What I learned in 2022

And what I want to learn more about in 2023

New Year’s Eve family party, pandemic style. (Those are PCR tests.)

Happy new year everyone! Warm wishes and lots of love to everyone. You’re the best dang readers a writer like me could hope for.

Here’s what I learned in 2022:

Friends and family are basically everything. You need money to live, but friends and family are what you live for.

Creativity is what makes us most human. People holed up in those Lascaux caves 20,000 years ago still managed to find time to make its now-famous wall art. You’re creative by nature, even if you’re one of those people who weirdly insists that they aren’t.

Travel feeds the soul. I made up for lost quaran-time by going to SF, DC, Italy, Hawaii, the Bahamas, Charleston, Miami, and even the nerdsweat zoo that is Comic-Con. Like most, I’m a neophile—I crave experiencing new places using all my senses. Staring at a screen doesn’t compare for crap. It was a total pleasure meeting people at book events again. A single book event makes me feel more connection than a month of flinging Instagram around ever could. Actually, Instagram 100% reliably makes me feel like an inadequate piece of crap.

Speaking of screens, in 2022 it occurred to me that the internet, which was not invented to solve any specific problems, hasn’t made our lives noticeably better. People work harder for less, can’t afford basics like healthcare, education, or housing, are still stuck with systemic racism. On top of these “vintage” problems, the internet has created bizarre new ones, including: nonstop envy; increasingly nitpicky body issues (Thigh Gap in 1 Week! or my favorite, Practice your Soft Smile!); 1-click bullying; chronic distraction; societal fracturing, the devaluation of all art (ChatGPT, MidJourney, Spotify). I suspect it’s made people less polite, too. People counter-argue that life is so very convenient now, but I’m not all that convinced of even that. Anyway, I think it’s funny that we call technology “progress.” Evolution isn’t a straight line forward. It’s not even a line. It doesn’t necessarily travel anywhere.

I learned to love not working as much as working. It’s been a great year for my work—I’m writing my next novel, Nicki and I are co-authoring a thing, our first Joy Revolution books are coming out (Talia Hibbert’s YA debut Highly Suspicious & Unfairly Cute!), and fun stuff is afoot on the TV/film front. Work doesn’t feel so much like work when you’re doing what you love with your best friend ♥. BUT! As a writer, I’m also a small business owner, which means I’m often my own horrible boss. I worked way too much in 2022. It was surprisingly hard to learn how to be my own cool boss and take a day off now and then. And to celebrate every victory, no matter how small. Write a good chapter? Have a cookie. Finish a draft? Go to Disneyland.

I learned to reclaim my deep focus. After two long quarantine years of doomscrolling, in 2022 I finally put down my phone and picked up a book. Then I picked up another. I drew in my sketchbook. I played music. There’s a great Ezra Klein Show podcast episode about how the internet trains us to skim endlessly but never dive deep, and I’ve decided I don’t want to live like that. It’s been really nice! I don’t know all the minutiae of the news, and I’m clueless about what’s trending, but honestly—does it matter? I’ve Marie Kondo-ed my mind, and I’m not eager to clutter it back up with TikTok challenges.

I learned that my body is literally all I have. Turning 50 in 2022 taught me this, whoo boy. Skipping exercise is no longer an option—my body will complain after even a day of inactivity. My favorites are rowing, yoga, and riding my e-bike to the beach. Exercise also keeps my brain creative. There is no separation between mind and body. I wish people would stop saying that. It’s silly to think you can neglect one and expect the other to still function.

I learned how to live with COVID. I’ve never caught COVID, and I’d really rather not, but 2022 was the year me and Nicki finally got proficient at the darkly comical art of living in a never-ending pandemic. We mask indoors, never fly without our N95s, eat outside. (Oh, how I miss eating indoors!) I’ve learned to stop feeling awkward for being so “careful.” And to stop being so angry at the systemic failure to prevent COVID mutations, and accept the reality that hey, if I want to have a life, I need to hold science close and take measures. Here’s the thing: I have personal loved ones with long COVID, and it’s a mysterious and debilitating and heartbreaking condition that brought one of them to the brink of death. (So not so much a “flu,” but a true neurological disease.) All that aside, I’m much happier than during the Bosch hellscape of 2020. I meet friends and family and go to restaurants and movies and shops. Aside from spending hundreds on PCR tests (above), the holidays felt beautifully normal.

I learned to embrace my dark thoughts, at least temporarily. People often say you should count your blessings and think positive thoughts, and they’re right. Me and Nicki and our daughter end every day by listing what we’re grateful for, and I love it. But there’s immense relief also to be had in saying out loud all the things I hate, am confounded by, find irritating. Venting! Nicki and I spent a good hour just griping to one another recently, and it was the most liberating fun we’d had in a long time. If you don’t have someone to vent to, you can always yap at an empty chair (a tried-and-true therapist trick). You feel light as air afterward.

As always, I am forever thankful for everything I have. I find myself wanting less stuff as a result, which is nice. Hopefully I can keep this attitude up in 2023. Speaking of which…

Here’s what I want to learn more about in 2023:

How to outsource work more.

How to draw people accurately.

How to play 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover on the drums like Steve Gadd.

How to speak Korean better.

How to do much more with much less.

How to get to know you lovely folks better.

What about you?

I love hearing from you. Feel free to leave a comment about your reflections on 2022, and your hopes for 2023.

For the next newsletter:

I’ll dissect the movies Bullet Train and Spiderhead. Bye for now!

— Dave