no interesting information available on it. And then in 2023, it was the same, again, an astronomical object that I found, that didn’t look interesting, and I can’t even learn anything interesting about it. So my hope for 2024 is to find something new and interesting! I was hoping I could end 2023 by finding Vesta, my first asteroid, but clouds and a bright moon ruined my chance of that, so I’m hoping that 2024 can be the year of my first asteroid!
I’ve been working on an album since 2021, called Neurotypical Empire Vo1 1: 2244. I have gone through several stages of self doubt with it, not knowing if I can finish it, and often periods of four months or more would be wasted, just doubting my ability to do it. But now, out of ten songs, I have four completely finished. The instrumentation is almost done, and all that’s really left is vocals and production. In fact, I would have reached the 50% or more completion point during the Christmas holidays, except I got a blockage in my left ear (not the right), so I now have partial earring in my left ear, so I can’t mix any of the songs! I’m still getting a lot of useful work done on the album, but the fact that I can’t completely finish any more of the songs has been a source of frustration! So hopefully 2024 is the year I finish this album that has been the source of such joy but also a lot of self doubt!
2023 was the first year I played any of my own songs in front of a live audience. It was so great to finally put my songs out there like that, and to work with such great musicians. More of that please!
I hope I can get my problem with overeating under control in 2024. For years I have found it near impossible to stop eating huge amounts of junk food. I don’t like the fact that I have a compulsion to eat foods that frankly, are likely to shorten my life expectancy. Hopefully I can do something about that in the new year.
And speaking of health, that’s something I’ve always been very lucky with. Other than a really bad sprain I got a few years ago, I’ve never known any extreme pain. And that’s something I worry about. That some day, maybe this year, maybe next, I will develop some terrible ailment, and I will just be in a lot of pain for the remainder of my life. The fact that I have been lucky so far gives me the feeling that, rightly or wrongly, I’m “overdue” to develop some sort of chronic health condition that leaves me in a lot of pain and discomfort. So I have a terrible fear that this is the year that my luck runs out, and the days of a life free of physical pain will just end.
Another way I have been very fortunate, up to now, is that I have never lost anybody that I’m close to. I know many, many people who have lost close friends or close family members, to accidents or to disease, but, it has never happened me, and I feel blessed every day for that. But I’m wondering, is 2024 going to be the year that happens, when I finally lose someone, who is a really important part of my life. How would I deal with that? Would I ever be the same after it? It’s frankly, not something I would even know how to process, and yet it’s inevitable, there is no real possibility of it simply never happening.
During 2023 I have seen a continued normalization of bigotry. In my daily life I see transphobia, homophobia, racism and antisemitism go completely unchallenged in conversation, I try to speak up against this myself, but too often, I’m the only one who does. I worry that 2024 will see a continuance of this trend. With social media and you tube, any bigotry and prejudice that is commonplace in America can land in Ireland within a day, and we’re seeing many imported controversies that barely make sense in the context of Ireland, so now I’ll too often hear antisemitic rhetoric from other Irish people, and it seems to come from the fact that they are more likely to hear bigotry coming in from the United States then they are to meet a Jewish person. It will take a very long time to try and solve this problem, but hopefully, hopefully, we can make a start in making things better in 2024.
The October 7th attack by Hamas on Israel was beyond horrific, and it was rightly condemned by people from around the world. It chilled my blood to think of so many innocent people murdered. But Israel’s response to this was simply horrifying. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has received the denunciation it deserves, but so many world leaders are silent about the horrific murders of innocent people that Israel is inflicting on Gaza. I hope 2024 will see an end to the bloodshed, and hopefully, some sort of path forward to insuring that nothing like this is repeated in the future.
For the last few years I have gotten more pessimistic about humanity, it just started to seem like humanity wasn’t making progress in ending bigotry and intolerance, and that climate change would just be allowed to continue, unchecked. But I found hope for humanity in a place that I don’t know will people expect, in space exploration. I thought of all the massive achievements in space over the last few decades, the Voyager probes reaching the edge of the solar system, the Huygens probe landing on Saturn, and the launch of the James Webb Telescope. So I hope we learning more amazing things about our solar system, our galaxy, and our universe in 2024. The Europa Clipper mission will launch this year, and it will fly around Jupiter’s moon Europa, though it will take many years to get to Europa, where it will give us the closest views of the surface we have ever seen, and hopefully get us closer to answering the question, is there life under the surface? And James Webb has already stunned the astronomical community, despite launching very recently, in 2021. I can’t wait for 2024 knowing that James Webb is up there, looking at exoplanets and galaxies, showing us the wonder of the universe around us.
So 2023 was a lot of things, it was one of the best years of my life, but also a big indicator that there are still many problems, in my own life, and in the larger world. But hopefully 2024 can be full of cycling, music, and space (as in outer space, but also having enough space is also good!) I hope 2024 can be a year I spend around people who are good to be around, and that I can continue, as I’ve been doing for the last few years, to further distance myself from people who’s only goal is to bring others down and to create a negative environment. Despite some negatives I have talked about, I still have a lot of hope for 2024. I mean I’ve already finished a new blogpost so it’s already going well!
Ponderings Of An Autist 