Bear's Monthly Mayhem - December 2023!
Archived from BearWiseman.com
December. The end of the year. I usually use this particular blog to catch up on the month, but December always feels like a time for deeper reflection (hence this coming out a few days later than usual).
Well, this last year was quite a trip. I had hoped that 2023 would be easier than 2022 had been, but I was not so fortunate. However, 2023 also brought out a lot of my strength and pushed me to start doing more with myself than I’ve been doing for a long time. I lost one of the most important people in the world to me this year, but I have also deeply celebrated everything I learned from him. Grief over losing your kid is rough. Grief over losing someone that you were not on speaking terms with is worse. Yet, I found a way to come to terms with all of that in a surprisingly short amount of time. Now, my cub is a warm blanket of reassurance for whenever I need it. He finally gets to be at peace and I finally get to have the spiritual emotional support that I knew he always wanted to give me.
I had some big epiphanies this year and took some big steps. I’m trying to move things forward and stop feeling like I’m treading water. I realized that my judgments towards blogging and self-publishing were probably only holding me back. I made a lot of changes on this site—-for example, this monthly blog used to be just me dropping all of the articles I had written for Tuonela Magazine. Funny to read back on January 2023 and see how it sounds compared to November 2023. It wasn’t much of a blog before, just some random thoughts depicting where I’m at in the moment, and whatever articles had come out of me.
It’s interesting to read back on February, for example, where I talked about admitting that I was unhappy and just needed to be for a while. That was wildly true and ultimately, I feel like that decision had paid off in the end. I don’t feel quite so unhappy anymore, for many reasons.
I start to always get cabin fever in March, and I did a lot more work selling merch this year, particularly in the spring. There were some very interesting experiences and I do enjoy learning about how things work behind-the-scenes in the music industry. There was a lot of drama in the metal scene this year because of unscrupulous band members and their merch reps, so I’m pleased to say that Enslain doesn’t (at least per any of the crew I’ve met, which is most of them) have any groupies on staff. The spring was also, it seems, when I made my first decisions to ease up on the music journalism, as I opted to attend very few festivals in 2023 (compared to the 10ish I attended in 2022).
May marked the end of days for one of my all-time favorite bands, tragically. I will always remember Ember Falls with nothing but fondness, as they were always very lovely to me and treated me with real appreciation. It also marked the first changes in this blog, and I had spoken about how wrangling the beast that is my brain and depression is hard without medication. In hindsight, I can also admit to some good progress there—my extreme, drastic responses to things have died down considerably. My general mood is actually pretty positive/optimistic at the moment, interspersed with bad days, which is a pleasant change from the always-bad-with-occasional-good-days that I’ve been used to for so many years. I feel much more level-headed and capable of doing things than I did last year. Interestingly, May was also the first month in years where I hadn’t attended a single live show.
I had been really excited about the Gathering of Geeks Trivia Showdown I had done with The Mosfets and Everfrost when they were both at the same event (Louhela Jam), but I’m sad to say that, because it was filmed outdoors, none of the material is actually usable. The audio is just far too messy to make use of and the video file didn’t end up working out either. I also found my first joys in live music in ages in June, when I saw Frozen Factory in Helsinki for the first time.
July was, of course, the month when my cub had passed away. Tuska and Kosmos were both a lot of fun, and July was also the month when I decided that I couldn’t keep acting as editor of Tuonela any longer. All of this was followed by the commencement of my grieving period, wherein, I must say, I took extremely good care of myself and did exactly what I needed to get through it.
August allowed me to see Marko Hietala and Tarja Turunen on stage together for the first time ever. I attended a Machinae Supremacy show with a spirit, and enjoyed the first year Enslain took over merch for Dark River Festival (finally!). I was strangely harassed by a washed-up delusional hack of a musician and wrote the article about the ending to How I Met Your Mother that’s been stewing in my head since that show ended. Meanwhile, September brought me back to Tilburg for my fourth Ayreon live show (that’s 4/4, ooh yeah!), this time with my partner attending (his first time)!
October is my birthday month and this year was the first year that I’ve tried to have a party for myself. I’ve noticed that I often end up being a bit of a tourist in other people’s friend groups, who shows up for a while but never really finds their place. It makes sense then, that my efforts to gather all of the people I like together have resulted in those people liking each other as well. Having so many lovely people come spend time with me on my birthday really helped to heal something in me that’s been very sad for a very long time. October also marked the second time I found a strong joy at attending a live show again, this time seeing Jekaterina X and Pihka Is My Name. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the small-crowd art-house setting for live shows. Also, I decided to fall in love with Merta in October after I saw them open for Machinae Supremacy. You may see me as their merch rep in 2024!
By the end of November, my mood towards the music scene in Finland had completely changed, after seeing artists like Emmy June, Helena Haaparanta, Johanna von Hertzen, Heikki Hänninen, and everyone else from Love Potion Psych Fest. It was also the month when I started the new format for this blog that I’ll be continuing next year.
This led to me taking more risks with live shows in December. I went gig-hopping between Heikki Hänninen and Johanna von Hertzen, where I discovered two more interesting acts, Vies Vignette and Monotonia. I finished the second season of Heartstopper and was pleased to find that it held up to the first. I got started on writing up some TTRPG systems, with my first one dedicated to LIMINAL_. I finished playing both Sea of Stars and Oceanhorn, and finally decided to write up Nex Machina. After all that was done and ready, I did a gaming recap for 2023. I also shared some thoughts on the Elton John biopic, Rocketman. I dropped even more thoughts on the releases from Vorna, Emmy June, and Vies Vignette from 2023, as well as Merta, Johanna von Hertzen, and Joss Cope from before this year. There’s also a year-end list from Tuonela and a year-end not-so-much-a-list from here!
On a grander scale, while this year was still very hard and heavy, I’m pleased to say that this was the year that I conquered grief, made peace with my cub posthumously, fixed my relationship, started a podcast, had a full break-up and musical renaissance, and began my journey of investing in myself and started self-publishing. You can find links to my currently published short stories here:
Soulsong - Amazon
Adrift - Amazon
Soulsong - Google
Adrift - Google
Soulsong - Kobo
Adrift - Kobo
Now, in 2024, I’m hoping to focus on healing my body (which has been neglected for far too long) and moving all of the things I started in 2023 forward. I hope that the worst of things is over. Of course, life is always an ebb and flow of good and bad, but I’m hoping that it’s time for a reversal after the past hard couple of years. I’m looking forward to finding joys in life again.
Thanks for reading along with me! I appreciate everyone who stops by, reads articles, picks up my short stories, all of it! Take care of yourselves in 2024! Coming next month will be a new playlist for 2024, so for now, have one last look at my favorite tracks from 2023!