My fantastic mother-in-law signed me up for some virtual races that give medals for Christmas, but among them was a run called F*CK 2022. The medal of the run is a middle finger which of course I’m cool with, but what got my brain churning was the idea that there being a race with this theme, there has to be some overwhelming sentiment that 2022 was anything but a good year.
Which brings us to the question in the subject of this post, was 2022 a bad year?
Honest question, because I’ve been living in a pretty small bubble since 2022, and my exposure to the news and happenings of the world outside of it are more limited than ever, and I’ve become one of those grownups who lets theFacebook feed me curated news and really only hear of things from that, Apple News and the shit that my friends talk about in a group chat.
I don’t watch any television beyond the specific things I want to watch, which most certainly does not include any form of television news and I don’t venture out on the internet to all the news websites and Atlanta-centric sites I used to, so I’m going blind to even local things.
In the past, I felt it was important to be well informed and knowledgeable of news and current events, because if anything at all, that could make me better at conversation, but I really just like being in the know of things. But after the rise of COVID and having kids and having kids in the age of COVID, it’s just not as important, and far behind the priority of making sure my kids are safe and fed every day.
Needless to say, my bubble has shrunken to where I have to ask other people if they think a year was bad or not, because I don’t really think my opinion holds any weight. Because within my bubble exists pretty much just my kids, mythical wife, sports, wrestling and working for the sake of making money in order to live, and just about everything else exists outside of it.
Throughout the last few years, I’ve created living documents for every year, where I’ve literally narrated a tiny blurb to summarize every single day, of notable things and happenings, because I’m of the mindset that something important happens every single day, be it as small as one of my kids successfully eating something new, or as momentous as Russia invading the Ukraine and daring the rest of the world into another World War.
Some years have been really sad to look back through, because there’s a mass shooting every single month, or the deaths of notable people in the world, but as far as my interests and explorations of the world via the internet go, combined with the happenings of my daily life, I don’t think I’m wrong in thinking that something important does happen, every single day.
Regardless, looking back through my 2022 log, it validates just how much of a bubble that I live in, because a vast majority of my daily notes revolve around my kids. The things they’re doing, how many times they’re getting sick and ping ponging ailments between themselves throughout the year, their sleep habits and behavioral developments, among other things.
Piggybacking onto the kids is what was without question, the biggest challenge throughout the year, which was childcare. To boil it down, childcare was a nightmare for over half the year, and my household burned through two full-time nannies because their personal lives were flooded with bullshit and it kept overlapping into ours in the form of flakey no-shows, excuses and exasperating sick days. And when we weren’t dealing with them, we were paying out the nose for temps who were pretty competent, but were bleeding us financially.
Fortunately, we were able to find and gain stability by making the wisest choice we’ve ever made, which was embarking on bringing an au pair into household, even if it came at the cost of me losing my personal office space. She has brought stability to my home, which helps in just about every other facet of our lives, and my biggest regret is that we didn’t do this sooner.
As far as my kids go, obviously #2’s growth was at the forefront of everything, as we closed in on year one of her life. She went from starting the year hating naps as if taking them would result in her getting charged money to now having the fairly predictable daily schedule we’d dreamed of, like a year ago. She’s now walking and close to running now, and her mouth is starting to formulate words beyond repeating syllables; she knows how to say mama and dada, and has even begun sounding out her sister’s name.
But as far as notable wins go, #2’s crowning achievement on the year was probably becoming a full-fledged working model, and showing up in Targets nationwide as a Carters baby.
Not to overlook my eldest, #1 is still the trailblazer for The Hong Girls, and she who sets the bar and does all the things that become experience for mythical wife and I to raise both our daughters with. She is a bright, intelligent and physical whirlwind of a superstar that is the sparkling apple of my eye, and she never fails to astound me on a daily basis of her steady growth, both physically and intellectually. #1 is smart, too often smart for her own good, but I’d rather have that, than a kid who was intellectually below the curve. She has started preschool and dance classes, even if they come with increased exposure to sickness.
Which has most definitely been the case, as it’s safe to say that throughout the year, my household has housed and circulated more bugs and sicknesses in 2022 than 2019-2021 combined. The year started with a COVID exposure, where mythical wife was the only confirmed positive, but it’s safe to say that we all had it, and there was one more exposure where #1 possibly had it, but by virtue of vaccines and boosters, nobody else seemed to get it.
Aside from my family and kids, 2022 started off pretty positively for me career-wise, as I changed jobs, and left behind an excruciatingly toxic boss who was trying to get me to quit over the last two years, and I was more than happy to oblige her. As much as I loved my former company, I had hit a ceiling, and I just don’t play “the game” at a level to advance any further, aside from having a toxic boss, so it was time for me to leave. And it was all for the better, as I got more money, a better working title, less stressful work, and am teamed with better human beings that also have children and better understand my needs as fellow parents, and has created a healthier work-life balance that I so desperately needed.
Mythical wife and I both got new cars this year, with me capitalizing on the insanely nuclear used-car demand, flipping my previous, barely driven thanks to COVID car for its AWD-turbo big brother, and mythical wife plunking down and getting the Tesla that is our fancy new high-tech toy that we both get to drive around.
In all of the sports that I care about, baby luck continued to charm the team that I favor, with Georgia slaying the dragon and starting off the year by defeating Alabama for the National Championship. And then it influenced Virginia Tech’s transition into becoming a basketball school, where they marched into the ACC tournament as a lowly #7 and upended Clemson, Notre Dame, UNC and Duke en route to win their first ACC championship.
The Braves weren’t as lucky, having used up their allotment of baby luck the year prior, as they lost Freddie Freeman to the Dodgers in a very ugly and drama-filled breakup, but the team still won 101 games and won the NL East in dramatic fashion, but in true Braves fashion, were bounced from the NLDS by the fucking Phillies of all teams, who fortunately lost in the World Series, getting no-hit along the way, to the Houston Astros.
2022 was also a World Cup year, where in spite of all the criticism and shade thrown by the rest of the year for it being held in Qatar, was actually one of the more entertaining World Cups, ever, with Argentina winning the whole thing, in spite of their embarrassing opening game defeat to Saudi Arabia which was probably rigged the whole time. But at least Korea showed like real winners, notching a dramatic and exciting win against Portugal which advanced them into the knockout stage for the first time in 12 years, before they got bounced by Brazil, unsurprisingly.
Notable television watched this year was not a lot, as I simply don’t have a lot of time in my life for television anymore with dad duty peeling me away from watching as much television as I’d like to watch sometime. But I enjoyed the fact that the year allowed for both seasons four and five of Cobra Kai which is the ultimate guilty pleasure show that best described as being a show that has no right to be good as it is. I enjoyed the initial season of the Letterkenny spinoff, Shoresy, which showed a tremendous amount of heart coming from a property built on crass bros-manship. I enjoyed the final season(s) of Atlanta, and respect that Donald Glover picked a good time to walk away, before the show really could have a chance to sour.
After what felt like a lifetime, The Walking Dead finally came to an end, where it limped to the finish a lot like Breaking Bad and Dexter did, except that it didn’t really end so much as it exploded at the finish to set up all sorts of spinoffs and alternate properties, which made my roll my eyes heartily at the cheap finish.
And despite my general ambivalence of it, I kind of got into the Game of Thrones spinoff, House of the Dragon, which brought back some excitement of the original show, but also served as another reminder of how George RR Martin is basically never going to ever finish writing Winds of Winter, much less any of the other books he has to write in order to conclude his original story.
Outside of my bubble, some notable events were big enough for even me to catch notice, like Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, and the ensuing grand humiliation of a smaller country playing hardcore defense to repel the larger invaders with great success. On the domestic front, America basically declared war on the female gender, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, threatening the reproductive freedoms of everyone, and making me think that it’s a good time to pursue a snip myself.
And in true American fashion, both of the aforementioned conflicts paled in comparison to the attention and exposure of the war between Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard, which I personally couldn’t give any two cat shits about, but was virtually impossible to ignore, not helping the fact that the trial was taking place approximately 5.5 miles away from my old house where my dad still lives and where I had to stand when I got my first speeding ticket.
Noteworthy deaths that managed to pique my attention throughout the year:
- Bob Saget
- Gilbert Gottfried
- Queen Elizabeth
- Kevin Conroy
- Jason David Frank
- Pelé
But all of them fall a thousand stories in priority to the one death that mattered the most to me this year: my good boy Chase, who crossed the rainbow bridge back in March, after 15-16 estimated years of being the goodest boy of them all.
In spite of that last sad note, I still have to say that overall, I can’t really say that 2022 was a particularly bad year. Despite going through some dark personal clouds throughout varying parts of the year for myself, I still feel optimistic and positive after a good Christmas holiday and a much-needed weekend off from earlier in the month. I don’t hate my job like I did this time last year, my kids are growing and bring me endless happiness, and although my bubble remains small and sheltered, things in general are not as doomy and gloomy as they may have felt in prior pandemic-addled years.
With a modicum of stability achieved on my biggest challenge of this year, here’s hoping that 2023 keeps that upward trajectory, and that everyone in my life also has similarly positive gains.
