Can't wait for this year to wrap up. Typically, this is when we—so entrained in looking back and memorializing the waning cycle—conclude whether the year was good, fair, or bad. Certainly, taking an ubiquitous view of the world, anyone with a grain of sense must extrapolate 2018 to be one of the most consequential years since the end of the second world war. White nationalism on the rise here and overseas, an American president and his sycophantic congressional stooges strickening our democracy with plunder and pillage, immigrant children dying at the border, federal workers' wages frozen, and corruption turned into a virtue is indicative of the peril we face. Since there is no vacation from this virulent destabilization enveloping us in its pernicious effects, the refuge offered by spiritual specialists and dilettantes to visualize what you want over what you don’t … Well, to quote songstress Shania Twain, "that don't impress me much." 

With justice dangling on the thin thread of Mueller’s investigation and a New Democratic Congress, and mastering Trumpian lingua franca to translate the next existential threat, I’m not feeling “for auld lang syne,” exactly.

On a personal note, I’ve grown exceedingly blasé to perfunctory iteration suggestive of interest in my writing and publishing endeavors. Inquiries about what I’m writing and publishing, and the availability to acquire, apparently only the extending of social custom pleasantry. Turns out, I’ve only been writing for myself—a reading audience of one. The past couple of years have been excruciatingly disappointing. Twice this year, I discounted my latest book, Thinning of the Veils at half-price in special online sale offers. Passed the word to self-proclaimed “fans." Books sold, zero.

I do not intend on repeating the same dearth of satisfaction this coming year. I’ve eliminated many fruitless actions, activities, and assumptive beliefs in securing my place in the world of print. Facebook gone, Linkedin gone. Starting fresh in 2019. I write for myself, I blog for myself, and I waste no time on lip service. 

Onward!

— Carl