2024, Signing Off

A long time tradition of mine was to end the year by texting “Let’s All Try Harder Next Year” on whatever instant message/chat/social media mechanism was the current container of “the group chat”. It was supposed to be funny; but also a sort of oblique New Year’s resolution; no specific goals other than “trying harder.”

I fell out of the habit for what are probably obvious reasons, as The Twenties got going it seemed less and less funny; as a tweet from the Old Twitter said years ago, “no resolutions this year, it’s the circumstances turn to improve.”

2024 was not a great year, personally, professionally, politically, socially. Or maybe, to put that another way, ’24 was a year of huge disappointments; ’23 spent the year looking like things were getting better, ’24 was an extended exercise in the world saying “naaaahhhhhhhh.”

2024 was the culmination of a lot of failures, and ’25 is where those consequences start to play out. But, to quote Waring Hudsucker: “Failure should never lead to despair. That despair looks only to the past, in business and in love. The future is now.”

None of us know what 2025 has in store for us, but I’m perfectly confident that I’ll be worse—and stupider—than 2024 in nearly every way as the Disaster of the Twenties rolls on. I think the right attitude is to be looking for opportunities to reflect the year’s energy back at it, aikido-style. Otherwise, not much we can do except hold on to each other and find a way though it.

There’s a whole “post an image with the energy you’re taking into 2025” meme going on over on bluesky at the moment, and:

See you all in the future.