Well it’s Monday. Just like that. No getting around it. It’s November 30th, people I know have put up Xmas trees and we’re in the slide to the end of the year. Just like that. Soon people will put up endless lists, best of the year, best of the decade type stuff, and so on. What were the songs you loved most, the TV moments that you loved best the movies, books, orgasms, toes, viruses, scented wax candles and pastries that you remember the most fond over the last decade.

Of course we’ll also have the flurry of posts about how this was a bad year and thank god it’s over and next year will be better. There are always far too many of those, I think. And I never do check, but I always mean to – how many of the people posting those posts do you think posted them in the last five years? Ever wonder about that? How many people have generally fine years but remember them badly, all the time, and just declare them all spoiled? I bet it isn’t a very small number. But regardless, those posts will happen.

It’s like the turning of the leaves. There are seasons to the internet and they have their signs. You know winter is truly here once NaNoWriMo and its 50,000 spin-offs start. Fall arrives with the posts of going back to school, either by students or parents. We’re creatures of habit and our environment both, these are the things that force us to think and we voice those thoughts. We turn our lives into a clock.

I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. I’m certain, however, that it doesn’t matter if it is one or the other. Reality would suggest it’s neither. It’s what we make of it. And as we all turn our thoughts to looking back over the last year, and casting further, the last ten years let us remember that: It’s what we make of it.

Horrible, horrible things happened in the last decade. As well as magical, wonderful things. And what would life be without both those things? I don’t care about the horrible, anymore. The larger stuff we all know and have hashed out for years already. I’m not saying it doesn’t matter, some of it will always matter, I’m just saying we have already named it and given it our power. So let’s not give it more just this morning.

Instead I want to think about the good things. The inspired things that leave me in awe.

I met S.J. Tucker in the ’00s. I never see her, haven’t in many moons, we don’t talk, which is partly because she’s so busy it makes me look like the laziest bitch on the planet and then some, and partly because we don’t travel in the same circles really – but I still think of her almost every day. Her songs come up on my playlists, or stray thoughts or what have you. Her and K. It’s incredible to remember a time when a mutual friend said “You need to hear this woman sing and then invite her to a convention.” Boy was he right. I like to think I have helped her some, introduced her to a few folks, assisted her in shining her light, just the tiniest bit but that’s not really true. I, at best, helped hold open a door the tiniest bit – she was already stepping through it regardless of me. She is, now and for the foreseeable future, unironically, my rockstar.

I started writing professionally this decade, as well. Sometimes I forget that. TwoHeadedCat started in 2001, I sold my first short story not long after, worked for Too Much Coffee Magazine, where I met D.J. Kirkbride, all of this crazy writing goodness I deal with now – it’s about ten years old. Sure I prepared for it for most of my life before that, but it’s still new, really. I mean I can look at the chains from A to G on that and still see so many steps before Z it’s stunning. And inspiring and joyous.

I’ve met so very many people in the last ten years. So many who are dear to my heart. Some have since vanished from my life or circle, and some haven’t. Either way I cherish the time I had and will have with them, each and every one. People rule. I know I always say I don’t like people, and I mean it. I don’t. But I love people, too. A few folks understand that, and they nod when they read this. Some don’t and, well, that’s all right too.

Just this last year I started Legend of the Burrito Blade, my first webcomic. I met Renato and Lauren and we formed a team and friendships that have led to so many other things.

No this sort of list is endless and has too many names on it, too many events. Each one is amazing and special and wondrous. Not because my life is so ultra-magi-unicorn-special (though it is) but because I am willing to acknowledge all of the awesome it contains. Ten years is a long time. One year is a long time. Every year of my life I think “That last year had so many awesome things in it, surely I can’t cram more into another year!” and yet the number of them keeps going up. I really only say it to myself now while grinning. I know. I know how lucky I am, how hard I work and how amazing my friends and close ones are.

So here’s what I’m going to do about it, and what I am going to encourage you guys to do about it as well. This holiday season, whatever you celebrate, is a rough one for a lot of us in terms of money and stress. Instead of gifts I propose this:

Take the time to write the people closest to you. Send them an email, or a letter in the mail. Tell them how much they mean to you, and why. Share some history. Remind them of why they’re so close to your heart. Maybe they don’t know, maybe they do, either way a reminder is a magical thing. Thirty of them. Probably just scratching the surface for most of us. One email a day for the whole month. That’s it. Think of how much awesome and wonder we could spread. Between ourselves, our close ones and their close ones. Spread the idea, spread the joy. Thirty emails. That’s it. Think of the effect it can have on the people you love, and frankly, on yourself.

Thirty emails. We can all do it. Join me.