2022: Watch Out, You Might Get What You’re After

Dead blog, lol.

Almost, anyway, but that’s fine. For the last couple years, and probably for a while to come, Everything is Oll Korrect! will primarily be a repository of old writing, updated very sporadically. I have a few ideas for future posts, but they’ll have to wait since I have more important projects.

I don’t even know what kind of traffic Everything received over the past year. Looking it up as I write, I’m at about 5,200 views, a bit up from last year’s 4,900 but under half of my peak in 2018, which was 12,800. The most viewed post of the year was, by a huge margin, “Which Translation of The Analects Should I Read?” The most popular from this year was my review of Henry Sumner Maines’ Popular Government, I suspect because publisher Imperium Press linked to it in a couple places. Coincidentally, all four posts this year looked like something from my more explicitly political days from about 2015-18. Popular Government, in fact, had been discussed by the old Neoreactionary bloggers Foseti and Radish Mag.

Hey, Everything may be dead, but it’s pretty OK compared to those two. They may well still get more views than me, though…

What else? I wrote about Yuri Pines’ book Foundations of Confucian Thought, mostly sharing some particularly interesting excerpts. There’s also John “Borzoi” Chapman’s essay collection Cultured Grugs, hit-and-miss like all compilations are but mostly good. Rounding out this year’s posts is a review of The Penguin Book of Haiku, which stinks. Sorry, weebs.

So did I not read anything? Well, of books written for adults, I read thirteen this year, by far the smallest number in a very long time. Certainly the smallest since I started tracking this back in 2015. Of the books I read to my toddler, I’ve read a ton of them. At least a couple every day, though of course the same books are reread many, many times. I’m sure someday my hobbies will recover from what marriage and parenthood have done to them. Well, to some extent, anyway; music and video games never recovered from what college and then working full time did to them.

One highlight of 2022, though, is that I do have one less thing to worry about: School. I’m done. I’ve got my Master’s degree in Library and Information Science, finally. With this in hand, moving on to a new career should be much easier.

School sucks, by the way.

Just terrible.

Absolutely rotten.

Anyway, besides that, my daughter is now a toddler, and a big sister. My son was born a bit earlier this year. In some ways, having a second child is easier than the first; my wife and I have a better idea of what we’re doing, which helps a lot. On the other hand, we now have twice as many small children to take care of, and we’re stretched thin even with substantial help from our parents. With God’s grace, though, we’ll make it.

For a long time, basically all of my twenties, my life largely revolved around my hobbies. I’d go to work, get home, and then read, watch anime, and write about the same. I was content in a relatively low-paying job because, hey, it was sufficient to buy the books I wanted. Eventually, though, I decided that these things were ultimately unsatisfying, and I became serious about finding a wife and starting a family. Well, now my free time is largely gone, money is tight, and I never have time for myself anymore. However, this is a project whose fruits last into eternity and which fulfills me in a way that reading even great books does not.

I certainly have some nostalgia for how things were, of course. There’s an appeal to the bachelor life of doing mostly what you want, when you want, and to the relatively carefree days of childhood. Childhood must end, though, and the bachelor life has no larger meaning in itself. The family life is the path I chose; its difficulties are the cross Christ gives me to bear, but it’s a cross that bears fruit. I can’t explain, but when I hold one of my children, I understand that I’m doing what God put me here to do.

Have a happy New Year, everyone, and thank you for reading.