VELOCITY: 2022 IN REVIEW

Hello one and all and Happy New Year! I hope you had a marvelous set of holidays and your 2023 is off to a wonderful start. In usual Fates tradition, I wanted to share my recap of 2022 – a year that, for all manner of reasons, was one of the most unique of my entire life. Perhaps it’s best to start by addressing the gargantuan elephant standing here in the middle of the room…

WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?

Even the most casual of readers will have recognized a 3-month gap in publishing activity which occurred immediately after the Fate-a-palooza article in September and ended with the 2022 Book Awards in late December. So, what, precisely, occurred you might ask? Well, it was more of the same with travel as 8 days after Fate-a-palooza ended, I was back in So. Cal., chilling for a week in Palm Springs and then, 2 weeks after that I temporarily relocated to the Vancouver/Portland area (more on that later).

I also realized that the majority of my articles in 2022 were about my travels and that Fates was perilously close to transmogrifying into a travelogue, and that I also needed a break from the site to just live life a bit. I also intentionally disengaged from Twitter and the community as keeping up with everything was beginning to feel somewhat close to “job-like” and, at times, simply overwhelming.

VELOCITY: A YEAR OF TRAVEL, ADVENTURES & MUSIC

Our good friends over at Webster’s define the word Velocity as: “The rate of occurrence of action; quickness of motion; rapidity of movement.” If any word could possibly encapsulate the spirit and theme of my 2022, this is, unequivocally, it.

Never in my life have I done so much travel – and it was positively glorious! Prior to my temporary relocation which began in early-October, I had taken 15 separate trips. It was such a joy to spend time with old friends and make tons of new ones. As I had reported across several articles throughout the year, many of these were to see bands. All told, I saw 23 bands play in 5 states and two countries. Oh the joy of basking in the sounds of live music once again. It positively energized my soul and reinvigorated my spirit!

When at home, the calendar was also jam-packed with activity, including my continued volunteering at the cat sanctuary, local hikes, exploring trails on the new mountain bike, kayaking, fishing and camping.

With an influx of new board games I had previously backed on Kickstarter, there was consistent fun with my nerd gangs locally and in Spokane enjoying each other’s company around the game table. There was also more geekdom had at the Crypticon horror convention in Seattle as well as at the amazing Rose City ComiCon in Portland.

It was a wonderful time for sure and I’m already using it as a blueprint for 2023 where I have already taken a trip to Scottsdale and am headed to the sultry sand and waves of Huntington Beach in a couple of days. A likely trip to the Dominican Republic in February and back to Palm Springs in March, a 10-day Fate-a-palooza II in May and more summer travels being vetted.

The best? Japan finally (finally) opened back up and I already purchased my tickets for a 3-week trip this coming October. I cannot wait!

A RETURN TO URBANITY

It became quite evident to me in the Winter of 2021/2022, that I was beginning to have issues with the characteristics of my current latitude. Specifically, the 16-hours of darkness each day during the Winter were manifesting in symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder, namely hypersomina, listlessness, and noticeable declines in motivation. This was exacerbated by the fact that I had previously lived my entire life in, arguably, the best weather on the planet: Southern California.

So, my plan was to try being someplace a bit different, yet reasonably close, for a potential “over-Wintering” spot. I knew that massive metro areas like So. Cal. or Seattle were definitely out, so after a couple of scouting sojourns to the Vancouver area, I decided to try it out for 6 months. I got a place and me and the Fuzzy Fates packed a few things and off we went.

The location was perfect! Camas is outside of the Vancouver metro area and is an affluent suburb nestled along the Columbia River with lush foliage and trees on its sides and rear. More green-space than development and only 6 miles drive across the bridge to Portland, it definitely suited my needs.

I moved in on a bright, beautiful sunny day and was excited as we loaded our gear into our apartment. Then, it was over a month of straight rain, which wasn’t necessarily bad nor unexpected, but it was the total absence of sunlight and perennial gloom that started to kill the buzz almost instantaneously. I found this to be far worse than that of Fate Estate in that, where even with 8-hours of daylight, the majority of Winter’s days are actually sunny.

I also knew there was risk in living in an apartment, particularly after living in my own home for 30 years. It was great for a while, then a loud-mouth prick, who talked every night on the phone from 11:30pm to 6:30am, moved above me and then things began to become somewhat untenable. I was literally able to get zero restorative slumber and was making noise complaints to management daily. In short order, despite having made many new friends and having many wonderful times, I made the call to head back to Fate Estate for the holidays.

It certainly was a grand adventure and I’ve no regrets. An easy and inexpensive way to realize I cannot ever live in that area full-time, nor can I ever live in an apartment setting or any residence with shared walls. I’m in the process of searching for a new spot for us later this year, which will likely be my original stomping grounds on California’s Central Coast or Northern Baja. Or maybe a string of 2-3 week trips peppered throughout the season? There’s plenty of time to sort it out.

ON CREATIVITY

With respect to creative endeavors, it was a bit of a mixed bag. The plan to (yet again) reunite my former punk-band was, unfortunately, a fail. Things started off exceedingly well as I flew down in January for initial rehearsals with a new drummer. Things sounded solid, tight and pretty shit-hot.

We agreed that we wanted to re-write some parts in various songs as our technical virtuosity, such as it is, is far stronger today than when we were in our early-20s’ and would only bolster the old tunes to make them far superior to their original incarnations. In addition, our singer wanted to similarly refine some of the lyrics. We agreed to work independently with the notes from the sessions and reconvene as a unit in July.

In June, our new drummer bowed out of the project for whatever reasons and that’s where it stands as of this writing. Will it happen this year? Is the 3^rd attempt the charm? Who knows? I’m somewhat doubtful, but certainly not ruling it out. I did manage to write 2 new songs, so I guess there was a semblance of a tangible result somewhere in the morass.

Things on the (non-Fates) writing front were a much different story. The final draft of the “Rock ‘N Roll Zero” manuscript is 90% complete and I plan to have it wrapped up by February.

After receiving some rather direct feedback on my novelist skills (or lack thereof) mid-year, I pivoted to an essay collection format which, frankly, is my primary strength as a writer and will, I’m told, make the book easier to sell. So, once complete, we’ll wait to see if there’s a publisher who may be interested in moving forward. This was also the reason for the decrease in Fates on Fire articles in 2022.

I have also commenced two new writing projects which I’ll discuss more in next month’s “Fourth Annual Report” article, but it’s pretty exciting stuff.

SO, HOW ABOUT THAT MARKET?

Since this is, ostensibly, a somewhat kinda-sorta FIRE blog, I’d be remiss if I didn’t touch on all things finance and investing. We’re all aware that 2022 was the worst market in 14 years. We investors got a good kick in the teeth to greater or lesser extents. But, honestly, after the ridiculous returns in the past 2 years, specifically 2021, what did anyone really think was going to occur?

That said, to demonstrate how negatively anomalous 2022 truly was, I’ve included a scatter chart below that shows historical returns in the context of the S&P 500 and U.S.10yr Treasury performance. Look to the lower-middle, far-left to see where 2022 lies. Just abysmal.

Like all other investors, my equity portfolio was down, but actually fared a bit better than the losses on the total market, Dow and S&P. As I’ve published previously, my dividend & interest income eclipses my total annual spending, thus putting me in a 0% draw-down position. That was never my plan, it just organically occurred, but I’m grateful in shit-storms like last year, I don’t lose any sleep, even if it was uncomfortable looking at the numbers on the statements. What was interesting is that with increased interest rates, the non-equity/cash portion of my portfolio increased my total income by a little over 60%.

I hope everyone else was able to hang-in and here’s to a significantly better 2023 for all of us. Just looking at the above chart gives me hope in that 2022 was such an egregious outlier, that it, likely, won’t occur again anytime soon.

HOW ABOUT YOU?

So that’s it from me. As you can see it was a wild ride with lots of, mostly ups, and a few downs, and a couple of surprises thrown in to keep things interesting. But ain’t that the nature and joy of life? How was your 2022? Best things? Worst things? As always, I’d love to hear from you.