Kage Baker rated years like restaurants. This year, 2015, would have gotten a skull and crossbones.

Only one, though, and lower case  – so, like, a toothless skull and 2 gnawed chicken legs. It wasn’t a vast and evil year, like the various times when parents died; those resonate for the rest of your life, huge ghastly shadows that peek out from the accumulated good years between THEN and NOW at the end of the year. No one needs to be reminded of these years, but it happens anyway. And 2015 didn’t hold a candle to 2010, which was my personal worst to date.

No, 2015 was a minor pain; or rather, a series of continuous minor pains. For me, anyway. Too many old friends died; only a few were surprises (me and my friends are getting old, old, old) but that doesn’t help assuage the loss. And the ones that were surprises were especially bad … but I’ve squeaked through this year without disabling personal tragedies; so I guess I had it pretty good.

Sure, I have a few more scars – but scars mean no open wounds. Pain happened; but pain does happen, and one of the few dependable wisdoms of age is reconciling one’s self to that. I didn’t sell much, but I got a new agent and lots of ideas. And a new computer monitor, so I am several points to the good there.

And according to the friendly stats monkeys here at Word Press, I got enough readers on this blog to fill the Sydney Opera house several times over. Converting that to the Hollywood Bowl (my own favourite size gauge for audiences) it means you Dear Readers were especially active in 2015. Considering that I  myself was not very responsible this past year, I owe you all lots of hugs and thank yous. Please consider yourselves virtually embraced and volubly thanked!

And here is a link to the graph so you can see what you all did:

https://kbco.wordpress.com/2015/annual-report/

You really do make me feel that I am not entirely wasting my time. In the coming year, I will waste it even less. Health is flowing back into me, my bones and veins and muscles are growing stronger, and it feels like a few of my more-stricken synapses are even coming back on line.

So a Happy Year’s End to all of you – which you have all, Dear Readers, certainly given to me. A Happy New to you as well, to be appended to whatever needs renewing in your lives. A Happy Year’s Beginning, too, for that special sparkly moment we all need to start our slog round the calender again.

My resolution is always the same, the one I shared with Kage every year of our lives: to survive. I invite you all to join me in the pledge, as we step out over another sparkly gulf of time, hoping for the best.

As the old story says: all right so far!