Personal Stuff

I’m not even going to acknowledge it.

In 2023’s year in review post I predicted that “2024 is gonna be lit, boys.” It sure was, but mostly in good ways. My family has grown by one, my career change has proven to be a good decision, and Everything is Oll Korrect! has started showing a pulse again.

So what’s happened on Everything is Oll Korrect! in 2023? Well, looks like I wrote four posts this year, three of them in the last few months. You can take the timing as a good sign - my schedule has lightened up a bit, meaning that, while this blog won’t be on, say, a weekly schedule any time soon, I should be able to manage somewhat regular updates, perhaps monthly or so. Two of those posts happened to be about children’s books, which gives some indication of what I’ve been mostly reading lately. One, which I think was the best of the year, on children’s books generally, and one on Dr. Seuss in particular.

Dead blog, lol.

This blog isn’t abandoned, though it’s only barely qualifies as active. At the very least, it’s not so dead that I’m not writing my annual year-end post, even if it is 5:08pm on December 31. That lack of activity is due almost entirely to a lack of time; other things are, ultimately, more important, and my free time lately has been spent mostly on family history.

Uh… I wrote five posts this year. I’m not even going to compare it to previous years. What in tarnation? What was I doing this year?

Every once in a while, especially when I still had accounts on ask.fm and Curious Cat, someone has asked me what books I’ve read that have most influenced me. It’s a reasonable enough question and seems like one I should be able to answer. After all, I read a lot and come across as a thoughtful person, and many posts on this blog are essentially my public attempts at trying to better understand what I read. However, there really isn’t one good answer. For one thing, I believe I’ve been influenced far more by the sum of many books and experiences than just a handful that I could easily enumerate. Also, much depends on what exactly we mean by “influence.”

It’s the end of the year, and now that the reminiscing and navel-gazing is over it’s time for the most important year-end festivity, looking at how many books I read. In 2018 I read thirty-six, compared to 2017’s forty-two. This year, I have twenty-nine books recorded in LibraryThing, but this excludes eight volumes of Toriyama Akira’s DragonballZ because they’re part of a box set and so, from LibraryThing’s perspective, are only one book. There’s also The Bowl of Tears and Solace, which isn’t in their catalogue at all last I checked. That brings us up to a more typical thirty-eight, two more than last year.

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.

The biggest surprise I’ve ever given my parents was last year when I told them that I was getting into professional wrestling. My online presence here and on Twitter reflects my real-life interests and hobbies closely, and as you can tell from a scan of my article and review index most of what I read and watch leans toward high culture. I’ll dip into popular culture with things like Devilman now and then, but overall I’m more likely to be reading French poetry or something. I have little interest in sports generally, and most guys who are into wrestling started watching when they were young. I remember several friends in middle school talking about it, but I had little interest. So what happened?