I've started to make these lists every New Year's Eve, setting down things/events/people/memories that made the past year a good one. I started this at the end of 2016, without the notion of it being an annual thing, but I've been glad to have the opportunity to make it a ritual of sorts. I'm not much of one for resolutions, but I like reflective New Years Eves more than party-all-the-time ones, so this suits me perfectly and keeps my heart pointed in the right direction. It's a good reminder that a year is a long time, and even my worst years have been packed with joy and goodness. Getting to choose what to focus on, and opting for gratitude, is a good bit of training. Here's hoping, amidst the dark and the snow and the cold, that you're doing the same.
Here, then, for them as wants it, is my 2018 in fragments of happy, grateful memories. Jump to it!
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| It felt like a good omen to have the moon hanging over the clouds on the flight to Japan. (With breathless thanks to the flight attendant who made sure I opened my window to look and see.) And SPOILER ALERT it was a good omen, turns out Japan was good guess you can stop reading the blog forever now huh. |
1. Ringing in the new year with a crowd of my Chicago tribe once again, mellow and tipsy and happy.
2. Starting a stable and well-paying job and gradually realizing I really like the people I work with.
3. A year that mostly consisted of focus on stability in life and in work began with a lovely li'l romance, which was both delightful and a nice confirmation that it's okay to make sure things are right for me even if it may mean walking away at times. And o the friends ye make along the way!
4. First Chicago auditions in ages - none of them world-beaters, but some of them extremely fun, and a nice sense of reconnecting muscle tissue and reconnecting with people I wanna play with.
5. A whirlwind dive into one of the great new friendships in my life, and with it the pleasant discovery that New Pals At This Stage can be superb.
6. Overcoming my preternatural terror of conflict and getting involved politically with fundraisers and canvassing. Good god I'd never want to be a politician, but it felt good to put effort into things.
7. Finding my sea legs as a vocal performer in a growing series of drama-type-styles podcasts!
8. Seeing the first of said podcasts released as a Christmas radio play and immediately deciding I can never listen to my own voice this way oh well better luck in the next life
9. A birthday in New Orleans with a magnificent old friend, new and delightful humans all around, and a dollar bill pinned to my lapel. Crikey that city is lovely, and a-callin' my name as the temperatures plummet again.
10. Speaking of: long walks and late night talks with my friend Caroline, just digging deep on all the things, and rediscovering the joys of uhhhh everything
11. A rooftop summer soiree with Chicago neighborhood pals
12. Seeing Darlingside live in a tiny space in Evanston. Awash in blue light and the wonder at the fluid, swirling, lush soundscapes them four dudes conjured up.
13. A second round of Hamilton, this time in Chicago with the family, and YEP still ugly cryin' through most of the second act whatever you unemotional monsters everybody else was doing it
14. Starting to find Front Bar at Steppenwolf to be a new iteration of my favorite Chicago thing: running into everybody you know without planning to. Again and again and again!
15. Going for thin-crust pizza at an old-old-old school dive out west of Albany Park, and finding myself nostalgic for that one very specific slice of Bostonian atmosphere.
16. Starting to host friends as they visit Chicago, loving the opportunity to catch up with old friends while showing off the city I love so well.
17. Talking politics and art and careers and the wild contours of life with my friend Erika over milkshakes at Edzo's
18. Hunting fruitlessly for good food in the suburbs with my pal Nina before seeing my old acting teacher take on Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and ending up in a confusing Spanish restaurant in a suburban business hotel, as one does.
19. Drinks with my old MFA director buddies, at various points of the year, getting to see what magnificent things they're all up to, and loving the currents that keep them circulating in Chicago.
20. Bouncing back from a stress-induced freakout in Denver at a family reunion (I had blown a chapter deadline by a week and wasn't getting any work done) and then... somehow letting the burden of the supposed-to-do fall away and being, you know, a person. Hey: if once a summer is as often as I hit that wall of frustration, that is a pretty good ratio for being a human, I think!
21. Backyard cookouts with my friends Nicole and David, careening through town at one of a million pivot points in my friends' lives this year, over the moon to see my lovely be-California'd friends and feel the years falling away.
22. Watching a very unhappy goat take a revenge-dump in the middle of my old roommate Adam's wedding, a perfect grace note to an incoherent gesture that was somehow perfect for that madman's nuptials.
23. A middle-of-the-night run to Sheetz (yes, a gas station) for food with my other old roommate Nick and his wife Janelle, taking a break from their amazing kids to indulge in some primo junk food nostalgia for Nick.
24. Wandering D.C. talking Thomas Merton and D.T. Suzuki with my old pal Chris, in between some primo noms (which were repaid at a miraculous Girl & the Goat walk-in dinner later in the year back in Chicago)
25. A Cubs outing with the students from work, getting to shake off the stress of writing and the day job to just have fun and get a feel for how amazing some of these folk really are
26. Another lightning-to-the-heart dinner with an old friend: Mediterranean food with my friend Jenny, visiting from Barcelona, and a long walk through Old Town Chicago talking about relationships and the strange courses our lives have taken. And Spain goes right back on the gotta-get-back list.
27. A supremely promising series of interviews for what I finally realized was the perfect job for me... and in not getting it, realizing that the process and discovery was worth the letdown. Here's hoping a similar door opens soon, but it was an eye-opening experience.
28. Late night backyard cookout parties three doors down from mine. Neighborhood pals are the best.
29. The ease and joy of a quick trip to the suburbs for my dad's birthday, and the marvelously relaxed stakes of family time when it's that easy - and often - to get to see them.
30. A cold overnight stay on my great-grandparents' farm in Michigan after a full and rowdy extended-family Thanksgiving in Michigan. Feeling the age in which the drafty wooden floorboards were laid, and loving that step out of time.
31. A night of drinks and shouting and joy and dizziness with my core Tufts friends, grateful to have found a crew that connect as people and not Professional Types
32. One of those wonderful "and no time has passed at all" breakfast with another Tufts core, laughing and heartfelt and full of a sense of freedom and possibility and newness.
33. Finding in the literal minutes before my defense that the stress melted away, the agonized "what if I fail" possibility suddenly seeming harmless (if it be now, 'tis not to come) and then rolling into an engaging, pleasant chat with a relieving outcome.
34. An unscheduled and unannounced wander through London, revisiting old haunts and breathing that magnificent damp air as the Christmas season got underway.
35. One final farewell to Vienna, engaging with the city for the first time without a to-do list, and finding it... basically fine? Thanks, Vienna! Can't wait to get back.... to Copenhagen! (Uh... zing?)
36. The joy in seeing family members surprised and delighted at gifts they didn't know existed. (Do I adore having the mental energy and freedom to focus on the stuff like this, which I actually care about? IT MAY BE SO.)
37. A kind flight attendant jotting down advice for my trip to Japan as we zipped across the Pacific. A restorative shower in an airport. The magic of lounges and comfortable connections!
There are more on my list, but as they start to get into the Japan trip, I'll save 'em for subsequent posts as I cobble together videos and photos to share that journey with y'all. I'll close with one last item as I scrawled it in my notebook in a Buddhist monastery on Mount Koya on New Year's Eve (hi I think I have a new every-other-year goal for New Year's Eve, and it's to be somewhere vaguely remote and wonderful to do this??):
"Knowing I am loved by my family, by my friends, and feeling eager to pause my travels when I'm back just to be with and near them with space and freedom and support as I figure out what's next in my life. With a blank slate, and a clear horizon."
So that's basically where I'm at. As is apparent, I'm still kind of travel-stupid (I have two trips on the horizon but they are both required due to life events) but it was wonderful to come back from Japan eager to settle, to breathe and indulge the homebody half of my heart, to reopen to romance and theatremaking and all the too-many things I had to set aside to get through the gauntlet of the dissertation. Even a few weeks into 2019, it's feeling like a year of discovery and exploration in a key that I haven't found in quite a few years. So you know. Lots to be thankful for. And thanks to you for sharing the journey!
Away we go.
