What Just Happened, 2024?

Taking stock of a year full of the soul-wrenching polarity of grief and joy

This year has been one for the books. Unspeakably challenging, and unimaginably joyful. It’s wild and difficult to hold both things together at the same time. And yet. We persist in holding the impossible polarity to achieve life’s greatest promise.

We are told that we should strive for a “good life” but that stereotype too often looks like The Good Place, a (spoiler) “heaven” ultimately revealed to be a new kind of hell. In reality, life is a lot more like a video game: you attempt to survive the onslaught of various threats in order to win some kind of prize. (I never really played video games so gamers, if this offends you, just insert some other kind of sportsing metaphor here). Yet in life, unlike video games, the prize is rarely a weapon or treasure. Instead, it’s a moment of elation or joyful euphoria — being in a place, with people you love, or celebrating a milestone moment. The challenge of adulthood isn’t trying to escape the trials that life will inevitably force you through, it’s trying to balance psychologically and emotionally, the reality that someone you love can be dying at the same time you’re pledging to love someone else “forever.” Life’s most joyous moments can also be haunted by unspeakable sorrow.

This year has been full of these kinds of stark polarities…

In the month of April: finding out I was pregnant and losing the pregnancy.

Finding out I was fired on May 31 and getting married one week later.

My father-in-law’s diagnosis with a mysterious brain-eating virus (seriously, not a zombie-movie fiction) overshadowed so many joyful family moments this year… my son’s second birthday, family time together at the New Hampshire lake camp in July and in Rhode Island in August, our family Camino to Spain, our wedding day.

A vow to love another person “in sickness and in health” takes on new meaning when that person’s father is watching you make your vows via Zoom from a hospital room four hours away.

We considered postponing the wedding for when he would get better, but ultimately decided not to because we knew he wouldn’t have wanted us to delay that standout moment of joy on his account.

It’s hard to keep living when people you love might be dying.

It’s the triumphs you can only imagine… the ones that when they happen will make you feel closer to God, that help you keep going.

Walking 500 miles, alone, in the third trimester of my second pregnancy was the ultimate Camino, one I’m still processing. But it planted the aspiration of “more Camino” in our family so last year, when my stepdaughters wondered “When will we get to walk a Camino…?” We decided, why not now? Last February, we started training to take our almost-10-year-old, our 13-year-old, and almost two-year-old on a 100km walk. This might sound like a banana-pants plan for collective suffering, but it turned out to be an extended moment of shared joy – again, one enjoyed against the lingering backdrop of family illness.

Walking into Santiago de Compostela for the second time just two years after the first felt like a magnificent triumph, and one I was so elated to share with my now-husband and children. Walking twelve miles a day for multiple days in a row shows you what your body is built for, what it’s capable of. As a pregnant person, my body was constantly getting more encumbered, which meant every day got harder instead of easier, but our family’s five day jaunt from Vigo to Santiago let me have the real Camino experience, this time fully in command of my body.

This year, my son has also discovered an obsession with the Pixar Cars franchise. He has also decided he is displeased by the sound of my voice in song (he shouts “NO!” anytime I start singing) so I often resort to putting him to sleep listening to the Cars soundtrack. On my list to write about this year, Cars is a fascinating experiment in making a kid’s move for a working class audience. In an attempt to appeal to that… demographic, it features a fair amount of country music.

Night after night, I listen to Brad Paisley sing Behind the Clouds…

[Verse 1]

When you're feeling lonely, lost and let down

Seems like those dark skies are following you around

And life's just one big shade of gray

You wonder if you'll see the light of day

[Chorus]

Behind the clouds, the sun is shining

Believe me, even though you can't quite make it out

You may not see the silver linin'

But there's a big blue sky waiting right behind the clouds

[Verse 2]

I've heard it said that this too shall pass

Good times or bad times, neither one lasts

But thinking that your luck won't ever change

Is like thinkin' it won't ever stop once it starts to rain

It’s the kind of twangy little earworm only a country great could come up with and through the trials of this past year — my father-in-laws mysterious, undiagnosed illness, my painfully abrupt unemployment, the unspeakable grief of pregnancy loss — I used it like a mantra.

It can’t rain forever. It can’t rain forever. Brad Paisley promised! It can’t rain forever.

This November, I finally landed an offer for a new job, so the rainstorm of protracted unemployment is finally clearing up.

My father-in-law’s medical mystery tour is over, though with a far less happy ending: this month, he enters hospice.

For Fetch Me Home, this year was a productive one.

I published 30 posts, seven of them about my Grandmother Marjorie, and her path to becoming a Soviet spy. I wrote about weaning my son and about driving stick. I railed against the brokenness of America’s political technology, the deafening media dominance of the male voice, and my own political history. I ranted a lot about economics: about the economic injustice of war, about my personal experience with poverty, about fear, and work, utility maximization, extractive capitalism, scarcity, and who gets to decide who gets to decide. Last year, when I started writing Fetch Me Home, I thought I’d be writing a monthly missive about my grandmother, a way to hold myself accountable to telling a family story that has gone too long untold. But this fall, I realized I’ve got more to say here, and upgraded Fetch Me Home to a weekly newsletter that says a lot more than A Family Spy Story (though it’s still possible to subscribe only to that, if that’s what you’re here for).

Many people come to Substack with a clear conviction about the community they are trying to build, and that conviction clearly pays off. This week, “my weekly stack” fed me a post by Jeannine Ouellette from December 2023, her overview of how she grew her Substack last year.

How I Grew My Substack from Zero to 40K Annual Income in Just 12 Months

Jeannine describes her community as a fusion of George Saunders and Suleika Jouad, both Substackers I have yet to indulge myself with paid subscriptions to but who remain high on my discretionary income dream list once I can manage a Substack subscription line item in my monthly budget (fingers crossed 2025 is the year). I hope that by the time I’m in my 50s, I have as much clarity and conviction as Jeannine has in her Substack. But on the cusp of my 39th birthday, I’m settling for meandering through life at the speed my two-year-old can walk. It seems fine — even nice sometimes. (Unlike Jeannine, I can hardly describe my writing work ethic as “ferocious.”)

I’m unsure exactly what the essence of the community is that I’m building here, but I’m hoping that the next year will lead me to greater clarity on this question. It’s connected to the world we’re building and birthing together, a new kind of lived experience that helps us stand together as we hold and cherish our moments of grief alongside the standout moments of joy. (Still working on the “post-it” framing here… suggestions welcome.) It’s going to be about parenting, because that’s the stage of life I’m in, and a certain kind of essential “creativity” part of the human race has to be engaged in in order for us to continue life on planet earth… But it’s also going to be about my creative ambitions and creative process. I’m a lot better at writing down my soul than I am planning what I’ve got to say, so it remains to be seen exactly what this means but… I think it’s going to be good? I hope you’ll stick around. And maybe tell some other people they should hang out here too, sometimes…

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This year, I was grateful to receive comped subscriptions to a few publications due to my unemployed status which really helped get me through.

Dinner: A Love Story is just the best food newsletter, and Jenny’s free offering, Three Things, is simply the best. Seriously. Do me and your future vegetarian self a favor and buy at least one of her books.

As best I can tell, Sarah Fay, who writes Substack Writers at Work, is the leading authority on how to be a good Substacker.

I’m still figuring out how to operationalize all her advice, but I’m so grateful to her for making it available to me at my time of greatest need, and I hope that my life creates the opportunity for me to become a paying subscriber of hers again soon.

Virginia Sole-Smith is maybe the most impressive Substacker I’ve had the pleasure of following now for more than three years. I have no idea where you may be on your body liberation or anti-fat-bias journey, but believe you me, we all have something to learn (and unlearn!) from Virginia.

Please help me thank these people for their generosity by subscribing to their newsletters.

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Throughout my life, I’ve found myself enthralled by quantitative New Year’s resolutions — for years now, I’ve been resolving to “read 10 books” and somehow can’t get it done. (Let 2025 be the year!)

And then there are the years you get lucky — this year I resolved to publish 12 posts and somehow managed 30. You can’t always predict how your lived experience will live up to your soul’s ambition.

As I head into my 40th year, I’m as tempted as ever by the alluring promise of resolutions. And this year, I mean to make them stick. I’m hoping this public accountability will help.

I’m planning on reading six physical books, and listening to six audiobooks (if I succeed, you’ll be the first to hear about it…)

I’m planning on publishing at least 50 posts, and growing this community to 500+ subscribers (y’all are here to hold me to it.)

This year, I’m going to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time — write a musical. It will be a love story about a toddler (yes, really) and his parent (who are puppets), and I absolutely can’t wait to share what I am sure will be a magically transformational (and insane) writing process with you here!

This November, I got to experience a course on immersive experience design taught by the inimitable Zach Morris of Third Rail Projects. And my brain is still steaming with the possibility of immersive experiences I have yet to manifest. I know it sounds clinically insane to suggest that I might do a new job, write 50 Substack posts, write a musical, and produce an immersive experience while also parenting a toddler but… you don’t walk 500 miles in your third trimester or pregnancy to think small and say no to big dreams.

My 30s were full of tumult. I’m cautiously optimistic my 40th year on Earth is the start of a new, exciting chapter. And I can’t wait to see what happens.

I am so incredibly grateful to you for reading along with me on this journey.

I turn 39 on Saturday and to celebrate, I’m offering a 39% off annual subscriptions to Fetch Me Home.

If you’re thinking about making the leap behind the paywall, now’s the time. This year, I’ll be writing about the significance of the 10-year anniversary of my abortion (!!!), about the challenges and joys of stepmother, and of course, publishing the cliffhanger next installments of A Family Spy Story. As I write this post, I have to imagine this year will also hold updates on the promised resolutions above.

Your support will be celebrated and deeply appreciated. Looking forward to seeing you behind the paywall in 2025.

Xo A

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