I wrote a couple days ago about how I do not really care for all my year-in-review things that have been cropping up all over the place since they mostly just remind me of the incredibly varied and emotionally draining year I’ve had (and I’ve had more of these things crop up since then that just further cemented this unfortunate pattern), but I wanted to take some time to end the year on a more positive note. I spent all year writing about my struggles and what made the year difficult, often in broad strokes that brushed aside all the positive stuff that actually happened, so I wanted to take some time to paint my year in review by connecting all the bright spots in a way I rarely take the time to do. It is, after all, so much easier to be miserable. Still, I think it’s work worth doing before I wrap up 2023 (well, aside from one last piece of Flash Fiction that will be posting tomorrow) and maybe it will help lift my mood as I prepare myself for whatever heaven or hell 2024 will bring.

It’s difficult to pick a place to start, since most of the beginning of 2023 is a bit of a haze thanks to the stress, but one bright spot that sticks out is the incredible Dungeons and Dragons session I had with three of my friends. It was our last session of that campaign (though we didn’t know it at the time), and my character was pretending to be another character in order to make use of my more applicable combat skills in the tournament that she’d entered. It was a lot of fun and the GM did a great job of shifting the mini-game’s mechanics so that I could make use of my better abilities (my character, Lewis, was a Rogue/Warlock multiclass, so he was good at bluffing and dodging and very little else, but my GM was willing to give me bonuses for creative ideas). Lewis won in the end, which set all our characters up for a great moment of conflict following our victory (which was supposed to set up an entirely different conflict). It was a lot of very tense fun and I really hope we return to that game some day so we can finish telling that story.

Next up is my trip to Spain and the friends I made along the way. I meant to write more about it and share more pictures, but the entire trip and its results weren’t the fully positive (if exhausting) experience I’d hoped they would be. They were still largely positive and one of my current closest friends is someone I met for the first time in Spain as we gathered to catch a taxi to our Airbnb. I had a great time visiting Europe for the first time and the highs of that are moments I will think back on for years to come. I wish I could afford to travel more and that I had the time to learn other languages (I’m not very good at it, so it is slow going for me), but that’s a nice goal for my future self once I get my student loans paid off in (hopefully) the next couple of years. I’d really love to see more of the world since the glimpses I’ve gotten of the world beyond my own horizons have always filled me with wonder, joy, and passion.

The next bright spot was the small but intense community that sprung up around my streaming in April. Sure, it fell apart a bit in the months after that, but so did I. Still, when I think of my time as a part-time streamer this year, that month of playing Breath of the Wild while my sister and friends (old and new) cheered me on. I still think some of the funniest things I’ve ever said where on that stream, between my spur-of-the-moment jokes, my coherent rambling, and the little bits of improvisational poetry I tossed out as I focused on the task before me. All of which goes without mentioning some of my greatest moves, my closest calls, and my most hilarious death. It was a great time and I hope to someday return to streaming so I can recapture that fun.

After that (and not very long after it, mind you), I got to be the Person of Honor in my friends’ wedding! It was an amazing event that went pretty well, as far as weddings goes. Nothing horrible seemed to happen, the ceremony was beautiful, and I got to be a part of a major milestone in the lives of two friends so close I think of them as family. It was a great event and I had a wonderful time getting to see all my friends from the Spain trip again and celebrate such a wonderful occasion. And that wasn’t even the only wedding of this year! I got to be a legal witness in the Halloween wedding (Hallowedding) of two more close friends, also acting as a person of honor of sorts in their very stripped-down but still lovely ceremony, holding onto the rings, reading a bit of poetry they’d picked out, and holding up the dice tray so they could roll for initiative to see who got to read their vows first. It was also a lovely ceremony and I’m so happy I got to be a part of two such wonderful occasions this year.

Mixed into that was the background glow of deepening friendships, newly forged relationships, great games, a return to reading, a new apartment that is free of everything that made me miserable in my old apartment, and the slow forward churn of time required to cement and expand the personal growth I’ve been working on for years through therapy, coming to better understand myself and my identity, and become the person I want to be. All this often fades behind the general grey malaise of my depression, anxiety, and the stress of my life, but it is still there, helping me get through the dark, difficult days because even if I don’t always think about it, I can usually find something to comfort me or spark a little bit of joy when all I can think about is my own sadness and misfortune.

Next year will not be easy. It will hopefully be easier than this year (and less stressful, while I’m hoping for things), but I think that it will be better day-by-day than this year was and that will be enough. I may sometimes worry that I set the bar too low since I’m so used to being miserable all the time (thanks to my terrible childhood and various mental health issues), but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being able to find contentment easily as long as you don’t allow it to trap you in unhealthy situations or turn into complacency. Whatever happens in this next year, I will go on. That, at least, I’m pretty certain of.