The World That's Coming

Longtime readers of this site will remember that, back when I freelanced for THR, I made graphics for their newsletter every Friday; I used to post them here after a couple weeks, both for safekeeping/posterity, and also because there were often some that I liked, despite the speed at which they were produced.

Now that I’m at Popverse, I don’t really have the same need or opportunity to create images, although very occasionally, I’ve made edits to header images when necessary. It’s uncommon, but every now and then, when we need to have a “new” image for a story but there aren’t that many source images to choose from… so we have to come up with something new. They’re pretty understated, nothing that would really draw too much attention to themselves, but still be relatively aesthetically pleasing.

I mention all of this, because I’m a subscriber to Chip Zdarsky’s newsletter. You know, former Daredevil writer Chip Zdarsky. And in a recent newsletter, he clearly grabbed an image of the TV Daredevil from Google without thinking about it — and it was something I’d done for Popverse a few months back.

I take this as an unexpected compliment for my work, and a nice surprise to see first thing in the morning one day. Hey, if Chip Zdarsky thought it was good enough to use…!

It feels as if winter arrived overnight, when I wasn’t paying attention. I remember arriving back in the US in mid-November and feeling, as much as anything, surprised that it wasn’t colder and darker. Certainly, the days immediately following my return seemed surprisingly sunny, even with a crispness in the air. It added to my sense of disorientation, every time I stepped outside the house.

And then, unexpectedly suddenly, I was waking up to see frost on the roofs of the houses across the street, and freezing fog hiding everything past the end of the block. The air outside the bedclothes felt sharp and uninviting, and I started making the traditional winter deals with myself after waking up in the morning: I know I probably need to get up to piss, but if I get to stay under the warm covers, then I’ll do anything, I promise…

As much as it felt like the weather was cycling through the same catch-up routine I was moving through — shit, it’s almost December already, we’re supposed to have done stuff by now— there was a distinct sense of comfort in the change, as if everything was finally settling into some kind of place, some semblance of order, after literal months of upheaval and quiet chaos. I’d gone weeks (months!) of exploring new things and moving through new places, and finally I’d arrived somewhere where I knew the emotional landmarks and furniture.

This might just be me, of course, this happiness and cozy affection for the start of winter, with the shorter days and the colder weather. I’ve often claimed it’s because I’m an October baby and therefore it’s my time, but that’s as likely superstition and nothing more. Whatever the reason, as the weather collapses down into freezing temperatures and the need for sweaters, hats, and heavy jackets, I’m feeling grateful and comfortable to feel at home for the first time in too long.

I remember very clearly a point when I was a kid — a teenager really, probably 14 or 15 — and impatiently ready for Christmas; I kept a diary at the time, because of course I did, and it was full of exactly the kind of dull things that you’d expect me at that age to be writing about, even if I (of course) felt very passionately about it all at the time. The reason I’m telling you this, though, was that I have a shockingly clear memory of it turning December and my starting to count down to Christmas Day, feeling that it was impossibly far away at 24 days, 23, 22, and so on. How could it ever arrive, when it was still 20 days away.?

Compare that with this year, when someone pointed out at the end of last month that Christmas was just four weeks away, and I broke out in the emotional equivalent of a cold sweat, wondering how it could be so close already. I hadn’t even planned out what gifts I was going to get everybody just yet…!

I don’t know if this is purely an aging thing, or if this year in particular has made me curiously aware of how quickly time passes. Certainly, the anxiety over not having planned everyone’s presents feels entirely new; I can remember going shopping the weekend before Christmas last year with some gifts still to get and feeling utterly fine about it, for example. Now, though, I feel as if I’m playing with fire and convinced that something will happen to distract me and leave me on Christmas Eve realizing that I’ve forgotten something important.

If there’s an upside to this, it’s that my Season of Caution might result in me finishing all my yuletide chores early enough to allow me to enjoy the rest of December in a holiday haze. Alternately, I might end up just being far too conscious of the rushed passing of time to enjoy anything. It’s beginning to look a lot like… middle age, I guess.

When I was in Scotland last month, my electronics decided to try to commit suicide.

It started on Sunday morning when I managed to drop my phone while taking photos on my walk around Greenock; I’ve gone… however long I’ve had cellphones (two decades? More? Let’s go with more) without dropping my phone and damaging it, but that streak came to an end when it fell and the screen lowkey shattered on the top left, with cracks extending all the way down. Oh no, I thought, this might be trouble. Maybe I’ll have to get the screen repaired or maybe replaced.

Any question about that “maybe” was resolved when, less than two hours later, I dropped it again in the apartment I was staying in, making all the cracks significantly worse. I got online on my laptop and made an appointment in the local Apple store to get it repaired… and then, on rising after doing so, immediately tripped on the power cable for the laptop, throwing it across the room, putting a 30 degree bend in the part of the cable that connects to the laptop — thankfully, it still worked — and scratching the laptop up pretty badly.

That evening, I dropped the phone a third time, taking a solid chip out of the screen.

I was telling my sister about the first few events that evening, and she pointed out that, on the last trip to the UK in April, I plugged my phone into a wall socket, only for the socket to literally explode and destroy the charging cable in the process. (As well as the power adapter I was using at the time.) “Maybe you’re cursed when it comes to using anything in the UK,” she suggested. It was beginning to feel like it.

The next day, I went to the Apple Store and paid an extortionate amount of money to have the screen replaced; it didn’t take that long and, honestly, was a pretty straightforward process. When I left the Store, I tried to log into my phone… and I couldn’t. It refused to recognize my thumbprint. I rushed back to the Store and panicking, asked what was happening. “Oh, you just need to input your thumbprint again for the first time, we forgot to do that before,” they said. “Why are you so upset? It’s okay. It’s not like it’s broken or anything.”

I didn’t want to sound too out there, arguing that all of my electronics had been trying their best to convince me otherwise recently.