Tedium - 2024: Live Another Day 🗓️

Today in Tedium: Okay, we’ve made it to year nine. That’s pretty wild to me. Not quite a decade, but long enough that when I started this, I had way fewer gray hairs, and I was somewhat hipper. (But, to be clear, never hip.) And honestly, writing these year-end roundups never gets old. It’s my opportunity to put a small wrinkle in the void, to cleanse the palate before another year of Tedium. Is this issue of Tedium better than any of the others? Nah. But it is a good place to start ahead of another year. Today’s Tedium wraps its head around the future ahead of 2024. — Ernie @ Tedium

Yet another example of someone who made a calendar who wasn’t me. (Manasvita S/Unsplash)

We failed to make a wall calendar this year, so now we’re stuck complaining about the people who did

To the person who sent me a pre-scheduled email on September 1st, as per my request almost exactly 12 months ago, reminding me that I should create a 2024 calendar: Thank you, I saw it. I deeply appreciate it.

And it did spring me into action.

But I admit I got a little stuck in my own head about it. I did some groundwork. I worked on it in bits and pieces for weeks, actually. But I wanted to literally put hundreds of pieces of information into a wall calendar, and when the going got tough, I had to back burner it.

Hence, why you’re not seeing a calendar this year, and instead are reading a bunch of excuses from the guy who should be selling all of you a calendar right now. Maybe next year. (If you want to send me another reminder, shoot for August, maybe?)

Seriously, though, we’re not in the position of strength that we hoped to be at the end of 2023, but nonetheless, the weird wall calendars keep showing up. Here are just a few, uh, highlights that I spotted this time around. (Amazon affiliate links are missing from this if you’re reading in the email, but if you actually want one of these, head over to my influencer link over this way.)

Finally, a wall calendar that hits all parts of the market.

Birds and bros seem like an interesting novelty calendar duo, especially if you’re into either of those things. To be clear, this isn’t the only Chicken Daddies calendar I found on Amazon this year. This is simply the more publishable of the two.

Bothered by the number of questions this calendar raises.

The high watermark of any great artist is the ability to draw a picture of a thing and put a suggestive crease in the middle. I hear that’s how Picasso got his start.

A global incident waiting to happen.

The world is already messed up enough right now on the global stage. This is fun, but we don’t need North Korea seeing this calendar on someone’s wall to make matters worse. You don’t know who’s reading your posts.

Did you know dogs know how to use smartphones?

This pretty cheap calendar raises an important question: If the dogs took the photos themselves, are these pictures technically in the public domain? You laugh, but there was an actual legal dispute regarding this exact issue.

What if we took a random guy and made a calendar about him?

If it feels like we’ve made fun of Cliff Richard’s wall calendars before, it’s because we did. But this time he’s wearing glasses, which means we can do it again. Cliff Richard, now 83, is still kicking, by the way.

To end things here, I will admit that I was looking to see how AI-generated imagery, one of 2023’s defining trends, shaped the wall calendar. And, for what it’s worth, I didn’t find a lot on Amazon. No, I had to go a bit further afield for the AI stuff.

Someone needs to do a version of this calendar that makes out the letters W-H-Y.

One of the most notable examples I found was over at Etsy, where someone used an AI tool, probably Midjourney, to hide the letters of months in serene vacation views. Which, fine, good luck trying to do that in real life.

But AI often cheapens the experience, unfortunately, especially if you know it’s there. Say what you will about Chicken Daddies, but it’s pretty obvious they staged those daddies with those chickens in real photos.

Maybe once I finish my own calendar, I’ll finally have room to complain. One of these years.

Sometimes, a pixelated forest is what you need.

The state of our Tedium in 2024 is defined by adaptation in the face of uncertainty

If you turned 2023 into a board game, what are the odds that you’d correctly guess where all the pieces properly landed?

Sure, some things might have been obvious—the contour of the U.S. presidential race feels pretty obvious, for one thing. The decline of technology we liked, for another. Rising prices. The general feeling of malaise and chaos that greets you whenever you load up a lot of social media sites. That’s an important one: Social media is way more confusing right now, and there are no real winners.

But there were other things that couldn’t be predicted: OpenAI randomly kicking Sam Altman to the curb? The Writers Guild and SAG making AI a centerpiece of their respective strikes? The fact that “rizz” beat out “enshittification” for Oxford’s word of the year? The fact that, of all companies, Panera released the most dangerous foodstuff of the year, besting the company that literally sold chips it promoted as dangerous and risky?

Hell, the most random pop-culture trend of the past decade, Barbenheimer, hitting in the middle of the strike?

In some senses, 2024 feels like an abyss. In others, like an opportunity. I hope to turn it into an opportunity, personally.

At least on my end of things, 2023 was a big year of transition. This newsletter made many changes, some of which did not look like the ones I promised at the start of the year. That’s the result of transition, too. I didn’t ultimately get what I planned for out of this year, but at least I got to keep evolving, and a little evolution is always nice.

A beautiful view, though with less detail than usual.

This fall, while on vacation and taking time away from the newsletter, I found a small hobby amid all the hiking I was doing. I would take pictures of the scenic things I was looking at, and intentionally try to make them look like vintage video games, or old CGA graphics. I had to sideload an app on my phone for this purpose, because it was no longer supported by my version of Android. But once I got it loaded, it was as if I found my speed in nature, something I’ve often struggled with.

The thing is, each of us has our own refracted view of this world. Some of us are more comfortable in a natural environment. Others prefer seeing through a frame, a viewpoint. (Guess which one I am?)

I admit I’m not a natural hiker, but I tried really hard to get used to it on this trip. I usually wear earbuds on the trail—I skipped them this time. It was hard, and I was often a pile of sweat by the end of each day. But I found a comfort zone with all of it, as I tried to keep up with my wonderful wife, a much more active hiker than me. Capturing this beauty, and presenting it in a way that looked familiar to me, was just one way that I found comfort in the unfamiliar. It wasn’t like I was creating a work of art—it was art in service of the activity, even if the end result looked kind of like gaming on a 386.

“Art in service of the activity” is a great way to describe how I’ve tried to better myself in this year of transition. I hope to keep at it—and maybe to hike a little more along the way, too.

This looks like joy to me.

My brain feels less shredded this year than last, even if there are moments where I feel like I’m going in six directions. But nonetheless, I’ve had to find ways to adapt. I’m mostly working on the newsletter myself under a new model, though I try to keep in touch with Tedium’s great writers from the past, including David Buck and Andrew Egan, who are just as weird and fascinating as ever. When the opportunity shows itself, I’d like to bring them back into the mix.

I’m nine years into this whole mess. Which means next year is our ten-year anniversary. After all this time, that feels like a great goal to reach.

What does your 2024 look like? Do you land on the abyss or opportunity side of things? How do you keep things interesting and find new adventures?

(And how should I celebrate ten years of running Tedium?)