Throw Out The 2017 Banners, It's Time To Boogie?

Well, well, well. Against all the odds, we have made it to the very brink of 2018. How many people thought that very unlikely, even a few months ago? There were several rashes of alarmist thinking during 2017, after all. We made it! Huzzah! Bring on another year of -- Oh, great herds of kerfuffling dingoes! I forgot.

2018 will be an important year, but at the moment no-one can really tell whether it will be a good one or not. There are massive and invisible forces maneuvering in the world, and we have no idea what the repercussions of their actions will be. Will we head into the abyss of ever more superficial and empty nonsense, be conquered by stealthy and unseen overlords, reach a tipping point and head for somewhere new, continue in an ever more unstable status quo, or experience some other as yet unknown option (preferably involving lemons as a global currency)?

Before we consider 2018, though, we should try and get an idea of what 2017 was. However, this is really a fool's errand as it is entirely unclear what has really happened in 2017 at this point. The traditional routes of information are now so biased as to be utterly unintelligible, and the Internet is being tamed continually in terms of communication by the big forces. It's very difficult to know what happened, but on the gut level it seems like it was a foundational year, setting the scene but without really doing anything in particular. Despite much media furore, what you can point to that was new and terrible in 2017? There were good things, but they're not entirely clear, drowned out as they have been by hysterical gibbering from our reporters and opinion remakers.

This has been a bit serious, hasn't it? Not really very quirky? Or muffiny? It has been that kind of year. Specifically here in the blog, we've had lots of reviews and general blather, but the stories have fallen away. It would be nice to reverse that, but the extra workload of being a part-time student is very draining. It's almost completely impossible to find that well of creative energy that once was so bountiful and flowing! What we can expect from 2018 is a re-invigoration and a return to some level of creative wackiness, especially if studies take a year off. This is meant to be fun to do, not a drain of resources.

Good bye, 2017. Hello, 2018. Roll on, post one thousand. Bring on the positivity!

O.