Goodbye 2024, and not a minute too soon
And don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya
I know, I know, you were probably expecting a Nosferatu review, and are now deeply disappointed. It’s coming, and anyhow “deeply disappointed” should be the mood surrounding the end of 2024 anyway, wouldn’t you agree?
Anyway, I’m just going to say this right now: anyone who says they’re excited about 2025 should be treated with, at minimum, suspicion. Whatever explanation there may be for it, either you’re looking forward to everything being more expensive because the President-elect doesn’t know what a tariff actually is and seeing mass deportations, or just because your own life is blissfully free of problems, I don’t trust you. At the very least, you might be an alien in a skinsuit who has not yet learned how to read a room full of humans.
On a personal level, the best I can come up with is “cautiously optimistic,” but that’s often a challenge when it’s competing against “growing panic.” I don’t really know what lies ahead, because, if you’re new to this newsletter (and admittedly I don’t write about it much here), I’m facing a kidney transplant, likely sometime in the next few months. Heavy shit, right? Tell me about it. I’m not afraid of the actual surgery, I’m sure I’ll sail right through that with no issues. But recovery from an organ transplant is rough. I’ll be taking a lot more medications, many of them with deeply unpleasant side effects. I won’t be able to leave my house much beyond doctor’s appointments (of which there will be a lot at first) for a couple months, which doesn’t sound too bad in theory (so many projects I can catch up on! I can finally watch The Bear!), but I expect by the middle of the second month I’ll be running around my house with an ax shouting “Heeeeeere’s GENA!”
Beyond that point it’s even murkier. There’s no reason to believe that I won’t make it to old age with this new kidney (especially since, I’m thankful to say, I’ve remained in otherwise good health during this whole experience), but what kind of world will I be trying to exist in with a suppressed immune system? Will I have to wear these fucking masks forever? What if by some insane course of events steroid and heroin enthusiast Robert F. Kennedy Jr. does become in charge of Americans’ access to vaccines, and Congress really does decide we don’t need to worry about polio or measles anymore? I was vaccinated against those things, but that was literally over 50 years ago (I am old), so what will happen to me? Will I actually be able to return to the normal life that lots of very cheerful pro-kidney transplant websites tell me I will? I honestly have no idea.
I can’t think too much about the future on a wide scale. I don’t know what’s going to happen, and that’s a real challenge for a person with an anxiety disorder. Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe these people we somehow put in charge are so stupid and ego-driven that they’ll be too busy eating each other alive to do any real damage to decent people. Or maybe everything they promise will happen, and it will be terrible, and somehow Eric Adams will win a second term as Mayor of New York City, and I’ll just give up on trying to understand any of this and go lick a measles-covered subway turnstile to get it over with.
So, in the spirit of present mindfulness, I will continue focusing on my creative output to keep the “but what if????” demons at bay. As I’ve mentioned here numerous times (as opposed to waiting on a kidney transplant, which you’d think would be a bigger deal), I’ve been writing a book this year, and I think it’s extremely likely that I’ll be done with the first draft by March. So I have that to edit down and make something near publishable, plus other projects and ideas lined up. Five other ideas for books, I must be out of my gd mind. I also have other things I do to keep the goblins asleep, and a long list of potential projects, plus Kill by Kill, which keeps on trucking, and will somehow be turning 9 in 2025.
And of course there’s this thing, which I’ve elected to focus on instead of actual professional film reviewing (not that I was doing it on more than a dilettante level anyway, I may or may not write something about that later). I have some new ideas for this going into the new year, including sharing excerpts from my book (or at least, stuff that I think is good but maybe don’t make it into the final draft), as a taste to whet what I hope will be some eager appetites.
Is this all burying my head in the sand, focusing on my own dumb bullshit so I don’t see how bad things are going to get? I suppose. I saw a post online criticizing people for having hobbies when there’s so much suffering in the world, as if to imply that your only hobby right now should be reading, watching, and listening to as much as you can about said suffering. I can’t do that. I don’t know that anyone could, and I don’t believe people who say that’s all they do, because the human mind isn’t meant to endure all that. Or at least, mine isn’t. There’s a point where constantly being locked into the 24 hour “now here’s some more bad news” cycle just becomes a modern form of self-flagellation.
So! I shan’t be doing that. Just like Ken’s job is “beach,” mine is “writing stupid shit on the internet,” and that’s what I’ll continue doing. I’m not trying to make that sound like some heroic “raging against the dying of the light” gesture, I just literally have no idea what else I can do. I don’t know what’s going to happen going forward. No one does, although there are certainly many people who have a vested interest in convincing others that they do. After I get a new kidney I’ll have to take things on a day by day basis for at least a little while, so I might as well get in some practice now.
I’m lying, of course. It’s impossible to drop 50+ years of catastrophizing everything in an instant. I don’t know if anything short of completely rewiring my brain (by, like, sticking a fork in an electrical outlet maybe) would put an end to that. But I’ll try, and as we enter the uncertainty of a new year I’ll do what I can to make it bearable, regardless of what happens, for both myself, and for you.
As long as 2025 has you in it, it'll be a good 2025 for me. (Even with all the screaming and the venality and the Den of Thieves administration and whatnot.)