2017

New Year's Eve 2016 was one of my favorites. After the insane everything-in-a-year that was that year, it was glorious and perfect to finish it in a town I'd never visited before, on the cusp of a trek out to a beautiful and alien landscape, with a river view, a small Scottish fireworks display, and time to reflect on all the good seeded throughout a tough year. It was quiet, it was meditative, it was perfect - and a good reminder that patience, with myself and with the world, pays off far more than my more-frantic desires sometimes want me to believe.

In the leadup to this NYE, I felt the tug of desire for a similar getaway, the same pull that I had in Inverness when I suddenly felt like driving as far north as I could get in mainland Scotland for midnight. It's an impulse that reflects how I've come to realize I like to celebrate the holiday. While some people emphatically need the party/dance/music/crowd/adventure vibe, something to validate the years as ended and begun in celebration and plenty, I prefer the quiet alternatives suited to thoughtfulness and a quieter variety of joy. Even solitude, sanctified by a new geography and unfamiliar air, suits me better. But this year, I'm glad to be among friends, and will mark the passing of the year surrounded by some of my best and oldest. I'll take my solo moments to breathe, explore, and feel my place in the world on New Year's Day - I've got some destinations marked out and a few things I'm glad to be doing, but mostly it'll be time to take stock and rest in the peace and tranquility of silence and self-reflection.

For now, though, I wanted to repeat last year's ritual and free-write a list of memories that give me joy as the year ends. And so, before I hurry off to a li'l joy-gather, here it be:


First things first, I pulled together a Youtube playlist of my travel/music videos from the past two years here. (Link cued up to the first days of 2017.) I think it's a pretty swell soundtrack, and if you're reading this on a groggy New Year's Day in the mood to daydream-travel, have at it. Now, as to those "the year in good things" memories...

1. New Year's Day. Fresh newness on an empty-roads drive past Eilean Donan castle and through Skye, still probably the most stunning place I've set foot thus far in this life. A perfect balance of occasional encounter and solitude, I couldn't have designed a better start to the year.

2. Sagrada Familia. The interplay of colored lights as the sun swam across the abstract stained glass, the cascading pillars unfolding as they ascend through the light. I don't know how you could stand in this space and not be shaken by it.

3. The surprise and thrill of a fling in Florence, which doesn't need any help to make wandering its streets an exercise in in-the-moment nostalgia and dreaminess. (For real, Florence is an A+ first-date city.)

4. A final brunch in Boston with my buddy Pete, who got me through some of the most difficult chapters of my life.

5. Reuniting with my Tufts crowd in Atlanta, and an excursion to the Puppetry Center where it felt like we reconnected with the giddy delight in performance that got us all into the field to begin with.

6. Annoying my friend Danielle on a night out in Milan at a canalside cocktail bar
7. An 18-hour, hell-for-leather drive from Boston to Chicago with my dad and a truck full of my belongings, talking about our mutual experiences with depression, goofy pieces of pop culture, and the odd shape our lives have taken these last several years.
8. The early-days-in-Chicago, sweaty, crushingly frustrating moment at the end of a house-sit in which I took a temp job paying less than half of my former day job, and knew it was a transitional moment even if it felt like a dead end. This was just three months ago, but it feels a lifetime away.
9. The first time, a month or so later, that I texted a friend to grab a drink, and had them on my couch with a tumbler of whisky less than twenty minutes later, and knew my geography felt right again.
10. A long night swapping breakup stories with Emily at a Turkish grill in Dalston, London, realizing even in the moment how meaningful our new friendship was going to be.

Not Turkish, but eggs, months later.

11. Baking in the sun on the roof of the bus station in Mostar, Kate and I both grumpy about our nonexistent crack-of-dawn bus, but taking only about 20 minutes before I could verbally process my frustration and we could both move on, eventually finding the fun and adventure in a mishap that cut Plitvice Lakes out of my travels.

The Grumps.

12. That perfect moment of "God of Loss" coming on the radio as I wrote in the cafe at the Museum of Broken Relationships on the anniversary of my divorce
13. Walking the cobbled streets of Paris to the skittering mandolin strains of "Harrison Ford" by Darlingside, which I did not stop playing the entire week I was there.

14. Crying my eyes out at Coco
15. Climbing to the Oyster Shed on Skye on a damp, gray, foggy morning and soaking in the gloomy atmosphere

16. Solitary climbs to the Old Man of Storr and elsewhere, feeling as if I had the entire island to myself save a handful of sheep roaming free

17. Meeting the llama from whose fur (wool?) my Scottish host had made the winter cap I now wear
18. Arriving at Kate and Stuart's to a pile of ridicule over the various pajamas and slippers I'd had shipped to them in my desperately sublimated desire to have a home of my own

19. Accidentally throwing my phone in the toilet (it's complicated) and having the ensuing weekend of tech-free, pre-cell-phone living turn out to be one of the best, most present ones I've had in a while.
20. A perfect, mouthwatering slice of cream cake in Lake Bled

21. Dinner with my Berlin host Brian in a dance hall that had been abandoned since the Weimar era, and which retains its scars from the war, with bullet-ricochet divots splayed across the wall and gorgeous, shambly mirrors and chandeliers
22. Mosque visits in Mostar and Vienna, the former a surprisingly moving meditation on architecture and space, the latter marked by a great conversation with an Imam the day before he left for his pilgrimage.

23. The gleeful mess of the Deutschestheater's Ubu
24. Choking up at United Flight 232 at the House Theater, realizing that stories about humans being kind and caring to each other zap me right in the gut these days.
25. The adrenaline rush, joy, and stumbles of my first performance as an actor in something like four years.
26. Being in the massive crowds in NYC at the Women's March, which for all its sometimes-disappointing ripple effects does seem to have indicated a seriousness of intent that might get us through this nightmare.

27. The occasional getting-jumped-on moments scattered through the fall of my return to Chicago as I ran into my people for the first time (this kept up to as late as December, which was amazing), gradually regaining confidence in the idear that I'm #good, and not something to be put up with. (Weird how that stuff can hang on you after the fact.)
28. On the same note, finding out that Steppenwolf's Front Bar space has now joined Clark St and Lincoln Ave as spaces that it's real hard to meander/hang without running into a delightful human being I know, or several.

29. Helping Emily go through her box of Chicago stuff, sifting through ephemera dating back to her childhood and watching all of it play across her face.
30. So many amazing dog pets from all my Chicago friends' new hounds.

31. The zen comedy of arriving in Brussels during a baggage handler strike, almost immediately realizing I had no way to control the situation, and laughing as I tried to figure out what form to fill out in the hopes of someday seeing my luggage again. (I did! Belgians are great.)
32. My first shop visit in Paris, to a cheesemonger stall near my flat, discovering that I still had just enough French (and decent enough accent) to make it through without the leap to English
33. Perfect weather for a morning-long walk along the canals in London, walking beyond the point of any reason.

34. A miraculous Christmas Eve snowfall just as the last family members got home, followed by two days of near-perfect family time. Probably one of the best Christmases in the past... 5 years? More?

OK fine this is my neighborhood a few days after Christmas, it was all extremely pretty.

35. Regent's Cafe in London, whose owner knows your name by the time you finish your breakfast, and which is incomprehensibly cheap for its location

HIS name, by the way, is Marco.

36. Roti King in London for the most stunning flatbread magic I've ever eaten (with my hands, sopping up curry in my hotel room like a wild animal); the realization that my tastes have shifted toward things like this, just perfect unpretentious food done brilliantly at bargain prices with no fuss.
37. Wondering, the afternoon of my Muppet Party, if it would be my last, a little bummed about some last-minute cancellations... and then in no time at all being reminded of how fun it is, what a joy it is to gather my disparate friend-groups, and to learn that it matters to other people and not just me... Well, as I say, I'm relearning a lot of things this year.

38. The apparent decision that I'm going to meet Kate (and maybe Stuart?) every summer for SOME kind of travel, and that our friend Anne might join. Fun people are fun!
39. Spontaneous Viennese sidewalk haircut. ALWAYS GET THE SPONTANEOUS VIENNESE SIDEWALK HAIRCUT.

You know... as with last year, the list could go on (and probably should) but there's an evening to dash off to, and ultimately any year has probably got a small miracle a day if you go hunting for them (and are in a place to see and experience them). So let's wrap it up here.

Basically: this year started very strangely, unsettled and woven through with anxiety. (I still find it hard to believe that the Women's March happened this year.) And while globally it's hard to say the year has been good - for every Doug Jones win there are dozen to hundreds of ways that the world is manifestly rotting - as a human, I'm beyond grateful to be ending it with a sense of security, purpose, and clarity. I don't know that I've felt much in the way of stability since... spring 2015, probably, and if the year had contained nothing but this seed of stability that I feel as it closes, it would merit all my gratitude and joy.

So anyhow. I'm off to celebrate with some lovely people, and then starting 2018 with a solid unplug before I dive into the next chapter. More on what this (I'm already kind of excited) year holds on the other side. Til then, try not to let auld acquaintance be forgot, willya.