I mentally began the process of writing this blog in my living room when it was lit by just a fire in the fireplace and the lights of our Christmas tree. The combination of those two things turns what is an ordinary space that I see every day into a magical place, full of warmth and love and memory.

You see, there’s a poem in The Lord of the Rings that really resonates with me at this time of the year, especially as I get older. It’s the song that Bilbo sings to Frodo on the eve of the Fellowship leaving Rivendell: I Sit Beside the Fire and Think. Clamavi de Profundis (who I can’t say enough good things about) sang a version of this song as a farewell to Christopher Tolkien when he passed away a few years back. It’s well worth a listen, especially if you’d like to take the musical pulse of where I am I’m currently.

I’ve always thought of the holiday season as a time for self-reflection in addition to making merry. The world is dark and cold (or cold-er when it comes to Texas), the regular rules of work and life are temporarily suspended as we celebrate in defiance of winter. The New Year has not yet come. We don’t know what it has in store for us yet. We hope, we plan, and some make resolutions, but we don’t know how it will turn out. We sometimes wonder what our world will look like this time next year, though life is far too unpredictable for us to know for sure.

So, for my last blog post of 2024, I wanted to express some thoughts that have been rattling around in my head for a while now. I must warn you, however, if you were looking for a feel-good holiday post, this isn’t it. But, if you would like a glimpse into where I am right now emotionally and my state of mind, this is absolutely the post for you.

Still with me? Excellent — let’s get started.

The Year of Mourning

See, I warned you. This first one is a corker. While there were many bright spots to this year, including reconnecting in person with some old friends, making new connections, and getting to higher ground in numerous senses of the word, 2024 will be known to me as a year of loss. In 2024, I leave behind two pets, a cousin, my mentor, many of my illusions, and much of my faith in humanity.

Grief and pain have shadowed my steps for much of the year. I felt as though I had scarcely begun to deal with one crushing emotional blow when another would land. As I’ve said before, I obviously don’t have a monopoly on grief or pain. I know that this has been an incredibly difficult year for many people I know, and when you look at the wider world, it’s been one tragedy after another. So, I’m not trying to claim some special status for what I’m going through; I’m only trying to tell my little slice of the story.

At times like this, I had always looked forward to the New Year in the hope that it would be better. Unfortunately, that is not the case this time. While 2024 has been the Year of Mourning, 2025 is already the Year of Uncertainty.

But again, we make merry in defiance of the cold and dark. This year, I’m making merry in defiance of that uncertainty. It might turn out to be more in the style of an Irish wake, but if that’s the case, so be it.

Fellow-Passengers to the Grave

I recently had a discussion with some co-workers on our favorite Christmas movies. I may be in the minority, but I generally don’t have a single favorite anything. I have favorites, plural, but my tastes might change from day to day on my favorite song, TV show, movie, etc. Still, if I had to pick a lone favorite, it would almost certainly be A Muppet Christmas Carol.

While Dickens’ timeless tale has been retold countless times in various ways, we have an actor of the caliber of Michael Caine playing Ebeneezer Scrooge, and he plays the role absolutely straight. He speaks and reacts to all the Muppets around him as though they were fellow actors in the Royal Shakespearean Company, and it absolutely works. Watching it this year, as I do with pretty much all the classics, I was particularly moved by it.

Part of it is that A Christmas Carol did more in creating the holiday we know as Christmas than any other. Dickens practically redefined the holiday into what it is today through his prose. It’s one of the reasons why the Victorian era looms large when it comes to Christmas traditions, from Christmas trees (first introduced to England by Prince Albert) to carolers and even versions of what would become Santa Claus.

The other part of it is Gonzo’s delivery, in the guise of Dickens himself, of the famous line about “seeing other people as fellow-passengers to the grave.” Grief has a way of making you think of your own mortality. Sickness does as well, and how did yours truly start off his holiday break? By coming down with a particularly nasty case of strep throat, of course, which is only finally starting to subside. Strep can be fatal if left untreated, but thankfully it rarely is now with modern medicine. Plus, I got on it pretty early when it became clear that it wasn’t just seasonal allergies messing with me. I’ve been pretty lucky in that I don’t get seriously ill all that often.

If anything, this bout of illness has forced me to slow down and focus on my health more than I usually do. Thankfully, I have a decent break from work ahead of me to complete my recovery, but I missed a number of things in the meantime that I regret. Even still, I just crossed paths with a bacterial strain that might have ended my journey had I been born in another time, or even if the right medications were not readily available. That has a way of putting a lot of things into perspective.

What’s my takeaway from it? I’m grateful. Grateful for the fact that help and aid were available when I needed them, that I have the time and space to convalesce, but most importantly, I’m grateful for the people I have in my life. My family, my friends, my co-workers, my extended network — all of them. And if you’re reading this blog, dear reader, that now includes you. I’m grateful to be a passenger with you on this journey, even if we know that it will inevitably end.

The Pale Blue Dot     

This month marks 28 years since America lost one of its greatest minds: Carl Sagan. I’m firmly convinced that if more of us could see the world in the way that he did, we would all be better off. Yet, a mind and a perspective like his are sadly rare. Though the man himself is gone, he left behind an incredible body of work, including his famous “Pale Blue Dot” speech.

If you’ve never heard it, I’ll link it here. It is, in my opinion, one of the most poignant speeches ever given. It puts things in perspective in a way that I’ve never encountered before or since. One of the lines that really speaks to me is this one: “Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”

As I said earlier, I’ve lost much of my faith in humanity this year, and I’m not sure when, or even if, I will get that back. I hope I do, as I feel that I am a humanist at my core. The pronouncement that we, as a species, are in charge of saving ourselves, however, doesn’t sound all that comforting to me at the moment.

Deep in my geeky heart of hearts, I want humanity to achieve the kind of high-minded ideals that the Federation stands for in Star Trek. But I also realize that even in that continuity, humanity had to go through some pretty dark days before it finally got its act together and made the world a better place. Maybe that’s where we are now.

Maybe.

As he closes the speech, Sagan says, “To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

Strangely, this sentiment also echoes the long-held and oft-quoted Christmas sentiment of “peace on Earth and good will towards men.” Lately, it seems we’ve had a lack of both of those things. To my fellow Earthlings, let’s do something about that, okay?

Gandalf’s Wisdom

This year, I introduced my young son to the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films. While he struggled with sitting through 3+ hour movies, he did enjoy them. He felt the emotional highs and lows just as I did. While the entire cast is famously, almost absurdly, talented, I really have to hand it to Sir Ian McKellan in his role as Gandalf the Grey/White. He really delivers on one of my favorite fictional characters of all time.

Gandalf is one of the great mentor characters, up there with the best of the best, the likes of Merlin, Alpha Trion, Morpheus, and Obi-Wan Kenobi. As an immortal maiar, an angelic being, Gandalf has been around since before Middle-Earth existed. So, Gandalf is extremely old and wise. He’s also quick to give the protagonists under his care an inspiring quote just when they need it most.

Trust me when I say, that we all could use such a quote right about now to lift our spirits or show us the folly of our ways. But as Gandalf stubbornly stays in the realm of fiction, and most definitely not in the real world, we have to content ourselves with the various portrayals of him in the books and in adaptations of those books. I’m drawn to three quotes in particular. For LOTR fans, these may seem like low-hanging fruit, but they are three that live rent-free in my brain right now:

• Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened. Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

This one is pretty self-explanatory, and one of the most famous. The moment in the movie when Frodo stands on the banks of the Anduin, contemplating his plight, and he hears this quote again gets me every time.

• Gandalf: Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand. Many that live deserve death, and some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death and judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends.

I think what calls to me about this quote stems from some of the deep-lore surrounding Gandalf himself. He was once a servant of Nienna, the Valar (one of the gods of Middle-Earth for those not familiar with the term) who understood sadness and grief in the most profound way. She mourned the destruction and sorrow that existed in the world, often before it had even happened. Because of this connection to grief, she was also a being who appreciated compassion and pity beyond all others. Gandalf is often cited as the wisest of the maiar. I suppose that is why I have always associated wisdom with compassion and empathy.

• Gandalf: Saruman believes that only great power can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I’ve found it is the small things — the everyday deeds of ordinary folk — that keeps the darkness at bay, simple acts of kindness and love. Why Bilbo Baggins? Perhaps it’s because I’m afraid, and he gives me courage.

To some degree, I feel this speaks to my relationship with my son. He’s a deep thinker, and feels all the doubts and apprehensions that this implies. But, ultimately, he is an optimist, and sometimes surprises me with his insight that seems far beyond his short years. Even though I can at times feel hopeless, he gives me the courage to keep going.

Final Thoughts

It’s been a rough year for me all right, personally, professionally, and creatively. I am not looking forward to writing the State of the Sector Address for this year, simply because I had so many misses and so little to show for the past twelve months.

Despite the somber tone of this blog post, I don’t want to end it on a down note, truly. So, how do I strike a delicate balance between a meaningful Christmas message and the not-so-holly-jolly state of mind that I’m in now? Simple, I’ll refer you to Loreena McKennitt’s A Midwinter Night’s Dream album. Her versions of some well-known Christmas classics are introspective, even a little melancholic, without being depressing or nihilistic. And that’s pretty much me right now.

In particular, I would recommend The Holly and the Ivy, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Emmanuel, and Snow, though there is not a bad track on the whole album. Even if Christmas is not your thing, or even part of your belief system, they are beautiful expressions of music that I highly recommend.

And that’s where I will leave things for 2024. It’s a year that I’m glad to leave behind, but one you can be damned sure I won’t ever forget. It has left its mark on me. But as my father is so fond of saying, “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you really wanted.”

Despite my reticence to approach the State of the Sector Address this year, I will be moving forward with it, regardless. I know my delivery dates for blog posts have gotten a bit unpredictable of late, but my plan is to post it on the Friday of the first full week of January, so January 10. Watch for it then.

In the meantime, I wish all of you out there, along with your families and friends, a holiday season filled with light, joy, and hope.

Thanks for reading, and take care out there.