I want to paint a picture for you, dear reader. One of melancholy, “what could have been,” and hopefulness.
After I finished last year’s Decemystery duology, I had three stories picked out for the start of this year. One of them has been on my to-do list since this blog began; I’d been searching high and low for it. I’ve written a portion of the article, but the majority remains incomplete, though I ended up using a section for “The McDonald’s Blob” write-up’s intro and My Take sections.
I never began the other two for two reasons. The first was that my bipolar exited remission. I started experiencing terrible mood swings, ranging from feelings of loneliness and hopelessness to believing that I was invincible.
For the most part, those contrasting emotions were active at the same time in what’s known as a “mixed episode.” For those who don’t know, a mixed episode is when you experience a manic/hypomanic episode and a depressive episode simultaneously. I have type 2 bipolar, so I have hypomania, which isn’t as severe as regular mania.
All of this started in January and didn’t end until mid-August. But, the not-so-ideal circumstances didn’t end there. At the end of the month, my grandmother passed away. She was my last surviving grandparent, and I found myself wishing I’d spent more time with her.
Then I got sick, which was salt in an already degloved-sized wound. If you didn’t know, I hate getting sick—a lot. I contracted some sort of cough while I was in New York for the funeral wake. It wasn’t COVID; that was saved until July.
Suffice it to say the start of my year was a grand disappointment. My plans didn’t come to fruition, my hopes to make 2024 an amazing year for this blog floundered, and I kept blaming myself for not being better in every possible way. I thoroughly believed that it was my fault nothing went right.
Now, as of this writing, I’ve accepted that that isn’t the case. While I could have (and should have) posted an update or two, I felt too ashamed at the time—especially when I couldn’t make any promises for this year’s Decemystery.
But not posting any updates is beside the point. No, the point is that I wanted to cover one of the three stories I planned to start 2024 with. I also wanted it to be one that’d remove the melancholy I’ve come to associate the start of this year with.
That task proved easy since the story I’d begun work on will most likely be the inaugural write-up for Decemystery 2025. Meanwhile, the second story will be covered at some point next year—if all goes well, anyway.
That left me with the third story, the one I’d planned to do at the end of January. It’s another Fortean Map Enigma, and it’s one that I considered covering last year. I forget what it was replaced with, but that’s unimportant. No, what is important is we’re going to retroactively make 2024 feel like a success story by covering a mystery that’s sure to leave you flabbergasted! Come along, dear reader, as we investigate the absolutely bonkers story of The Glowing Toe of North Dakota!
