Wrapping up 2022; The year we found out.

 2022... what a decade this year has been.

Possibly that's not fair.  It does feel like this year lasted forever, but it's certainly better than 2020 (aka the Plague Year)

If the year had a theme, it feels like this was the year many assumptions over the past decade were called out, faced reality, and did not do well.  Some examples:

- The country of Russia under Putin, which has been portrayed as a World Power, invaded Ukraine and has done poorly against a country that is a fraction of their size.  It seems like the world is in the middle of an experiment... can they put enough pressure on an invading country to leave, without sending troops and escalating the war?  

- The 'genius' of Elon Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion (that's $44,000,000,000.00) and became an embarassment as a consequence for his purchase

- Cryptocurrency.  Sam Bankman-Fried, another proclaimed 'genius', has been charged with fraud and has over $8 billion of customer's money is nowhere to be found.  I could never understand cryptocurrency enough to invest in it, but so many people vouched for it that I wondered if there was something I was missing.  Too much fraud has shown Crypto to be a paper tiger.

- The Republican Party.  They spent 2022 replaying the same playbook they did in 2016, and it was a disaster for them.  The economy is doing poorly, the voters are unhappy with the direciton of the country- and they'd still rather give the Democrats another couple of years rather than turn the Seante over to the GOP.  Both parties need to decide what it is exactly that they stand for- but this is especially true for the GOP.  And they don't have much time- the 2024 Presidential election is already underway.

There's a saying of "Fuck Around and Find Out".  Well, 2022 seems to be the year we found out.

So, in a lot of ways, the hype of certain groups was held up to the light, and failed.  Hopefully, we've learned our lessons about listening to the hype without asking questions.

Then again, a Venutre Capital firm just gave Adam Neumann $350 million.  Some people just don't learn.

On a personal level, the housing renovations of 2021 was completed, and the year was spent setting up the new house.  It's gone well.  

I'm looking forward to 2023, and hope it brings joy and happiness to everyone.  Be well.