It’s been an eventful, surprising, albeit sometimes disturbing year. The Ukrainian invasion, inflation, and the World Cup. A blur, really. Do you even remember the Beijing Winter Olympics? Me neither. 2022 was chock full of new friends, ideas, motivations, and exciting destinations.
Most of us got our lives back on track—13 billion administered vaccines will do that. Crazy thing science.
I learned a lot of stuff in 2022: Like how women’s breasts have grown 300% since WWII, according to a comic book study. That Powerball is now the surest way for the average Joe to achieve the American Dream. And I can rest easier now fully understanding Celine Dion’s long-ill-defined glitch—she suffers from Stiff Person Syndrome. Which explains everything!
I learned a lot of new words and neologisms in 2022, too. Phrases like: permacrisis, Flurona, tip baiting, Okay Doomer, text chains, passkeys, grandfluencers, greedflation, shrinkflation, joy workoutsforever chemicals, deplatforming, microplastic rain, malvertising and splotting. Seeing my lab Barney splot makes me happy. But I’m still confused with the dueling dictionary “words of the year”: Is it gaslighting or goblin mode? I get the daily right wing gaslighting thing, but WTF is goblin mode? Is that an eccentric English entry?
It was a big year for science again. Those eggheads at Lawrence Livermore successfully created sun-like nuclear fusion, which will radically change the world—albeit a decade too late to matter. Scientists also created synthetic embryos—making us males completely superfluous. And good old NASA was back…like it’s 1969. First, for the successful Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission that proved we earthlings can protect ourselves from earth-destroying asteroids—now, if we could only protect ourselves from us earthlings. Then another moon shot?! And finally, NASA excited us with the James Webb Space Telescope, giving us jaw-dropping and awe-inspiring photos. That made some realize how small we indeed are. And lightning zigzags have been explained!
The most significant news stories in 2002 revealed a lot: I read Poland handed Germany a $1.3 trillion WWII reparations bill. Good luck collecting on that! Sadly, I learned that since 9/11, there have been four suicides for every battlefield death among US military members. Seems America’s mental health is in serious decline. And I learned, despite inflation being at a 40-year high, that corporate profits hit their highest level in 70 years! Coincidence? And finally, Spoiler Alert: Workers discovered they preferred working from home.
Along with Santa’s Naughty/Nice kind, tis the season for year-end list making. Listhood is the best thing about recapping a year. We love ‘em, or we hate ‘em stuff. I’m a sucker for annual best-of lists, those ends of-the-year contrivances neatly sum up the whole complicated year for us like a Christmas present where the bow is the best part. Packaging over the content is very American. And list-making has proliferated too, like the presents around the Chalmers family tree. One prominent listologist claims there are over 2,000 such annual lists today. Like the cereal aisle at the grocery store, there’s probably a few too many.
I especially enjoy surveying travel lists: Best Beaches in 2022, Best New Restaurants in 2022, New Hotels for 2022, and that infamously famous annual Travelers GO/noGO list…but, as you already know, this is not a travel piece.
Some lists are easier to put together than others, like best-of sports lists, top movies, best reads, must-see TV shows and music hits, along with podcasts, gadgets, video games, and most Googled items (Wordle!). Such is life in 2022. Others are notably trickier to assemble, wholly subjective, the product of expert taste purveyors, and dare I say it, influencers. Thoughtless pop culture social media banalities all. Like the Best memes, Tweets and apps. Do you remember Barbara Walters’s annual “10 Most Fascinating People of (insert year)” that ran, seemingly, forever? Talk about banal. Sometimes it’s all just so overwhelming that I revert to simple images. The NY Times Year in Pictures is always interesting to me.
And every industry makes their own year-end lists: there are best ads, top censored stories, top fashions, Architectural Digest’s 2022 Wow List, best cars, best jobs to have, and best restaurants in the world.
Whatever list you enjoy perusing, it is our annual ritual. I know I always learn something new or find something novel that I want to see, do, eat, visit, watch, hear…Something to aspire. Lists reveal our species’ unique passion for organization and how we catch-up on our times as it hurries past us: What we did, what we saw, what we heard, and what we may have missed while unplugged. FOMO gone wild. And then we argue about them at the Christmas table. Fun times.
Now I don’t know who started making these lists. Some say it was the angst created in movie-goers with the first Academy Awards (a list of movies we should see) held in 1929. Others blame Fortune Magazine’s first Fortune 500 list in 1955. And I vaguely remember someone describing an early work of Susan Sontag’s entitled “Notes on Camp,” in which she listed what was and was not “camp” to her. Which is funny. Or maybe it was that damn Dickens dude again with his: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times opener? Frankly, I dunno…they’re just lists; we shouldn’t dwell too much on them.
But, then again, while we’re at it…if I were going to make an annual list, and since Santa’s Naughty/Nice list is taken, I might choose from these fun new list categories:
● 2023’s Notable births & deaths = Checking In Checking Out
● 2023’s TV pundit ratings = 50/50ish 100% Wrong
● 2023’s World leader ranking = Saints Sinners
● 2023’s Our holidays graded = Heavenly Hellish
● 2023’s Service providers assessed = Kudos Kvetches
● 2023’s Sport finishers ranked = Clutch Choker
● 2023’s Latest ideas evaluated = Paradigm shifter Money grab
● 2023’s Legislation appraised = Sign it Veto it
● 2023’s Political candidates ranked = Smartest Dumbest
● 2023’s Special mentions = Kisses Kicks
● 2023’s Hot it travel destinations = Love it Leave it
…and this list could go on.
Next year, I promise. Maybe.
Thanks for the privilege of your time, it is the most precious thing we have, and I appreciate it. Be well.
William D. Chalmers © 2022 GreatEscape Adventures, Inc. All Rights Reserved.