As if 2022 will be any better…

Happy New Year’s Eve. It’s been a while. How did you even find this blog, anyway? Are you a friend or a fan from a long time ago, back when I actually wrote stuff? Did you recently find a story of mine and decide to type in my web address? Were you looking for the photographer in New York at scottwbaker.com? Whatever brought you, welcome. It’s been a while since I was here. Please pardon the dust.

As I ring in the new year, I’m of course contemplating resolutions. I have a lot of the standards: lose weight, get more exercise, lower my blood pressure, write more… Only the blood pressure one is unique to this year (hooray for getting old). The odds of me sticking to any of them aren’t much better than the odds of 2022 being a superior year to 2021…which we had such high hopes for as an improvement to 2020.

Then I started to realize that the quality of a year and my ability to maintain resolutions could possibly be correlated. I have no control over pandemics and politics and supply chains, but I do control what I do. Sounds pretty obvious, right? But if I lose 30 pounds, stop worrying about my bp, improve my physicality enough that simple things don’t wear me down, and get a few stories out the door, I’m pretty sure that my corner of 2022 could be an improvement.

I’ll add one more: this blog. I need to give it more attention. It could use a redesign, sure, but it also needs some consistent content. Once a week? Ambitious. I’ll target a couple times a month (which I can align with my school’s Creative Writing Club meetings to help me remember). There are a lot of things to discuss: TV shows (Wheel of Time, the Marvel stuff, Expanse), movies (SpiderMan, Matrix, more Marvel stuff), books, writing, cons and their formats, video games… Yeah, I’ll try to remember to come back to this list. Maybe I should talk about one now. Let’s talk cons.

Con crud has been a thing as far back as cons go. So yes, virus transmission is a very real thing at conventions. It’s the reason so many cons were cancelled last year, even with the push to get back to

“normal”. It’s the reason that a lot of the cons that weren’t cancelled had mask mandates or even vaccine mandates. I’m supposed to be hitting ChattaCon in a couple weeks and I have no idea what their policy will be. I’m hoping for a mask mandate. I’ll likely wear one whether it’s required or not. I wear a mask every day at school (another place where germ exchange is rampant) despite the mandate having lifted a month or so ago. Last year’s ChattaCon was virtual, so masks would be a significant improvement. It also occurs to me that a hybrid in-person/online con is a possibility (panels streaming on Zoom).

I’m excited to get back together with my con pals. I’ve been in touch with some in the hiatus, but that’s not the same. For instance, we have a perennial whiskey tasting that lost some of its “perennial” with last year’s con being virtual. Cons are a big way that I refuel my writing tank, something that definitely ran dry last year. It’ll likely be summer before I get to another con, but even one gets me pumped up.

Have your local sci-fi cons been happening? With masks? Virtual? Let me know in the comments.

I’ll see you soon. I promise. Or at least, I resolve.