New Year’s 2023: Jeff Baker, Boogieman in Lavender

This Is Myyyyy New Years Resolution

by Jeff Baker

(title from Spike Jones)

So here we are in Two-Thousand-Twenty-Three.

As a guy who was watching reruns of “The Jetsons” back in 1969 I find that amazing.

There are plenty of reasons for hope about 2023, if only from naive optimism. At the very least, Civil War did not break out in 2022 and the partisan hacks who thought they wanted civil war were shocked, shocked at any violence seemingly directed at them.

And the possibility of turning back rights for LGBT people in the U.S. was squelched at least for now with passage of legislation which also guaranteed the right to interracial marriage, the latter in spite of statements that such marriages were not in danger from Joe Isuzu…I mean, from conservatives.

Other political news was a mixed bag but the election results could have been so much worse.

That probably ought to be the theme for the year: “It could have been so much worse.”

As for the title of our feature this month it’s actually from a Spike Jones song. I play it every year at the end of the year but I’ve never believed in making New Year’s Resolutions. I DO make a lot of to-do lists, however. One of the items is to write and finish a few more full-length stories this year. I had some personal obligations that got in the way of major writing projects last year although I wrote a lot of flash fiction.

One thing I’ve noticed from writers is they almost all wish they had started writing (and publishing!) sooner. Same with me. I did a bunch of comic book parodies in my school notebook in High School (actually IN High School which is why I didn’t have a 4.0 grade average!) and I wish I’d known how to submit something, or even that I COULD submit something for publication! It would’ve been easier than I thought and being published in High School would have been incredibly cool! But if I had any career ambitions at all it was about becoming a journalist and I didn’t even consider doing fiction until about ten years after I graduated.

So, if there’s a message to this long ramble it is that it really never is too late to start something new. You don’t even have to wait until Midnight December 31^st.

And I noticed just now that this is being posted on Friday the Thirteenth. I’m not superstitious about that but I’ll say that’s an omen of optimism.

Happy New Year!

Jeff Baker blogs about reading (and writing) SciFi, Fantasy and Horror on or around the thirteenth of every month. He is a regular contributor to the RoM/Mantic Reads e-zine https://rommanticreads.wordpress.com/ and his fiction and non-fiction regularly get rejected from many other markets. He posts fiction on his blog https://authorjeffbaker.com/2023/01/12/the-snowflower-by-jeff-baker-friday-flash-fics-for-friday-the-thirteenth-of-january-twenty-twenty-three/ and wastes time on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063555483587 He and his husband Darryl both remember when “The Jetsons” was new and they send readers optimistic wishes and hopes for the New Year.

Here’s Spike Jones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_4BrQeTFKo