As I write this, we’re a little more than 24 hours to go until we move into 2020. A change in year. A change in decade. All that, plus a Presidential election and such.

2019, stressful as it’s been in some cases, has been surprisingly productive and successful for me. Sure, my day job continues to be frustrating, though some shifting in responsibilities has made me rather indispensable, and allows me to use some skills I haven’t gotten to use for a while. I am waiting anxiously to see whether the number of times I’ve pulled our department out of the fire translates into decent pay increase (I should actually know by now, but given the scheduling of things, I don’t). The good news, I guess, is that this job isn’t likely to go anywhere any time soon.

In my other job, that of Semi-Professional Rock Star™, I’ve probably had the most productive year of my life. For one, I made more money, by a significant margin, than I spent, on this hobby that almost pays for itself. I played a bunch of great gigs up and down the east coast with the Humdingers and as myself (including my shot as “Special Filk Guest”, and successfully wrangled and maintained a regular paying gig as open mic host at Castleburg in town, and this gig looks to continue all the way through the coming year. I also got my songs featured on some national, if niche, media, like The FuMP and Filkcast, which is pretty cool, if I do say so myself.

Also, I took a big step and recorded and released my own record, which, while not exactly setting the world on fire (yet), has already made back the money I invested in producing the physical CDs, which is nice; I won’t go broke on the deal. In any case, going ahead and putting my stuff out there, both live and for sale as recordings, is kind of a big deal and involved me stepping way out of my comfort zone. The Chuck of even five years ago wouldn’t have been able to do it.

Yay me.

I’ve mostly maintained my svelte figure (I’m maybe ten pounds heavier than I want to be at the moment, but my clothes still fit, and I was able to speed-hike three miles in 40 minutes this morning), am still taking care of myself physically and mentally, and as a middle-aged man, that helps – I’m still in better shape than I was in high school, which is indeed something at age 45.

Oh, and Phoenix, the awesome cat, came into my life this year. I wasn’t originally down with adding another cat, but given her story, and her personality, I kinda had to go with it, and now I have a new best buddy for life. I’ll take it.

All these things in my life kind of needed some commemoration. My lovely wife and eldest daughter decided to enable that with their Christmas present to me:

I think it captures most of it. It took me 45 years to decide what was worth emblazoning on my body for the rest of my life. This is it.

Happy New Year, folks.