2019: Mais où sont les neiges d’antan!
Oh yeah, I have a blog, don’t I? As I recall, I typically write annual year-in-review posts so maybe I should do that. There hasn’t been much action on Everything is Oll Korrect! in 2019, especially in the latter half, due to school, work, and other commitments (which we’ll get to shortly), and for the last couple weeks illness. As I write, my eyes itch and I can’t breathe through my right nostril, but such is my dedication to the millions and millions of the Ocelot’s fans that I’m going to write at least this one post. I’ll run through the articles I did publish this year, then spend the bulk of this article talking about one of my favourite subjects, me.
So, I wrote all of seventeen posts in 2019. For comparison, in 2018 I wrote fifty-seven. I started the year with William Cecil and his lovely New Year’s Day poem about addressed to his daughter. Several other posts would also cover poetry, including articles about Dante’s friend Guido Cavalcanti, Cavalier Sir John Denham, 19th Century French poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (which also features my attempt at translating her poem “Rendez-vous”), and medieval troublemaker François Villon, who I liked enough to write about in French and English. Everything also featured two articles about poets, one on Homer and one on Dante.
In the world of prose, we have a fine children’s adaptation of Moby Dick, as well as contemporary novel The Bowl of Tears and Solace. As for non-fiction, we have the helpful Confession Made Easy and John Carter’s classic book about books, ABC for Book Collectors. Graphic novels found representation in Ito Junji’s excellent adaptation of Frankenstein and Go Nagai’s original Devilman. Video games also made an appearance thanks to a review of Ogre Battle 64, and non-video games made their Everything debut with the happy game of mahjong. Content may have been sparse in 2019 but variety was not as even professional wrestling made an appearance. Finally, back in July I gave a status report for those wondering “What’s the news, where ya been?”
With such a variety of articles to choose from it’s hard to pick a best of the year, but my coverage of “Rendez-vous” was the most fun to write since translation was a new challenge for me. “The Happy Game of Mahjong” accomplished its purposes the best, and my review of The Printed Homer was overall the best of 2019.
Now, onto personal matters. The first thing to note is that my family expanded by one when my niece was born this spring, and I was chosen as her godfather. I did move into a new and nicer apartment back in January as I noted I would last year, and up until a coworker gave me the plague a couple weeks ago I’m the healthiest I’ve been in a long time. I’m also having a lot of fun with my new pro wrestling hobby, both in the sport itself and the social aspect. I’ve attended four events this year and am set to see four more in January, as well as a meet-and-greet with Mick Foley in March.
Professionally, another year of graduate school is done, so that’s two down and one to go before I get that Master’s degree in Library Science. I did complete the internship at my local library mentioned last year, which confirmed for me that this is what I want to do as a career. Afterwards, I’ve continued going in weekly as a volunteer, and the connections I’ve made there have me confident that I’ll be a heavy favourite to be hired should a full time position open. Of course, I’ve also been sending in job applications to libraries around north Texas but without success, despite a couple interviews last month.
Finally, last year I wrote this:
I’ve also begun making more serious efforts in finding a wife, and am trying the online dating thing. Whether that will work out is hard to say; I do know someone who met his fiancée through CatholicMatch (the same service I’m using), but I’ve also heard online dating described as “playing Russian roulette with five bullets.”
I did briefly date a couple women I met through CatholicMatch earlier this year and exchanged messages with several others, but I may have reached the end of the beginning of my romantic life back in August when I received a message from a Chinese woman living around the Bryan/College Station area (about a three-hour drive south of Dallas). This meeting was somewhat unlikely, since I’d only been searching around the DFW metroplex and had focused on white women, and she hadn’t been on CatholicMatch long and was already thinking of giving it up since, as she told me later, most of the men on there are too “weird” (she wouldn’t expand on what exactly she meant by “weird,” though). A long-distance relationship has its challenges, but we’ve been communicating via text daily and FaceTime dates a few times per week, while I’ve been driving down to spend a day with her every few weeks.
Now, it’s been four months, but I think it’s very likely that she’s the one I’ll marry. She’s among the most pious people I’ve ever met, not only wants children but wants to be a stay-at-home mother, and has an old-school (i.e., correct) understanding of marriage, largely formed by reading the Catechism of the Council of Trent. She also has a similar sense of humour as me (the brilliant jokes I shared with my last couple girlfriends went over like a fart in church). Currently, I only have two concerns. One is that it is difficult to really get to know someone as well as I’d like long-distance, but she’s planning to move to the Dallas area early next year. The other is the racial issue. The two of us will be fine, I’m sure, but biracial children often have a difficult time forming a sense of identity. I think it can be handled, though, and not being naive about it as a parent should help.
So, that’s the year that was. What’s in the works for 2020? It’s impossible to say. My hope is that by the end of next year I’ll have a full-time position as a librarian and will be engaged. As for the blog, I’ll never abandon Everything and will attempt to pick up the updating pace. Realistically, though, it’s unlikely that I’ll ever average a post per week again until I’ve at least finished grad school, and perhaps not even then.
Regardless, I’ll do what I can. I love this blog, and I appreciate everyone who reads it. God bless, and have a happy New Year!