Hi hello how are you my word of the year for 2023 was enkrateia (meaning self-control, more-or-less) and I’m addicted to painkillers. Not so much like Tylenol or OxyContin or euthanasia solutions or the good old fashioned huffing of Rust-Oleum Specialty 11 oz. Silver Metallic Spray Paint ($6.98 at Home Depot).

Painkillers more in terms of masturbating to hardcore anime at 3am, wondering if maybe I’m autistic at 4am (yes), fantasizing about art school while under the influence of moderate to severe prostate stimulation at 5am, and spending literally thousands of dollars on keyboards come 6am. Rolled into work for a 12 hour day at approximately 10am; who knows what happened in the four-hour interim. Time passed in the event horizon of a phone screen.

At least one of those things happened. I think. I don’t know what the pain is but boy howdy did I kill it. Just absolutely blasting those endorphin emitters.

I don’t sleep well. Must be my sleep apnea. 2 cups of coffee administered orally (not rectally) at 1:13 PM. Must be sleep apnea.

If you’re a member of certain early second century Christian sect, enkrateia means the rejection of meat consumption and marriage (presumably separate endeavors at that point in society). I suppose you — especially the gnostically oriented among you — would consider me to have failed on enough counts of the word to warrant retaking the class.

You’ve considered wrong.

In 2023 I stayed committed to a romantic relationship against opposing impulses. We both saw something in this worth cherishing and now at our two year anniversary, we’ve never been in a healthier place. We discovered that we’re both neurodivergent; we finally have a common language to understand each other instead of words and words and words flying in all directions, birds sent scurrying upwards by two toddlers. We have a real foundation to build from now, no more stacking rocks onto a teetering cairn like a counterfeit Tower of Babel.

Despite my addiction to work for the sake of work, I learned how to enforce mental and physical boundaries between me and my money generating brain tumor (aka software engineering job).

I even drew every day in December after spending years wondering if forming a single solitary habit was just too much for my cheese grated brain to manage. Turns out all I was missing in my quest to form a single solitary habit in my entire life was seeing the perspective lines of some dude’s bendy penis.

Sometimes things that seem small feel huge.

I ended 2022 with the outward appearances of a functioning, successful life. Good job, good car, renting house, solid 401k biweekly contributions, moved with dream girl across the country. And yet in every step of the way, in all the endless little moments that make up a day, I felt complete and total lack of self-control. Akrasia. If I was 45, I’d take out a loan on a Porsche. But instead I’m an autistic 27 year old, so I’m ending 2023 with metallic spray paint encrusting my nostrils and a small, blossoming feeling of influence over the vague direction that this big jumble of tiny moments is going. Like every now and then seeing the garden of forking paths and drunkenly gesturing towards a branch to shamble down. Enkrateia.

As I keep editing this jerk-off log, I cant shake the feeling that I’m still writing in the same way I would have written years ago — a feeling of intangible failure self-consciously counterbalanced by dick jokes. Still here, thinking about the same things in the same ways as time hums forwards. Writing is a bulimic impulse to cram my middle finger down my throat, maybe just to make room for more.

When I write my reflection for 2024, it’s going to read differently. I want to reach a state where the writing that comes naturally to me has balance. Respect for the past. Maturity. More dick jokes.

I’ve found a path that I like the look of, now I need to walk it.

And with that thought, my word of the year for 2024 can only be diligence. Conscientious and persistent effort towards something. As famous wine mom Albert Camus once said in his book about how to not kill yourself, “Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my COFFEE!!” (loose paraphrase). So I think it’s time to hunker down with a hot cup of 1:13 PM joe, a reinvigorated sense of purpose (and prostate), and get to work drawing boobs.