Notes on this Issue:

I’ve heard of a superstition that proposes the following: the first 12 hours of your New Year’s Day, from midnight to noon, predetermines the events that will take place in your life throughout the upcoming year. Within the mechanism of the superstition, the events and themes of each hour during the first twelve hours of the new year correlates to the events and themes of each month of the upcoming twelve months (12:00am-1:00am correlates to January, 1:00am-2:00am correlates to February and so on). Just as with any superstition, I cannot and will not speak for the truth of it, but I will say that I’ve been shocked with applying it to my life throughout 2023. On the previous New Year’s, within the first twelve hours, I fell asleep early, woke up abruptly to my dog having explosive diarrhea under my bed, moved to my couch as an attempt to go back to sleep and avoid the smell of shit, failed at doing so then begrudgingly sat on my couch for a few hours, gave up on going to sleep and attempted to make breakfast then dropped a dozen eggs on the kitchen floor, began cleaning dishes, broke a wine glass and had glass shards stuck in my foot (that my girlfriend lovingly and meticulously removed), ate my breakfast, and lastly returned to the bedroom to scrub the dog shit from my carpet. Now I’m here to tell you that those first twelve hours serve as a phenomenal analogy for how the entirety of this year went for me, and I’m grateful to finally have all the shit cleaned up. 

- W.B.