journal features

goodbye, 2018

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Toronto, 2018.12.31

People seemed to behave like 2018 was a bad year, but I think I had a good one. Certainly, the month-long jaunt to Japan in the middle was a memorable change of pace. I've got aging parents and my kids seem to be dealing with new challenges where I feel increasingly useless, and I'm still amazingly incapable of building anything like what you'd call "life savings" and we're getting increasingly desperate warnings from the people watching the economy and ecology. But here we are: the madness of King Louie in the 'States is just background noise as we keep on raising the brats and taking care of each other. Yeah, 2018 was challenging but good.

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner