Bad things happen in January.

Money problems, every year.

Half of Defenestrate Media’s annual bills are due in January. Keeping The LEFT Show and The Comic Book Podcast broadcasting hits hardest in January. From the heavy hosting bill to so, so many URLs getting renewed that the post-Christmas burden makes everything more difficult. From being personally broke, to knowing that fundraising in December / January is just an unrewarding slog of epic proportions, January always lurks as a dark smudge on the circle of the calendar.

It used to be that January was financial inertia from working in politics. You lose your job every November, spend what’s left over in December, and in January, you’re rebuilding, looking for work, and selling yourself short on freelance gigs that pay out about 1/10th what they’re worth just to keep the kids fed and the water on. (I still do this.)

I’ve since given up on political work, much to my mental health’s joy, and now, I’ll admit, the existential dread of January is blunted a bit. Still a stress ball, but a smaller stress ball.

My mom died in January.

My dad’s second wife, Dolly, the step-mom I never called step, and one of my favorite people to ever walk this planet, died in January. She was kindness with feet.

The first time I remember meeting her, she had driven to American Fork to pick me up for something – I can’t remember. Right before she got there I noticed that my dog had escaped the yard. I was frantic and she calmed me down. We got in her car and drove around until we found him, dead on the side of the road. I was devastated and weepy, and she calmed me down. She got the dog loaded, got us back to the house, reverently handled him into the backyard, called my dad … she did everything, and she explained as she went. She made me a part of the process without setting me off crying again. It was, all things considered, the most masterfully I was ever been parented.

I literally have no memories of her that aren’t shaded with smiles. She could be too understanding, too kind, sometimes undeservedly loving. I was a teenage shit head, and no matter how frustrating I could be, she always made me feel welcome and loved. She was an amazing human.

Forrest died in January.

I’m still processing this. I don’t even know what the hell to say about it. He died too young, and he died surrounded by people that loved him. I was there, feeling guilty already, getting text spammed on my phone by my ex who could not stop telling me what a shitty friend I was to Forrest. Yeah, no shit.

When I was going to shut down the network in 2016 and quit making podcasts, it was Forrest who talked me out of it, making me promise to keep making shows. So – you can blame him.

Forrest and I met in the early 90’s at a goofy little coffee-shop pub called Anchor’s Aweigh (owned by a juggernaut of a bar called Port O’ Call – get it?). We kept in loose touch until I moved back to Utah. When I was doing Left of the Dial on KSL News Radio, Forrest was both a listener, a caller, and a great critic. When I got fired from KSL (for saying the word Vagina in a medical sense) Forrest was there, day after day, helping me get the podcast built. He was there almost every Sunday for 199 Sundays doing The LEFT Show.

… and then he got cancer.

… and then he was gone.

January is just a bastard.