I Live for Stories:

Given that there are no rosy political prospects -- at the apex of Republican power in my lifetime we did nothing to address either legal or illegal immigration, affirmative action, or anything else -- and no rosy technological prospects -- none of my eagerly awaited inventions are even close to being invented -- what am I sticking around for?

The answer is stories.  I want to see the ending to all these wonderful stories I've already begun and invested in.  The lives of these characters matter to me and I want to see where they go and how they end up.

There is an abundance of stories whose endings either haven't happened yet or haven't been translated yet.  In both cases there is hope that this state of things will change for the better, sooner or later.

On the sooner side, by sometime in 2019, we'll get to see the endings to Akame ga Kill! Zero, Sakura Trick and Zero no Tsukaima.

Kimi ni Todoke was supposed to end this December, but then the manga-ka decided to make additional epilogue chapters, so there's no telling if or when we'll actually get to see the ending.  But we'll at least be close to the ending in a few weeks.

In many cases these stories have stretched on for decades.  It's taken the patience of a lifetime to see these things through, but we're finally getting somewhere, at least in these edge cases.

Angel Beats: Heaven's Door already has its ending translated, but it's missing some critical middle chapters which makes the story impossible to understand as of yet.  Once those missing chapters are translated we'll have another artistic masterpiece under our belt.

Nanoha Reflection's manga shouldn't last much longer, and the Detonation movie will finish up this story arc, though not the overall Nanoha storyline.

I suspect Omoi, Omoware, Furi, Furare will end in 2019.

It's possible, though not assured, that Btooom! and Kyoukai no Rinne will be fully translated by 2019.  At least we'll be closing in towards their endings.

Even Shingeki no Kyojin might end by 2019, though I doubt it.

Code Geass and Little Busters! are slated to end in 2019.  As is Love Live! Sunshine.

Hibike! Euphonium is slated to end in 2019, but it's doubtful whether it will actually be translated within the same year.  The same is true of Macross Delta.

BanG Dream, which already had a good ending, will presumably end yet again in 2019.  But at this point who knows what the creators are thinking.

Star Wars, Game of Thrones and The Avengers will all have endings.

Shenmue III might possibly come out in 2019 and be the ending to the franchise, they haven't really made themselves clear on that point.

So best case scenario, we're looking at around 20 finished stories in 2019.

Just for comparison's sake, the only things that ended in 2018 were Yuuki Yuuna, Wake Up, Girls! and Mujaki no Rakuen: Parallel.  Yuuki Yuuna and Wake Up, Girls! ended in the first week of January, so they may as well have ended in 2017 for all intents and purposes.  Parallel was just a minor spinoff of the original manga which had already ended in 2017, so it wasn't worth much either.

Even GATE didn't end, because there's now that ongoing maritime spinoff.  2018 had the fewest endings imaginable.  It was like it was deliberately avoiding all possible endings.

Complete stories are what I live for, so in a sense 2018 was a famine to 2019's prospective feast, but to reach an ending you have to go through a beginning and a middle, and there were plenty of those up for offer in 2018, so it wasn't all bad.  I just think it would be nice to finally reach some endings for a change, and 2019 has that utility in spades.  2019 is what a lot of people have been waiting for, on a lot of different fronts, for a very long time.