Well, I was supposed to be wrapping up my year (mentally) this week in Austin with three hectic days of 2023 planning meetings with my leadership group. I woke up Sunday morning to a canceled calendar invite from my boss, who, along with the rest of his director crew, all seem to have contracted COVID at last week’s summit in Las Vegas.

I put so much time into the logistics, catering, planning, booking conference rooms, restaurant reservations, content and scheduling that I wanted to go anyway, but was overruled by the majority of my group, and fair enough. The larger frustration for me is that we’ll be “planning” for 2023 in 2023 which is a miserable thought for me. On the plus side, it sounds like the rescheduled event will happen here in Denver, which will make for a less insane January since I’ll already be spending the second week of the year back in Texas to hang over this team to their new manager (finally). My team also deserves the attention: I have the highest concentration of high performers of anyone in my group. In fact, I don’t spend enough time really taking in how insane it is that my team is so bad ass. We are actually beating most of North America in terms of key performance indicators. I hope I can promote at least 1/3 of my team in 2023: ideally half or more. They deserve it. They are not only good at their jobs, but they’ve become better-rounded, more cooperative, assertive but thoughtful people and I am proud AF.

I essentially have two more weeks of standard issue insanity, and I made a dinner reservation at a Spanish restaurant downtown with a girlfriend from work to really celebrate the winding down of 2022. While I gained back a few days, I still don’t want to travel, despite considering joining friends in Vegas, or my parents in Myrtle Beach. I am tired. I am approaching “burned out.” I want this year to be over. Any time I get time back in my life, it’s used doing shit I should’ve already done: today I got my flu shot, washed my truck and made an oil change appointment. Glamorous. I’ll be prepping my tax spreadsheets over Christmas break so I don’t have to deal with that hellscape in 2023, as per usual.

Dec 1 was my 8th year anniversary at this company, and it’s crazy to think I’ve been here for so long. One of my real Denver friends here took a contract job in Alexandria, Egypt and is departing in January, and I plan to just bide my time and see what happens with the path I’ve chosen to amble down in the new year. I booked my two weeks in Uzbekistan in April, I submitted my passport renewal app, I’ve completed all of my budgeting and goals/personal year in review spreadsheets early. Yesterday I got a wild hair and decided to throw out the expired food in all of my cabinets, of which there was more than I had anticipated, and that’s a shame. I also dropped off a giant garbage bag of clothes and shoes at Good Will today: items I’ve been lugging from home to home for the past decade thinking I’ll wear them again. Clearly I won’t. I’m not necessarily the kind of person who never gets rid of things, but I do seem to be the kind of person who overprepares, and I woefully overestimate the amount of food I can eat before it expires.

I continue to idealize a week or two of doing nothing here during Christmas break, but I’m pretty shitty at doing nothing, since I manage to over-administer my own life even when I’m doing two people’s jobs instead of one. In the past few weeks, my parents visited, I went to Dallas, I had an uncharacteristically festive Thanksgiving and decorated for Christmas (this is the first tree of my adult life, and it’s quite nice, actually). We also watched Dahmer during the long weekend, which was surprisingly revolting but very good. High recommend if you like to watch serial killer docs on your holiday break.

I have a huge stack of books to read and a lot of stuff to watch as well: I started and finished the much-hyped 1899 series this weekend, which was disappointing compared to this production house’s masterpiece, Dark; My Brilliant Friend season 3 is out and I’ll be saving that for the break: the books (The Neapolitan Novels) were so incredible I’m going to start all over from Season 1, Episode 1. I’m chipping away at 3 books, but I finished one very lengthy one yesterday, The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan, which was so freakin’ good. I also finished Tim Snyder’s On Tyranny (Expanded Edition) which was great, although sometimes it felt like he was definitely not talking to someone who knows much about Ukraine. I’d suggest it to anyone who is interested in tying history to present — it’s interesting to read the same history with varied (although, generally aligned) interpretations from different authors. I downloaded a few other of his books and will knock them out over the break. He tends to surface in the documentaries I watch as well, so reading all of his books is probably overdue.

I’ll be (unsurprisingly) reading extensively about Central Asia over the coming months, although I think I’d be able to hold my own over there without reading anymore on that area. I had looked into trying to get to Bishkek or Almaty or stopping in Baku on the way over as well, but there is so much stuff to see in Uzbekistan that there won’t be time to hit the other ‘stans in the same trip. Frankopan’s book confirmed as much. I don’t know that I’ll spend any time in Europe in peak summer in 2023; I am kind of tired of sweating my ass off over there (I’ve been tired of Western Europe for years; other than metalfests, I’d only ever spend any time there to show my parents Iceland or Spain) and may opt to just spend some more time in Alaska or road trip instead. There is still a 50/50 chance I am talked into Brutal Assault, but as it stands we are already going to Finland for Steelfest in May, and that may be enough. And, I will of course be returning to Mexico for 9-10 days of doing absolutely nothing.

I also spent many hours watching TraumaZone, a lengthy documentary(ish) about peoples’ lives in Russia during the fall of the Soviet Union. It was pretty awesome if you’re into that kind of thing, ie, random old footage strung together into many-hours-long docuseries. I also stumbled upon Turning Point: 9/11 and The War on Terror on Netflix, which was surprisingly good. I guess the narrative is finally changing and we’re all acknowledging the US wasted a shitload of time, money and lives fucking around in Iraq and going into Afghanistan and squatting there for 20 years with no discernible objective. It’s been brutal to watch the dipshit things we’ve done overseas in terms of the Middle East in my lifetime; particularly because everyone was so tired of pointless occupation by the time Syria needed help that we didn’t do jack shit for them, when we should have. There are cool things happening in the world: Ukraine is slowly but painfully gaining ground; Iranians are finally tired of oppressive theocracy. I’ll end up voting for whoever is going to keep the weapons flowing to Ukraine, as I care much more about international events than I do about the shit show that is American domestic policy at this time.

Otherwise, I got nothing. I have not resumed drinking alcohol with any regularity, but I have maintained my step streak and have dutifully gone to the gym 4x+ a week. I have 1-2 friends coming over for Christmas Eve and am making a huge leg of lamb Persian-style and the standard Slavic accoutrements. I will deeply enjoy not thinking about work for days on end; my 4-day Thanksgiving weekend was actually spectacular for that reason.

That’s it for now. I hope to have accomplished more in the way of books by the end of December. If not, I’m not sure how I will pass the time.