Right now I am very sad, if I’m honest: I didn’t do much this year but write this newsletter and go to the gym and not drink and love some people halfway decently and others not as well as I would have liked to. I did not do anything exciting and I also did not save as much money as I intended to save by trimming out those exciting things. I once again did not finish or sell a book; I got off twitter for a while but only because I spent most of the year wrestling with the feeling that all of this had been a mistake and that I should quit writing and go do something else with my life, and the perhaps-worse feeling that it was too late to even do that, too late, even, to successfully give up. every verb in the future or the past tense and nothing in the present. This is a time to sit uncomfortably with who we are when we have nothing to show for ourselves, and how we might still be loved.

“Thinking something through is an important part of the creative process but it means dick if you don’t ever start. And if you don’t start you don’t finish.”

With about a minute to go, I opened up my AirPods, ensured they were connected to my iPhone, woke Erin up, and handed her one. She popped in the left, me the right, and we were able to share New Year’s together. We did so silently, with Declan sleeping between us, none the wiser. ​ I’ll forget AirPods one day. I won’t forget the opening of 2017. With my little family, all huddled in one hotel room bed, celebrating together, each in our own little way.