If there were a way for a casual viewer to passively keep tabs on updates to this blog, they might think that the lack of an appearance of the one thing that has remained consistent would be harbigner of said blog's final demise. But, while late, here we are. Being in the middle of travel pushed out the publication of my annual reflection, but it is here.

Hi, you. Welcome back.

I'm in an interesting position this year, I feel. Even different from past years, where I felt I was in some sort of limbo waiting for things to happen. Indeed, there's a certain amount of "limbo" now that you're a married man and the search for love is over, but it's basically a limbo at a known cruising altitude. Okay, whatever.

What's in store for 2022? Assuming your little swimmers are as good as that app says that they are, you're either Daddy Matt or soon-to-be Daddy Matt. How that timing plays out is anybody's guess, but I'm putting my money on the "soon-to-be" version of history.

As for the things that pad your life around the expectancy of spawn... well, that's the unknown. Disney trips, sure. There's the talk of going to New York City. Dennis' 50th birthday bash is... coming up very soon, actually. Lots and lots of house projects on the brain: exercise room, changing office rooms, doing up a nursery, building more furniture. And, of course, there's that burning desire to Hakk's Lab it up: SNES boombox, house sign, anything utilizing the fun of the maker's space, possibly those house projects?

I dunno. Whatever you've done this year, I hope you take care of yourself and your wife and just enjoy things.

Before I go into it, a muse. The format of this series of letters at some point devolved into predictions of the future and perhaps a short list of things I wanted to achieve at the time of writing. What that leaves me with at the end of the year is a "hey, I called it!" and "didn't achieve that... again" post. I suppose the whole point is to capture my thoughts at a moment in time, and later reflect on it with the benefit of hindsight. Is that useful? Is it a notch in the ruler of my life that I can use to measure whether I've improved over the previous year (whatever that measurement looks like)? I dunno...

The "limbo" thing is an interesting note to open this letter on. At various points in my life, it's felt like I was waiting for something. Be it college, career, relationship, or some other fourth thing, I've often had a background feeling that I'm just waiting for the next thing in life. I'm sure the feeling has been touched upon somewhere in the depths of this blog's archives. Per my message to myself, I'm in a perpetual "limbo" now, but it feels less like it. Probably because my future is progressing with more knowns than unknowns these days; variables like career and relationship are much closer to constants. Still, with fewer and fewer seeming big milestones left ahead of me, I find myself in the beginning stages of dreading the end of the ride. That's fun.

To the point of things planned, Daddy-to-be Hakk was a spot on bet as Kayla and I are expecting the birth of the Wee Baby Evan this coming June. There was a small hiccup in the process of child creation, but all things considered, wound up pretty much exactly what we hoped for in an optimal scenario. Kayla is going into week sixteen of pregnancy and, thus far, no puking has happened. I don't think she's appreciated my open readiness for barf bowl fetching (as I was conditioned to during my mom's pregnancies). We haven't done much prep at this point, mostly getting over the "bad statistical chances of miscarraige" hump plus all the holiday stuff we've been doing, but now that all that's past, I anticipate the "get ready for baby" machine will be starting up very soon.

The remaining things I mush together in that one paragraph were fairly spot on, with 2022 acting as a little bit of a catch up after our plans to do just about anything in 2020/2021 were foiled by the pandemic. A week was spent shredding gnar up in Heavenly with the LinkedIn gang, centered around Dennis turning 50. Kayla and I did a lot of various travelling, including but not limited to many Disneyland trips. We visited New York, hit up Las Vegas during a rare work conference for me, and went on a small road trip up to Bend to see Weird Al in concert. Making up for her absence in 2021, Maggie even paid a visit in July and we showed her all the fun things life can offer outside the confines of boring-ass Oklahoma.

Of the various projects mentioned in that paragraph, a lot of that was a hit as well. We repainted/refloored the room off our bedroom into a pretty kick ass exercise area. While I never actually made another visit to Maker Nexus after the writing of that letter, I did obsess over and eventually purchase a CO2 laser that I haven't quite taken advantage of as much as I could have yet. The house sign did get cut, though remains mostly unassembled. But 60+ keychains were made for our Disney cruise that I'm quite pleased with.

Hakk's Lab, as it often has been, was a no show. I have no good excuse for why this is outside of good old fashioned procrastination and debilitating perfectionism. I should just be filming things, perfectly tuned narrative be damned. The arrival of the Wee Baby Evan is going to make this much of anything towards [video] making more difficult. Though, I do have illusions of editing while front packing a sleeping babby...

There's my thoughts on my thoughts on 2022. This next year is going to be interesting, for sure, and I'd like to do a better job of documenting it on this website that I pay money for every month. Will I in actuality? Who knows...

Only I control that fate.