Adios, 2019!

Well, it's been a year, hasn't it?

It's getting harder and harder to exist in a public space without pissing a few people off, and this has been the year to just embrace who you are and go for it . . . at least, for some of us. Not so much for others.

Way back in March, in the run-up to 221B Con, I got called "the worst person in our hobby" by the Facebook of a certain Sherlockian book of note, but by the time the con was over, someone else seemed to have stolen the crown, at least on social media. It'll make for an interesting chapter in one of those Sherlockian history Christmas annuals of The Baker Street Journal in twenty years. But all of that showed me one thing about where we find ourselves as we end the 2010s: You both have to not care what others think, and care about their feelings as well.

Seem contradictory? Seem like a fine line? Well, yes, and no.

Creatively, you simply cannot give a crap about folks without craft who like to judge craft. You cannot limit yourself to only exposing those loves that everyone else will love, as there is no thing that everyone loves. If you have faith that someone out there will have a little fun with it, let it out.

But you also have to be aware of the world around you. At well past six decades of life, I've got crap in my head that does not fit in the modern world any more than a manual typewriter does. (Like how to use a manual typewriter.) I could limit all my time talking to people of my generation who get that stuff, but how dull would that be? (We'd mostly talk of our ailments at this point anyway. Shingles vaccines, ouch!) If I'm going to talk to everyone around me, I need to be a little bit aware of what's going on in their heads, even if it's hard to figure out sometimes.

If we thought life was going to be easy, 2019 had some things of its own to teach us, and hopefully, we can carry some of those things into the next decade.

I can't wait.