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I found myself thinking about the turn of the century recently; about the way that culture felt at the time, and the way that I felt inside that culture, and about comparing that to today.

I didn’t buy into the idea of “Y2K” or “the Millennium Bug” or anything similar; although I knew that it was a Big Deal that we were about to cross over from years starting with 1 to years starting with 2, and that it was going to be odd thinking of the next 12 months as being “00” instead of “98” or “99,” or whatever, I wasn’t really paying attention to the increasingly panicked suggestions that disaster was around the corner for any and all technology. Someone will figure that out, if it’s a real thing was pretty much my attitude towards that.

My thoughts, instead, were caught up in the idea of a societal collapse. Not in the traditional sense of that phrase, but instead the idea common in a lot of things I was reading at the time that popular culture was falling in upon itself as self-reflexiveness and self-parody combined and everything seemed to be inspired by, or copied from, something else. I was reading a lot of cultural theory at the time — I had, after all, just graduated art school just a year or so earlier — and it felt as if something was ending all around me, leaving space for something new, and entirely unknown.

I think about that when I consider the internet today, a space filled with ideas and references and commentary that I, bluntly, don’t understand. It’s not just the number of memes or shared jokes that I’m not privy to, but the shared languages of communities I can’t comprehend on almost any level. For all that the internet makes me despair on a regular basis, especially when it comes to social media spaces and the communities and cliques found therein, there are times when I think about such things in the abstract and realize that, in so many ways, this is what I was expecting almost a quarter of a century ago. This is the future I wanted, even if I didn’t know that at the time.

The dog is… fine, perhaps…? He’s old, and he’s got old dog things wrong with him, which is how it was more or less explained to me, but anything more serious has thankfully, inexplicably, been avoided despite the blood test that sent alarm bells ringing last week. There was another blood test done to check this, and he had his belly shaved and some radiography done as well just in case. It’s been “looked into,” and he’s… okay…?

I found out via phone call. I’d spent the days before his appointment with an increasing sense of doom and foreboding, as if I knew definitively that this was the beginning of the end (if not the end of the end), and I’d been told that I’d get a call with updates during the appointment when I’d dropped him off that morning. Before it came, I’d look at the phone, accusatorially, daring it to ring and give me the bad news: come on, just do it. Just tell me.

But instead, the call was a surprisingly happy doctor giving me the good news. I remember thinking at the time, she sounds happier and more relieved than I am with some sense of wonderment. I couldn’t tell if I was surprised by the seeming lack of professionalism or touched by how much she cared more; all things considered, it’s a nice thing to have to call a draw in.

Even more surprising was how it felt afterwards: an unexpected sense of anti-climax that all it took was one phone call and everything was done, bar a follow-up appointment. I’d spent days thinking the worst, feeling the worst, and it was suddenly just gone. I was happy, I was relieved, but also, there was this very clear feeling of, Is that it? Am I just supposed to move on now? I try, and instead, I write this to exorcise those feelings and share how it actually feels.

Last week was one that taught me the value of that whole, “don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched” nonsense. You’ll remember, dear reader, that I’d shared my experience about taking the dog to the vet after his dental surgery a couple weeks back…? On the Tuesday of last week, he had his follow-up appointment, which proved to be a scary, difficult proposition: his weight had fallen significantly because he still wasn’t eating enough, and he wasn’t shitting well, either, The vet and I talked options while the dog sat there and shook in quiet terror; a plan of action was devised, blood was taken for tests, and we parted with everyone having a sense of what to do (as well as, on my end, no small amount of medication to give the dog).

Turns out, the dog had a sense of what to do, himself. Immediately following the appointment, he started eating well again. Even before I’d started giving him the medicine, his appetite miraculously returned, and his shits returned to normal. Across the next two days, I watched as he inexplicably returned to normal in seemingly every way. Had the vet visit scared him straight…? I didn’t really care: he was eating again, he was shitting again. Everything was good. On Thursday night, I told Chloe that I felt that I could stop worrying about him for the first time since his surgery, two weeks earlier. I felt a physical sense of relief.

This, of course, was my mistake.

On Friday, I heard from the vet that the blood work was back and it was not good. It wasn’t necessarily bad, either; it was mostly inexplicable, with the potential for things to be very bad: his liver numbers had rocketed through the roof, and they had no explanation why: as I was told, it could be entirely benign and the result of his not eating and being irritated post-surgery, or it could be cancer that they’d never noticed before. Either was a possibility, equally likely, as were all manner of things in between: gallstones, post-surgery infection, a testing error…

New plans were drawn up, for a new appointment later this week. I was advised that it could get expensive (again!) and that there may need to be end of life conversations. I immediately felt guilt, as if my saying that I could let go of my worry was the cause of it all.

I’m getting around to this later than intended, for the simple reason that I forgot. In the immediate aftermath of San Diego Comic-Con, there was a lot to take care of, not least of which was a sense of exhaustion that meant that I was able to take care of the most immediate business on any given day for a week or so before settling down to simply feel tired and watch TV for the night. (On the plus side, I enjoyed both the Wham! documentary and the series about the background of American Gladiators, so it wasn’t a complete loss. At some point, I’m also going to sing the praises of the extraordinary second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, as well.)

Nevertheless, this year’s San Diego Comic-Con left me with the realization that I’m actually pretty good as a panel moderator, something that I’d never previously felt comfortable or confident enough to actually admit out loud. It was a strange and welcome realization, if one that I still feel uncomfortable sharing because of humility and being Scottish, and yet…

Don’t misunderstand; I’ve been moderating panels at conventions for years, and I knew I was that bad at it even before SDCC this year. The thing is, I’d convinced myself that I was good at doing a particular kind of panel — one that’s somewhat freewheeling and conversational — and that I’d suck doing anything more structured or official… and then I got asked to do two structured and official panels.

To my surprise, I didn’t suck at them. In fact, I actually… enjoyed doing both, even with the added complications of having official announcements to make at one (and giveaways to the audience that I had to declare, as well!) and slideshows and/or multimedia components at both. The two “other” panels, the ones that pushed me outside of my comfort zone, definitely required parts of my brain that I’m not so used to using when moderating — being more professional, less playful, sure, but also having to think about schedules and objectives in a way that was more akin to interviewing than moderating, for me — but I came away from both with that sense of, Did I do okay? I think that went well? Did that really go well? in somewhat mild disbelief.

I wasn’t entirely alone, at least in the sense of thinking things went well; both panels were complimented afterwards, with the publishers attached to each asking if I’d do it again at future conventions. It’s nice to know that you don’t screw up, for sure; it’s also nice to know that you can do more than you thought, and that you might actually be good at it, as well. If there was one good thing to take away from San Diego Comic-Con this year, I’m happy for it to be that.

If anyone asks how my weekend went, this is what I’d want to tell them:

I spent much of Saturday and pretty much all of Sunday worried that my dog was going to die, or that something was very wrong with him; he had dental surgery last week, something that I was deeply worried about ahead of time because that was exactly what killed his brother a little over a year ago and the fear that history could repeat itself was real. In the days immediately following the surgery, he seemed to be okay and I thought that, maybe, just maybe, things had all worked out.

And then it was three days after the surgery, and he hadn’t eaten. I mean, he’d had a couple of bites of food, but otherwise, nothing. I’d been told his appetite would be back to normal by the day after, the second day for sure. So, the worry returned.

Of course, by this point, it was a Saturday — a Saturday afternoon, in fact, and his regular vet was closed, so I spent an hour or so calling other local vets who told me variations on, Oh, that doesn’t sound good at all, but we’re full up so we can’t see him, but he should probably be seen in case it’s something very serious indeed. Let me tell you, that did wonders for my mood. Eventually, one place told me to call the next morning to set up an appointment for that day, and promised they’d have space; I’d just have to keep trying to feed him in the meantime. He continued to refuse food.

Sunday came, after a restless night in which I tossed, turned, and enjoyed dreams where he got sick and died like his brother. I called and made an appointment, and felt restless and unable to relax while I waited for it. I overanalyzed everything the poor dog was doing the entire time: was he more energetic than normal? Did it mean something that he was drinking more water?

Turns out, the answer to that last question was yes: after a marathon session and a bunch of tests, it turned out that Gus was so dehydrated as a result of the anesthesia during the surgery, and that dehydration was in turn hindering his recovery. All of this was because of his age (he’s 14) and the simple fact that old dogs and surgery really don’t mix. He was given IV fluids, a dose of pain meds, and the hope was that he’ll start eating again within 24 hours or so.

By the time I got him home, it was after 9pm.

I feel like I didn’t have a weekend; I feel exhausted and stressed, still, and I’m still worried about his little dog self and will be until he eats. I’m wishing I had a weekend to recover, it it’s Monday morning and everything starts again right now. I’m very much not ready for the week.

Instead, if someone asks how my weekend was, I’ll probably just say it was fine, and ask them how theirs was.

As I write this, it’s 3AM on Sunday, July 23rd. It’s my last night — well, last morning now — in San Diego, and insomnia has struck.

I could blame the hotel bed, which is almost the archetypal hotel bed: a little too soft, a little formless and with pillows that are more like suggestions of pillows that are somehow too soft and too hard all at once; pillows that you almost have to ignore in order to sleep in the first place, never mind struggle against when your mind won’t stop talking in the middle of the night.

Or perhaps I could blame the fact that it’s a Saturday night/Sunday morning, which has meant a lot of noise in the corridor outside in the last few hours as people return back from drunken nights out and slam all their doors and giggle loudly, in both cases fully believing that they’re being really, really quiet. That was fun to eavesdrop on, and truth be told, it was what originally woke me up an hour or so ago.

That’s not why I’m still awake, though. My mind is racing because I’m headed into the final day of San Diego Comic-Con and it’s been a weird, busy — very busy — and emotionally taxing show, one that’s left me at once exhausted and oddly exhilarated. I both can’t believe it’s almost over and can’t remember fully what life was like before this, if that makes sense.

By the time you read this, it’ll be tomorrow and I’ll be back in Portland again, likely better rested and reality will be reasserting itself. That’s why I wrote this, though; to record a moment in time when I couldn’t sleep in San Diego, and I realized that all I really want to do, despite everything, is just read some comics. I guess that shows the power of Comic-Con, somehow.

As you read this, I’m in San Diego for this year’s Comic-Con; as I write, it’s still weeks away, which can mean only one thing: the anxiety has started kicking in.

What’s funny is, by the time this runs, the anxiety will be over and done with; once I actually get to San Diego, a zen state overcomes me, and I’m just there, dealing with whatever happens as it happens with an outlook that is, genuinely, surprisingly laid back about the whole thing. (Which isn’t to say that I don’t still get nervous about moderating panels; that’s still very much a thing.) But before the show…?

As I write this, I’m nervous about so much to do with San Diego Comic-Con, but really, it’s being nervous about all these related and connected things that aren’t actually the show itself: I’m nervous about whether or not I’ll buy new clothes and new shoes for the show — the shoes, especially, I need but I also need to get them and break them in, in advance; there’s a lot of walking at SDCC — and whether or not I’ll remember to get a new laptop bag to replace the one that fell apart in the UK. I’m nervous about my workload and if it will be too much, and the timing of my flights in and out of the city; I’m nervous about how comfortable or not the hotel bed will be, and how big the room will be, considering it’ll be both Chloe and myself working there. Will I have enough time to see everyone I want to? (No.) Will I eat well? Will I forget to pack something impossibly important? Will I disappoint my bosses? Will I disappoint anyone?

Traveling is always a Schrödinger experience for me — or, rather, preparing to travel is. There’s all this excitement and eagerness, but everything is also filled with this anxiety bucket of random nervousness and insecurity, as well. At least by the time you read this, all that will be over with.

(And then it’s just the marathon race of a five day convention…!)

There was a period a few weeks back where this site was getting bombarded by spam comments. Out of nowhere, there would be somewhere in the region of 30-50 spam comments daily, all of them either auto-generated by some nefarious AI that had been fed information on fashion designers of the 1970s and ‘80s — yeah, I don’t know why either, but all of the comments were related in some way to ‘70s and ‘80s designers; go figure — or were cut and pasted from some arcane essay somewhere. Either way, there was one comment that kept repeating, over and over, for the week or so that the spam attack kept happening:

“But the future is fascinating.”

That was it: one line, as opposed to the multi-paragraph comments that surrounded it every time it appeared. “But the future is fascinating.” Everything else would refer to Karl Lagerfeld or Ray Halston or whoever, just screeds of theorizing about what they brought to the fashion scene of the era, but then there would be this singular line that would reappear daily. The future is fascinating.

I love that line; the more I saw it as I deleted the various comments, the more I loved it. Sure, it’s almost certainly as random and automatically generated as everything around it, but it stood out and felt unusually important and filled with potential for something good or ill: “fascinating,” after all, could mean either.

It’s stuck with me in the weeks since, and I keep thinking about it on a worryingly regular basis. Out of a spam nowhere, I think I’ve found my ideal approach to life from now on. If nothing else, dear friends, let us always remember to keep our futures fascinating. We can but hope.

The other day (as I write this, weeks before you read it), I was having a conversation about the importance of failure — the idea that it’s not only okay to fail at things sometimes, it’s probably necessary on some deep, inexplicable emotional level.

This was treated with no small amount of cynicism by the person I was talking to, and I get it: failure is meant to be a bad thing, and certainly isn’t the goal of any particular enterprise, especially in the early days. Moreover, I can remember surprisingly clearly how strongly I felt about the idea of failing at something when I was younger: how scary it felt, how overwhelming and horrifying the very concept of people seeing me not do the thing I set out to was at the time. How could I face them if they knew how badly I fucked up? I’d ask myself, mortified at even considering the possibility.

Since those days, I’ve failed at a lot of things, professionally and personally. I’ve screwed up, and I’ve been screwed up by others; it’s been difficult and awkward and, sure, utterly embarrassing at times, too; I’ve dealt with a lot of it badly, and with less grace and goodwill than I’d have liked, looking back, in many cases, too, to my regret… but I can’t deny that a bunch of those failures have been for the best, in the long run.

Not in the, “every failure was a step on the path here” way, exactly — but also that, as cliche as it is — but in the sense of, it’s good to learn your limits and find out what you can’t do as well as what you can. It’s worthwhile to step out of the wreckage and go, “Well, I’m never doing that again,” and know exactly why. There’s value in fucking up and learning from your mistakes, even if sometimes the real lesson is that someone else is a real dick.

I’m not sure how much of this translated to the person I was talking to, or how much they realized that (a) they’ve failed at something and that’s fine as long as they accept it, and (b) it’s better to fail and move on than pull everything down around them in an attempt to disguise the failure from themselves and others. I know that the me of even a decade ago might not have been ready to accept that. Nonetheless: sometimes it’s good to give in and admit that you made a trash fire.

I’ve shared what I’ve been reading in terms of comics all year so far, but I figured as we’re approaching the midpoint of the year, I’d share my 2023 Spotify playlist. I started it at the very end of 2022, as you’ll be able to see below from the screenshots, but this is the second year I’ve done this: made a playlist that’s either new songs that I’ve not heard before but become obsessed with, or else things that I’ve not listened to in awhile that I felt the urge to dive back into. (More of the former than the latter, so far.)

Consider all of these songs recommended, of course.

The playlist so far goes beyond 50 songs, but that feels like a good place to stop for now. I should add that I try to make sure that no artist appears on the list twice, but I’m fudging the details a little on that here: “Neil MacArthur” is, in fact, Colin Blunstone under a fake name. (For those who don’t know either name, but generally know their pop: Blunstone was the lead vocalist for the Zombies. The Colin Blunstone track here is basically a Zombies reunion a handful of years after Odyssey and Oracle, and it’s glorious.)

Go on; sample some stuff. See if there’s some new (or old) favorites in there.