So, I turned forty this year, and I’m choosing to focus on that for the moment.
I became middle-aged slowly, but I possess very little doubt that I’m there. It looks different than it does for my parent’s generation. My father hit forty and ran for city council; the big 4-0 was looming for me, and I decided to ship off to library school for… reasons…? It looks different for everyone, I suppose.
The first stage was the fact that I’ve had the temperament of a middle-aged man since I was twelve. I was doomed a long time ago.
The second turning point? When Lora and I were having dinner at the Rancher’s Club in Stillwater at some point in the last several years. Our waitress—likely a HRAD student at the university—was making conversation as we were settling up the bill, and asked if we were staying at the on-campus hotel. We were.
“Oh, my parents like to stay here, too,” she said.
Silence filled the meal as we both had to launch into some frantic math to try to prove her wrong, only to come up short.
We still tipped well (because to not do so is sociopathic) but remain shaken to this day.
The third turning point? I don’t know what has changed inside of me or in the world, but by far the most common reaction I have to anything I see online is, “What in the hell am I looking at?” And that’s only occasionally when I’m looking at TikTok.
I don’t mean to lament getting older. I’m kind of enjoying it on some level. The few times in my twenties I behaved like I was in my twenties were the least enjoyable of that decade. And it turns out that my thirties were dominated by Donald Trump. Can’t say that I enjoyed that all that much…
Ahem.
I feel less of a frantic need to be spinning as many plates as possible. The world might be on fire, and the things larger than life are obstinately staying in the horrifying mode, but I can still find some peace in life. I’ve got a great marriage when I can kind of see that a lot of people don’t quite crack the code on that one. I’ve got a job that has yet to break me, despite their woefully inadequate best efforts. I have outlets that get me out of bed in the morning. I am content to sit with Lora and watch movies, putter away at my typewriter and fountain pen, record podcasts, and help out where I can, all the while hoping that the next leap will be the leap home.
Ahem.
I may have lost the thread on that one.
As with pretty much all of the years in this decade, I’m happy to report that I had a good handle on any of those things in life that can reasonably be under my control. The things outside of my control I am only prepared to give the attention it needs, but no more. Important to avoid sticking one’s head in the sand. You might think I’m landing on the wrong end of that divide, but if you remember from earlier, I’m an old man now, and I can do what I want. I guess.
Finished the aforementioned grad school, and while it may not fuel the sweeping changes to my career I might have hoped, going, graduating, and doing it right exercised more than a few demons from previous misadventures. If I ever again have that stress dream where it is finals week and I didn’t know I was signed up for a class, then I might feel differently about the whole ordeal.
Although I might have once white-knuckled my way through two years of co-hosting Beyond the Cabin in the Woods, I just finished a third season with those ghouls, and can’t imagine giving it up now. The Holodeck is Broken aired its 100th episode and rapidly approaches stuff that first aired when we started making the show. Lora and I occasionally brainstorm ideas for a The West Wing re-watch podcast. We may need that in the coming year.
I keep helping out with Circle Cinema, and I really like it. With the strikes of 2023 back far enough in the rearview mirror, I only hope that 2025 leads to more things with a place of which I have become very fond. Between the larger world and festival screeners, I’ve managed to watch over 300 movies this year, and that doesn’t even begin to cover the films on regular rotation. I may yet try to track just how many films I watch next year in total, although I may drop that by March as it will just horrify (or perhaps delight) me too much.
Here are my top five new movies of the year:
Code 3 (You’ll hear more about this one in the new year; take it from your Uncle Mac, this one is legit)
For this being the last year that I took something of a sabbatical from the writing career, I also somehow managed to write more than I have in any previous year, with 292,061 words put down. Some of those words will disappear into the aether of grad school Discord posts, but some might not. Since graduation, I’m now back on a regular writing schedule and may have some stuff to show you in that arena in the new year.
As always, here’s my reading list for the year. There may have been a few more graphic novels than I might have otherwise liked, but I did make my goal, and you can’t tell me otherwise. As in years past, audiobooks or those books Lora read to me are marked with “(a)” and graphic novels are marked with “(c)”.
Young Adult Literature In Action
MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios (a)
Universal Monsters: Dracula (c)
John Adams (a)
Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design
Vincent and Theo (a)
The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe
Bone Gap (a)
Dune
Starter Villain (a)
Star Trek Picard’s Academy (c)
The Time Machine
The Sun is Also a Star (a)
Franny and Zooey
Better Living Through Criticism (a)
They Called Us Enemy (c)
Legends of the Ferengi
Indiana Jones Omnibus, Vol. 1 (c)
Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
Superman 78 - The Metal Curtain (c)
Becoming Batman (a)
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
The Dead Zone (m)
I am the Cheese (a)
Quiver (c)
Superman: Funeral For a Friend (c)
The Nineties (a)
Apollo 13 (a)
The Bat-Man: First Knight (c)
Sounds of Violence (c)
The Killer’s Shadow (a)
Reign of the Supermen (c)
Nothing Lasts Forever
Autobiography of Mr. Spock
Doctor Who - Origins (c)
The Time Machine Did It
The Sun Also Rises
The Creature of the Black Lagoon Lives (c)
Kubrick: An Odyssey (a)
Moby Dick (CI) (c)
Blood, Sweat, and Chrome (a)
Without a Doubt (a)
A Mystery of Mysteries (a)
Hamlet (CI) (c)
The Art of Power (a)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
2061: Odyssey Three (a)
The Three Jokers (c)
Making it So (a)
The Kid Stays in the Picture (a)
Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong (c)
The Truths We Hold (a)
Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? (c)
Elon Musk
Michael Curtiz: A Life in Pictures (a)
Ghostbusters Vol. 1 (c)
Glory Days (a)
Universal Monsters: Frankenstein (c)
Knights of the Round Table (CI) (c)
Damned (c)
Casino Royale (a)
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
Escape From New York, Vol. 1 (c)
Escape From New York, Vol. 2 (c)
The Unfinished Haraud Hughes (a)
All Systems Red (a)
Justice, Inc. - Vol. 1 (c)
Based on a True Story - A Memoir (a)
Relativity: The Special and General Theory
Batman: Resurrection
Alternating Current (c)
Mark of the Phantasm (c)
The Shawshank Redemption Revealed (a)
The Autobiography of Benjamin Sisko
Knife (a)