I got this habit from my old friend Wally Conger, reviewing the last year and boiling it down to a top 10 drawn from pop culture encounters and/or life experiences of the past 12 months. 2023 is the year I turned 70 and the year I lost Red. Technically this is the 71st year of my life, and so I can safely say that 2023 will never be on the list of my 70 favorite years. But even the worst year of my life has some highlights, even if the top two laid me low.

1. Jack and Engrid Meng Hospice Residence — My entire year revolves around the seven weeks that my life partner lived in Room 4 here. They were among the most beautiful — and certainly the most heartbreaking — times we ever spent together, overseen by some of the most loving and sweet caretakers I will ever know. Unity Hospice was everything we could have prayed for. If I include the Celebration of Life we held July 7, this was the beginning of what I imagine will be a rest-of-my-life healing process.

2. Nitty Gritty Dirt Band at Big Top Chautauqua — Our last date, spent in Room 4 thanks to an app called Veeps, reprised several of our most memorable nights together. I have already written about that evening as well as I ever could. Again, beautiful and heartbreaking.

3. Godzilla Minus One — The first movie I’ve seen on a big screen since 2019 is not just the best Godzilla film since the first one, it’s one of the best films of any kind I’ve ever seen. Director Takashi Yamazaki created a life-affirming story cast in the shadow of unspeakable devastation. I spent December telling everyone I knew to go to the movie theater; no one who took my advice expressed disappointment. 

4. The Maid — I am a sucker for a good murder mystery and stories with quirky characters. Nita Prouse created as quirky a character as I’ve met in a long time, and narrator Lauren Ambrose brings Molly the Maid to life in the most fun audiobook of the dozens I heard this year. I was tickled to discover Prouse wrote a sequel already, and so The Mystery Guest found its way into my iPhone. Like most sequels, it’s not quite as special as the original, but Molly is such an endearing creation that it’s a pleasure to hear more.

5. The Petersens — Three sisters, their brother and mother, and a family friend on steel guitar comprise an outstanding bluegrass band from Branson, Missouri. Ellen, Kate and Julianne’s voices blend as well as any sisters since the Andrews trio, and their inventive arrangements bring new life to a range of tunes from as obvious as “Take Me Home, Country Roads” to as surprising as Sting’s “Fields of Gold” and as unexpected as “Bohemian Rhapsody.” I love these kids.

6. Daisy Jones and the Six — Talk about great acting, Riley Keough and Sam Claflin were not trained singers but they led a convincing cast in this story of a 1970s rock band that broke up after making one of the most iconic albums of that era. This spot on the list is actually three items — the way-cool Prime Video mini-series, the album Aurora which is almost as brilliant as the story requires it to be, and the audiobook of the original Taylor Jenkins Reid novel featuring a huge cast of voice actors.

7. No Offence — I discovered this 2015-2018 British police procedural on Acorn this year and was charmed by its dark humor and the talented ensemble cast led by Joanna Scanlan, Elaine Cassidy and Alexandra Roach. It’s a shame the show lasted only three seasons and 21 episodes; I would love to have followed the gang at Friday Street Station indefinitely.

8. Hackney Diamonds by The Rolling Stones — Are you kidding me? A band led by a couple of 80-year-old men produces an album this rockin’ good? Just seek it out and listen; it speaks for itself.

9. Palamino by First Aid Kit — I often keep Folk Alley, the fine streaming service, playing in the background, and one day I was stopped dead in my tracks by a catchy little melody with the refrain, “Can I keep coming back to you?” It turned out to be “Fallen Snow,” a tune from this album by First Aid Kit, the band fronted by two sisters from Sweden who sound like a cross between ABBA and Fleetwood Mac, which is a pretty tasty mix.

10. JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters — Around the 60th anniversary of that horrible day, my friend Wally posted that this book by James W. Douglass is the best chronicle of what happened that he knows. I know he knows a lot of those chronicles, so that endorsement was enough for me to buy it. I’m still working my way through, but “unspeakable” barely scratches the surface to describe what happened that day.

And that’s a wrap on the worst year of my life. At least I managed to find 10 highlights. May the new year bring you love, life, and above all, peace.

I often forget or don’t bother to remember thoughts that I have just before drifting off to sleep or during half-awake moments in the middle of the night. The other day I did preserve three thoughts by turning on the light and jotting some words before going back to sleep. I pass them along here.

+ I wonder if the word “job” is related to the biblical person Job. That would explain our long-suffering attitude toward jobs.

+ I opened my eyes in the night to see the dim light of a full moon. I leaned over to the window to see a beautiful moon surrounded by a ring of light. I need to look up more.

+ What would “writing full time” look like if I retired to write full time? It would help if I knew what I expected. I certainly have enough leftover time every day that I could start practicing full-time writing anytime.

After all, does a “full-time writer” really sit down and write for (say) eight hours a day? Or does she scratch out what she can when she can, just like I do now? Maybe I’m already as much of a “full-time writer” as I would ever be anyway.

In the end, I always come back to the thought that I may want to stop thinking and just write.