Would that I could sleep through hangovers but the headache wakes me up before dawn and reminds me that I should rise and go drink the entirety of the closest freshwater lake.

The upshot is I get to be sitting on my porch with no one around, shouting the first planetary day/hour prayer of the year at the world -albeit in a bleary-eyed state. (Which suits this Tuesday in particular, if you stop to think about it.)

Then I get to make some coffee and think about the new year. Well, kinda. I think about 2019, anyway. I stand by this awesome and hilarious tweet:

The real new year happened when Jupiter entered Sagittarius. Y'all are just gonna be paying uber surge prices for the heck of it. — Gordon White (@gordon_white) December 31, 2018

Oh, Twitter. Anyone would think the world was ending. I mean, it is, but so what? Here are 99 good things that happened in 2018 as well. One of the tiniest, least useful achievements I am quietly proud of from last year is wringing the last few drops of joy out of Twitter before we probably all have to abandon it sometime in 2020. This is achieved by judicious use of the mute button and gradually shaping my feed away from shrill, centrist warmongering and in the general direction of fun.

I’m sure you’re all thinking about how much time you spend digitally on various platforms at this time of year -if not, you should be- but there are still ways and means to make them improve your life more than they harm it. If we aren’t sources of joy, then who is going to be? Face the future in the style of this two-year-old tweet that somehow seems culturally prescient.

[apocalypse] Day 5: sickness is spreading rapidly Day 34: the streets are filled w death. There's no joy left in the world Day 69: LOL 69 — steve suckington (@SteveSuckington) March 16, 2016

This is an excellent example of your ‘two daddy’ challenge, which is only slightly less hot than it sounds. If you listened to the most recent solo show, you’ll be aware that one of my boldest, least repentant flexes of late is to declare astrology is 100% accurate. Because you can’t assign an accuracy value to a language. A language may describe certain concepts with varying degrees of accuracy (also arguable unless you’re translating between them), but a language is a language. I can now swear on a stack of Bibles that astrology is completely accurate if you use it lyrically -which is my post-Cartesian update of ‘psychologically’, for those who wish to unpack it.

So 2019 continues Saturn-in-Capricorn’s implacable, icy march down from beyond the wall and all over Westeros. This is the world. We can all see it. I’m not quite sure what is served by continuously reminding each other of it. Let’s try and make our fears and pathologies a little less viral. That would genuinely improve the world.

So that’s Saturn. Jupiter is in Sagittarius and will be for most of the year. That’s really, really good. Your other daddy is perfectly placed to crank out a continuous stream of utopias. And -such are the peculiarities of fate when living at this point in the timeline- January is exceptionally well configured for you to plan and begin implementing said utopias.

Which is why the thought of hopepunk disappoints me. For background, please see both Jay’s thread and the thread he shares:

Great thread from publisher @sarenaulibarri on hopepunk / solarpunk. https://t.co/JGKuPwv2j0 — ⚫ Your roots are in the infinite (@thejaymo) December 31, 2018

Now, let me be clear. I absolutely get the sentiment. Wallowing in dystopia is idiotic in days like these. But hope is not strong enough. Hope externalises your power away from you and makes it small in the face of its adversities. It is the belief there is a chance that external conditions may change around you.

You expend the exact same amount of energy hoping as you do imagining utopia. There are no efficiency gains to be made here. Hopepunk is what happens when that infinite luminosity that is our true nature tries to force its way up and through late-capitalist materialism and out onto the centrist internet. Light without heat, in a darkness that comprehendeth not.

As practitioners, I demand more of you than this. Demand it. This is not a benignly inspiring post. I need you to shoot for utopia. The world needs you to shoot for utopia. Who else will do it if not us? Here ye, the words of our Grandmother in Spirit:

When an insurance broker tells you that SF doesn’t deal with the Real World, when a chemistry freshman informs you that Science has disproved Myth, when a censor suppresses a book because it doesn’t fit the canons of Socialist Realism, and so forth, that’s not criticism; it’s bigotry. If it’s worth answering, the best answer is given by Tolkien, author, critic, and scholar. Yes, he said, fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape? The moneylenders, the knownothings, the authoritarians have us all in prison; if we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can.

And so, from the very bottom of the world and the very bottom of my heart, where in both places it is already 2019, I wish you the very best escapes into utopia.

Get on it.