It's the end of the world as we know it and everything feels like it just sucks
This end of the year roundup is not a symptom of ADHD
How do you write a year-end post after 2021?
Maybe start with a lede less hackneyed and derivative like that.
Yet, that’s how a lot of this year felt.
Trends defined 2021. We consumed them. We reported on them. We analyzed them. Before we found meaning in them, we moved on to the next one.
Along the way we bickered, and I mean bickered. That bickering became a constant divide, permeating through everything. We even bickered about how we were bickering, and tried to find meaning in everything that we were doing to justify the mental energy spent on whatever debate was flattened and flushed out for all to see online.
So, what are we left with after all of this? Nothing more than arguments to fill the void of another year lost to a deadly pandemic with no real end in sight.
Basically, we burned through a bunch of conversation starters this year but in a way that made us all hate that we were even talking to each other.
That’s the energy I’ve felt lingering over me in a really dreadful manner this holiday season as I try to look back and find things worth really enjoying from this year.
There have been plenty of good things that happened this year. I turned 30. I started HRT. I still have two wonderful dogs that make me really happy. I have a day job. My freelancing career is still going. I achieved my New Year’s resolution. I have good health and am exercising regularly again at a high level. I survived COVID!
In a vacuum all of these things seem great. I could have written the same paragraph about 2020 though, minus the COVID (I think). The big goal my partner and I have been working towards since November 2019 still hasn’t happened. We’re both just where we were at the start of March 2020, essentially.
And that fucking sucks.
Every year I like to post a Twitter thread of my favorite pieces I wrote during the year. Its a nice exercise to remind oneself that you produced a lot more work of value than you realize, and it gives others an opportunity to catch up on what they may have missed from me.
It is purely self-indulgent when the Twitter likes and retweets come in, though. I won’t lie about that. It is nice to see others share your work and say nice things about it.
I can’t even bring myself to make a thread this year. It feels derivative. It feels like its every other year. It feels like I’m just trying to get external validation because we all feel so alone.
Here’s five pieces I wrote this year that I liked, if you want to read them. Or don’t. I don’t really know what matters that much at this moment.
Escape Plans, Anxiety, Death Threats: Trans Kids in Texas Are Under Attack. This piece is pretty straight forward. Its about escape plans, death threats, and the anxiety that trans families in Texas face.
A Day in the Life of Three Transgender Athletes: What it Takes to Be Elite. This piece is pretty straight forward. Its about what it takes for trans athletes to be elite.
In the Southeast, heightened danger and few protections for trans people. This piece is pretty straight forward. Its about how trans people in the Southeast — where I live — face a lot of danger and have very few protections against it.
How You, Personally, Can Fight the Anti-Trans Bills Surging Across the U.S. This piece is pretty straight forward. Its about how you personally can fight against anti-trans bills surging in U.S. state legislatures.
Anti-LGBTQ coalition targets Equality Act in the name of America's children. This piece is pretty straight forward. Its about how a coalition of anti-LGBTQ groups are fighting the Equality Act, and how they are messaging it in the name of children.
I get asked to write a lot about trans people. I think that’s a good thing because as a trans person I tend to understand trans people a little better than cisgender people.
I have written about a lot of different topics in my career though, and sometimes I get sad I don’t really get to write about non-trans things. There doesn’t need to be a trans angle for everything in my opinion, but trans people are in the news a lot these days, so that’s what I get asked to write about. It makes sense. I am a news writer primarily.
I don’t think a lot of people used to know I was a foreign correspondent, and a beat reporter. I’ve interviewed people such as former UN Secretary Generals about Korean reunification, and countless politicians in other countries on topics such as infrastructure decisions and corruption probes. I covered sports forever, and genuinely enjoy writing about them.
As always if you want me to write about something feel free to email me at sydneyerinwrites@gmail.com. I think I would make your newsroom better. Although, maybe not. Maybe there’s a reason I’m stuck where I am.
People keep talking about the new Matrix movie, over and over, on social media.
I watched it the day it came out and really liked how it added to the original trilogy while being entertaining and fun. It was enjoyable.
A lot of people didn’t enjoy it though, and they made it very clear. That — in turn — upset a lot of people who defended their views of the movie because the feeling of those belittling or outright dismissing something of purpose for them was too much to bear.
This turned into a much larger discussion about what the movie meant, even if the movie told us exactly what it meant, and then a discussion about how what the movie meant reflects on your position in this world at large.
Essentially, the last week online has been watching the montage scene where the video game designers in the matrix discuss how they can make the matrix 4 video game, and work to distill what the original matrix trilogy meant so they can incorporate it in this new movie.
The scene was one of the weaker ones in the movie in my opinion, so needless to say watching it play out in real life over and over in the holiday season hasn’t been the most fun thing possible.
That’s life though. You don’t get to choose what other people are doing, no matter how much you can curate it to your likings. Sometimes it just is what it is.
What it is though can feel really much like being stuck in a tar pit as it dries up around you.
One of my favorite non-Succession television shows, Joe Pera Talks With You, had its third season this year.
The show is short, episodes are only around 12 minutes long, and they follow the titular main character explaining a mundane topic that intersects with his life and the community around him. The first season showcased its storytelling by taking topics such as “a fall drive” or “what you eat for breakfast” and making them meditations on the world around us to levels that most big budget television shows fail to achieve over a 22 episode arc.
As the show went on, we moved beyond just the musings of Joe and learned about the people he lives with in Marquette, Michigan, and how their lives — as different as they are — intersect with his. The world at large does not have the same childlike wonder that Joe has for the mundane, but he doesn’t try to change their views or make them better people, he just lives his best life as they try to live theirs.
Joe’s grandma unexpectedly dies in the second season, and episodes after tackle moving on through the grieving process. It’s not linear. It’s not easy. But we all have to face grief and move through it eventually.
Sometimes the new family that moves into your Nana’s old place puts a Barn Star on the facade of the house and there’s nothing you can do about it. This can destabilize someone, trying to grasp something in an infinite well of grief and make complete sense of it. Joe feels lost during a lot of this season, but he isn’t making any grand discoveries or changing who he is fundamentally as a person. Instead he continues through his life picking up the pieces and finding what works for him and helping those around him when he can.
Joe finds solace in woodworking and builds himself a chair to end the season. His girlfriend has been dealing with major anxiety episodes throughout the fall, and is getting increasingly sadder and worried as winter comes. While Joe is processing his grief he ultimately takes time to help his girlfriend with her anxiety, realizing that for their relationship to work they both will have to take some steps forward together. Joe uses the money from his Nana’s house to buy some property outside the city so he and his girlfriend can build a cabin together. The sense of purpose Joe got from building his chair, and the desire for his girlfriend to find a new outlet to channel her anxiety into something that can benefit her is met in this moment.
As the show reaches its climax, Joe plops his chair down in the snow and sits on it. It does not break. There is no sight gag. Instead, you see the character rub his eyes as he is tearing up. The sheer emotion of everything that had built up to that moment got to him. It may be one of the most beautiful, profound moments I watched on television this year.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this show as I tried to come up with a way to sum up my feelings for this year. Its been nice to think about how we can draw the beauty from the mundane around us and apply it to our lives in ways that are both big, small, productive, and just silly. Spending most of my time online I think I lose a lot of that most days. The internet flattens how you think and how you act. Yet, I need it to keep making a living.
What did I learn this year?
I read a lot of books this year on a lot of different topics. I met new people and had new experiences in places far from my house (taking risk into account due to the pandemic, and successfully navigating it!), while having a lot of alone time as well to reflect.
Yet, I don’t feel as if it’s enough. I don’t feel different from how I felt last year. And I’m not in that much of a different place as I was two years ago. Typing that out really sucks, but its also the reality of the situation.
We just keep going. The passing of time is both arbitrary and needed to bring the necessary order against the entropy of the universe. A year doesn’t have to mean anything really, but also it marks very important milestones that guide life forward and how we make and produce things.
Maybe two characters are just written to fall in love because love is a guiding emotion for humanity.
Maybe how we feel is both universal and yet so, so personal.
Maybe, we just don’t always have something profound to say. Or maybe we do.
Maybe the answers are coming, we just haven’t learned how to look for them yet.
Maybe there is no answer and we just have to live with some things.
Maybe this was a waste of time. Maybe it is exactly what I needed.
Maybe we just need to turn the page. It is blank after all.
Happy and healthy New Year.