Chaos & Confetti

Chaos Here!

The new year is often a time of celebration, the turning of the metaphorical page into the next chapter of our lives.  I regularly hear about how ready people are for a fresh start.  New year, new me!  Others look at the changing of the calendar as an excuse to reflect.  The end of one year and the start of a new one has meant many different things to me during my life, but I find myself entering 2024 with mixed feelings.  I’m not sure I was fully reading for 2023 to be over.  I have a confession to make. 

I might be a failure.

A BREAK FROM THE NORM

If you’ve read our blog over the last couple of years, you might have noticed that we didn’t make our normal end of year wrap-up posts.  No favorite shows and movies.  No holiday hauls.  No goal posts for the next year.  Heck, even this into-the-new-year post is coming almost two weeks into 2024.

Why?

If I may quote a great song by Jukebox the Ghost,” Time and I don’t see eye to eye.”  In many ways I have to think of 2023 as my incomplete year.  

Sure I knocked out plenty of shows and movies, but a much larger list remains unfinished (Love, Only Murders in the Building, Grown-ish, Clone High, Tiny Toons Looniversity, Bird Girl, My Pal Superman, Star vs. The Forces of Evil, Ted Lasso, Invincible season 2, Behind the Attractions, etc.), and that doesn’t even include the long list of shows or movies I wanted to watch and never started.

I did crush my new book goal this year, reading 73 instead of 52 books, but at the same time I still have a massive to-be-read pile and a number of started but not finished books (The Winners, How to Sell a Haunted House, The Sunlit Man, The Golden Enclaves).  I also came nowhere near reading the 50 comics I hoped to get to this year.  

The list of incompleteness goes on and on, and knowing me, I probably left a few things off, leaving even my incompleteness list incomplete.  Our 10×10 board game challenge only made it to six games played at least 10 times.  Our blog dropped from 154 posts in 2022 to only 74 posts in 2023, which meant that a lot of planned content never got done: Clashes, Cooperative Challenges, reviews, and recipes.  I have video games sitting partially complete or still in their shrink wrap.  While many online are complaining that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is too short, I still haven’t completed it.

Even my time with friends and family felt like they took big hits this year.

So again, I might be a failure.

Like a library patron realizing their two week checkout window is up with no more extensions and that they haven’t even finished half their book, I’m stuck asking…

WHERE DID THE TIME GO?

I can present plenty of excuses for undone tasks: harder work year, higher level grad classes and more of them, my kid dealing with big medical issues on top of already being a toddler, family and friend commitments, a busy life.  On the other hand, I have to admit plenty can be blamed on me: poor use of time, letting other priorities take precedence, laziness, lack of motivation, poor decision making, inaction due to feeling overwhelmed, and distraction.  Maybe I poured too much time into trying to do well at my local Lorcana league?  

Let’s be honest, I might have more done if I started fewer books and shows, and just finished what I began (sorry, I’m a mood reader/watcher, and sometimes my wife Confetti decides she doesn’t want to watch something any more which means I have to watch it during my almost non-existent me-time).  Heck, maybe I should set more realistic goals.  Maybe I should just admit that this is a busy season of my life with school, work, and a toddler.  

No matter how I slice it or what I contribute the failings to, they still don’t feel good.

TAKING STOCK

When I look at my life through the lens of to-do lists, checklists, set goals, deadlines, and timelines, it really creates a strange perspective on life.  Placing a checkmark next to a task can be thrilling but do putting away my socks and taking down all the Christmas decorations really deserve the same end action and standing?  Is it cheating if I find out I have to email someone back, so I do and then I add it to my list just to check it off?

As my wife Confetti will quickly tell you, I am not exactly a super list and checklist kind of guy.  Unless it’s work, packing, gift-getting, school, and a few things that tie into the sphere of Chaos and Confetti, I often feel comfortable just winging it and doing things as they feel needed.  (Trust me, Confetti hates when I recommend just walking around to see where we end up or hopping in the car with no dinner plans, assuming we’ll eventually settle on something).  I usually use lists when I truly need to stay organized, or I hope to have something cool to look back on later, either to remember or to pat myself on the back about eventually.  But again, I do have them, and incomplete ones can be haunting too.  

So, let’s try to think about success the same way I look at my son’s growth.  There are dozens of childhood milestones to keep track of, but the truth is that there is a wide range of times when those milestones are supposed to be hit.  Some kids talk early, some take more time.  Some are running, while others are crawling.  While I would never ignore some developmental red flags, my policy tends to be to ask, “am I seeing positive progression?”  Again, Confetti doesn’t always love it, but if our son, Yeti, seems to be learning new words, mastering new skills, and surprising us with new developments, I’m pretty pleased overall (again, this is coming from a dad who hasn’t had to deal with any serious delays or red flags; I should also note that Confetti’s forward planning and attention to detail is a huge contributor to any success we have as parents).  

So, maybe I didn’t hit all the milestones I wanted, but maybe I should celebrate where there has been progress or steadiness over the last year.

A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE

I want to take a deep breath, shake my head, and look at my “successes:”

• The blog slowed down but is still going
• We bought a car
• Still employed and still passing in grad school
• Our Instagram and TikTok following has grown
• We did some traveling
• We experimented a bit more with talking videos
• Our child’s health is overall doing better and is being managed
• Actual publishers have let us review and playtest their games
• We celebrated five years of marriage
• We checked going to GenCon off our bucket list
• We spent a lot of time with our toddler and helped get him excited for activities and traditions he’s actually starting to understand now
• We went to PAX Unplugged as official media
• We won tournament medals at PAX Unplugged
• We still played a bunch of games this year
• I did really well at my local Lorcana leagues

Those are the things off the top of my head, but the list really does go on and on.

I (we) failed to meet a bunch of goals in time for our self imposed yearly deadline, but that’s okay.  We’re still standing and simply starting another round.  There will always be more to do and too much of it, but I’ll try my best to focus on the successes we do have and the joy of those victories in the moment.  

Not to say I haven’t already started a new year of board game tracking on BGStats, created a document tracking this year’s tv shows and movies, and set a Goodreads goal.  They’re still kind of cool to reflect on later.  Sorry, but I can’t help myself