New Year’s Eve 2020 – Transcript

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Hey, it’s Christopher and it is 6:54 p.m. on New Year’s Eve 2020.

I’m trying something totally new here: just sitting down in front of the mic and talking about the year that was. Normally, I usually have some notes about what I want to talk about, and, obviously, if I’m doing a story, I have the entire story printed out. But tonight I just kind of wanted to babble.

I wanted to kinda challenge myself to see how quickly I could turn an episode around…I came up with this idea probably about ten minutes ago. I grabbed an image for this entry, I got some water together, and now I’m sitting down and talking.

I think we can all agree that it was a crappy year. For me, it started with a hope that the novel I’m shopping around, which is called A Magic Life, would get representation and hopefully even sell. And I had reason to have those high hopes. When I started submitting the novel, agents were requesting full and partial manuscripts—and some of those agents were the agents that you send things to with the hope that, “Okay, they represent a lot of really great people—and maybe they won’t even pay attention to me, but they seem open right now.” So, when you’re hearing back from agents who represents some huge writers, you naturally feel good about the year.

Even after losing a job in early January of 2020, I had high hopes even there. I was working a contract gig, and the group that I was working with wanted me back. They thought they’d be able to bring me on board [in] March or April and then, of course, COVID hit. And with that, hiring freezes happened, agents kinda didn’t know what to make of things, and…it’s only been in the last week or so that I’ve seen some agents coming out and saying, “Yeah, like everybody, I did my best just to get through the year. And I’m sorry that I’ve not really taken on new writers.”

So, what started off a great and hopeful year with A Magic Life ended up kinda sucky. I mean, it really was just like that—I was getting good responses for my query, and then silence. And I don’t blame those agents. I think many of us, especially early on, we had no idea what this year was going to become. Some people thought, “Oh, you know it’s just gonna be a month or so.” And then others—probably more realistic—and said. “Eh, it’s probably going to be a year or two.” And as time went on in 2020 I started seeing savings dwindling because the job that wanted to hire me wasn’t hiring anybody. Suddenly things were being pushed back, and they were saying, “Maybe September? Uh…we have no idea.”

I did get lucky when things were about to begin totally running out, and in July. I did find another contract. It’s at the same company and well…I almost lost that contract in November; then again in December. And, fortunately, they’ve looked at what we’re doing and decided, “Well, we’ll keep him around at least until March—maybe longer—it just depends how everything goes in 2021.” And I guess that’s what made me want to sit down and talk about not about Not About Lumberjacks on the last day of the year.

No matter how bad things get, fiction is always there for me. Whether it’s novels, short stories, or coming up with adventures for Dungeons and Dragons for my wife, it’s a thing that I’ve always depended on. And with A Magic Life not really doing much, once the pandemic hit, the only thing I really had control over was Not About Lumberjacks. And in what was such a bad year for so many people became a better year for this show.

Maybe because of the pandemic, I saw the show grow a little bit—and again, it’s something I’ve talked about: I really don’t get lots of listens for the show. But I’ve at least seen maybe that forty listens that I get in the first week climb up to fifty and sixty even when releasing something like this. The Behind the Cut episodes usually get fewer listens than the actual stories—and now Behind the Cut is doing as well as stories used to do.

It’s still not enough that most people would continue with a show like this—especially when I consider all the hours that I put into it. But aside from time spent with my wife, time out hiking—Not About Lumberjacks is one thing that I could rely upon. And that makes me wanna do a bit more in 2021.

I’m still not sure, entirely, what I’m going to do. But I’ve had friends and even some listeners whom I don’t really know in real life say, “You know, have you ever considered setting up a Patreon? What about a YouTube channel?”

I do have a YouTube channel—I just don’t do a lot with it.

My wife had a good year as an artist, doing some artwork for an animal sanctuary she loves. Not directly affiliated with them, but a side thing that donates money to a sanctuary—and they embrace that. So, in the process of her year, she set up the ability to print t-shirts. And then one day she said, “You know, I can print a couple Not About Lumberjacks t-shirts.”

So she did, and we posted a couple of photos of those, and I was amazed how many people were like, “Print these! I want one!”

So, I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do in 2021 with Not About Lumberjacks, but I do want to do more with it. Something as simple as the bloopers that I put at the end of this year’s Christmas episode was a huge hit. I don’t know if I did a Patreon that would be like one of those little perks. I don’t know if I would do a monthly or even quarterly state-of-the-show video. I don’t know if I’d just sometimes out on a hike just whip out the phone and just throw down some thoughts. Or even more things just like this where I have nothing written—not even bullet points—where I just sit down in front of the mic and babble.

I’d definitely be lying if I said, “Twenty-twenty didn’t hurt me.” Seeing that cycle of savings from my day job and then losing a job and seeing those savings go away, whether it’s due to a layoff or some kind of health emergency—it’s gotten old.

It’s funny when people talk about the movie Up. That beginning where everybody’s like, “Man, that’s just so beautiful, but so tragic.” I mean that’s almost my wife in me, except we’re both still here. Fortunately.

Every time the jar fills up it goes away. If we wanted to have children, a health condition I have ensures that we couldn’t. So many scenes in that beginning hit home. But another aspect of that movie that hits home even—even though I’m not really fond of Up, is the thought that just sometimes everyday life has its own magic.

While I was unemployed, my wife and I found all these new hiking trails. We came up with some cool ideas this year. And even though the whole thing with submitting A Magic Life actually hurt—and why wouldn’t it? It seemed like this was gonna be the year, and now, it seems like I’ve gone through every option and I’m coming to an end.

If nothing happens with that book, there are two more after it. And I’m not the kind of person who just bails on a project and goes to the next thing that might make some money or might not. This is the story I’m invested in, so I’m going to write those other two novels no matter what. Maybe they get released here—maybe they just end up in a drawer. I don’t know. But every single time I said, “I don’t know,” about 2020 and even the future, the two things that I’m sure about are that my wife and I will always make it somehow. I mean, it’s just what we do. We’ve been doing that for twenty-nine years, and we always keep going. And as we’ve talked about 2021, both of us have some good plans.

As for me, one of those things is the other thing I can rely upon: this show. As I mentioned in the most recent Behind the Cut, I plan to release eight episodes this year—and by “this year,” I mean, the November-beginning of a new year for Not About Lumberjacks, to November of 2021. But that still means six new episodes before Thanksgiving next year.

Earlier today. When I was knocking around on Twitter, I saw somebody who posted the very last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. It’s that one where Calvin and Hobbes—Hobbes is carrying a toboggan and Calvin is charging through snow. And he says, “Wow, it really snowed last night. Isn’t it wonderful?”

And then Hobbes, looking up in wonder, says, “Everything familiar has disappeared. The world looks brand new.”

Calvin stretches his arms out and says, “A new year. A fresh clean start.”

Hobbes almost throws out jazz hands as he says, “It’s like having a big white sheet of paper to draw on.”

Calvin, with his hands on his hips, says, “A day full of possibilities.”

They climb aboard the toboggan and Calvin looks back and says, “It’s a magical world, Hobbes old buddy.”

Off they go down the hill.

“Let’s go exploring.”

And I guess that’s what I wanna do in 2021—I want to go exploring. I wanna get out on more hiking trails—I wanna do more things that I don’t do. I want to spend even more time with my wife. And I wanna make next year’s writing better than even this year’s writing, which, even in one of the crappiest years ever, was better than the year before.

So, thanks to everybody who listens. I know I don’t have a big show, and it may never be a big show. Or maybe it’s the thing where instead of querying agents, that someday an agent comes across and says, “What’s up with the show—You have a ton of stories? And then you mentioned that you have novels and other things?!”

So who knows what the potential of the show is. But that doesn’t necessarily matter to me as much as every year piling up more stories, putting in the effort to record ’em, and then seeing if anybody cares enough to listen. And enough people do—so, again, “Thanks!”

Here’s to 2021.

Let’s go exploring…