Hindsight is 2020. (Yeah, I expect everybody did this pun. I don't care)

 In 2020 I was given an Arts Council Award to write a play. I was commissioned to write and direct five short films. I produced 13 episodes of my podcast Inside John Patrick Higgins, subsequently acquired by the Podcast Studio Story-Hunters (the chief upshot of this being that you now have to listen to adverts before, during and after the story I'm telling you. So its a real boon). I made a few episodes of the Stalemates podcast too, remotely, and often sounding like a Smash robot, through the vagaries of technology. One of my short stories was anthologised in a collection by Blackstaff Press called "The Black Dreams". It was due to come out last year but owing to Covid it has been put back to October of 2021. 

I appeared on BBC Radio Ulster twice: once at the start of the year, before the pandemic had landed, talking about my wish to cut back on drinking, and again exactly six months later explaining why Covid had made temperance a temporary impossibility. 

I had a bespoke short story published as part of a Mental Health Festival. I wrote and argued about twenty episodes of the animated series Zoomlanders, which was a fun and often shouty way to develop a new skill.  I also wrote several pieces for the satirical magazine, The Brexit, some of which actually made it to print. 

The producers of my feature film got me some development money, which has allowed me to develop the script further - it is going to be a very, very good script and "very me". (I'm not sure what that means, but that's what I've been told). There is talk of me publishing a shared chapbook with another author - rather like a punk rock split-single - but we'll see. I have produced two new songs for my band Blasted Heath, and I'm extremely pleased with them. They're so very close to being perfect as far as I'm concerned.

I have been writing a book of short stories based on my love of music. It's called Every Good Boy Deserves Failure. They're the best short stories I have ever written, though the marketability of them remains unproven. Some are based on songs or bands, some have pop stars in them, some feature music as a character, some may only share a title with a song. They are written in several different voices and styles, like the songs on an album. You don't want every song on the album to be "Frankly, Mr Shankly" just as you couldn't sit through ten "I Know It's Over"s. Apologies for the Smiths references 

I've written 93 blogs in 2020. The ones that were pointed state of the nation addresses were the most popular. People don't want whimsy - they want you to tell them what they already think back to them. Something else I've learned this year. 93 is too many. My new year's resolution is to write fewer blogs - 93 is almost twice a week. Nobody cares. For the most part they're an aide memoire anyway. Its a diary. I should list my dental appointments. 

I started to do a few live readings of stories. That tapered off after February, of course. My last night out was a reading about Folk Horror Television for Queens University. Apparently you can do this sort of thing as a degree now...

I started painting again. And drawing. I actually enjoyed it too, something I hadn't felt since I attempted to do for a living and crushed any joy out of it. I love to draw now, though I'm no longer any good at it. I suspect not being good at it is the joy.  

I wrote a version of "A Christmas Carol" as a theatrical production to be staged in Wales. That, again, didn't happen. There was this pandemic...also the process was not enjoyable and the work was poor. Ah well. 

I made a version of "The Old Curiosity Show" with Amadan as part of the East Belfast Festival in 2020. It was a triumph of technology and arsing about, being part live-bubbled-people-in-a-room-performing and part live-stream. It was brilliantly and imaginatively handled and I was very pleased with both it and them. 

I finished the first draft of my novel last year. And one day I will summon the energy to look at it again and try and fix the mistakes. The biggest mistake is the premise: it is a comic novel that is actually intended to be funny (not many of those about) but it is about ageing, loneliness, urban isolation and what it's like to be a man. Who cares? Everyone knows what its like to be a man - men never shut about it. Men wanting to tell you - in exacting, tedious detail - exactly what its like being a man is the cornerstone of Western art. And probably Eastern too, if I knew anything about it. No one cares any more. That was the fatal flaw of the novel. 

Still, lots of good things in it. Might have a peep at it around the spring. 

I'm hoping its salvageable. I know it has a lot to say and I know its funny. Whether or not its of any worth to anyone is another matter. It should be noted that I'm not a celebrity so the chances of having it published are remote in any case. 

(This is bitterness and unbecoming. In the last year my friend Guillermo Stitch has had his novel published to delirious acclaim and he is both a man and my age. What he is as well is annoyingly talented. Hence, the publication. Hence the acclaim. I need to work harder and get better). 

That's been my 2020 in work. Its actually been quite busy and poorly paid. But I did occasionally get paid, so its a step up on 2019. I'm looking forward, like everyone else, to some sense of where we're going in 2021. The possibility of increased mobility, of being able to see my family. We dont know where we're going to be and I don't trust this government to make correct decisions at any point. But I'm an optimist and I'm hoping that by the end of this year something approaching normal social discourse might return. 

We might even have sorted something useful out for a post Brexit Northern Ireland, though as I'm writing this reports are coming in of empty supermarket shelves and Sainsbury's is selling Co Op produce because they can't get the stock. Here's to more interesting times.