Gratitude: 2021 edition

 On the eve of spring semester, my second as a full-time faculty member, and marginally better-prepared than I was for my first (at this time last semester I was literally trying to find an apartment and move a first week's worth of living supplies while continuing to work my day job back at Loyola; truly psychotic that this was only four months ago), I wanted to pause and commemorate in this space a few of the memories, moments, events, whatever-you-want-to-call-em for which I'm grateful.

Longtime readers and pals know that this became an annual exercise in 2016, and it's the one thing I have done every New Years Eve since then. I'm not much of one for resolutions; I usually have a handful of projects toward which I'm working, and this grateful look back is always a good reminder that it's literally impossible to chart a linear course, and far more rewarding to pause and reflect on the unexpected swerves that shaped my life into something far better than I'd have sculpted for myself.

If I'm lucky, I'm writing this list in a corner of the world I've never visited before, or at home before I trek out to meet up with close friends; but even if I'm unluckily holed up thanks to a COVID variant quashing multiple rounds of plans, it's one of the most soul-feeding, mindset-correcting habits I have, and I'm glad for it!

Excerpts from the handwritten (and long!) list of grateful 2021 memories after the jump.

Sunsets over Lake Michigan: did NOT make the cut for the gratitude list, but probably should have!

1. Sitting in an outdoor thermal bath in the north of Iceland, looking out over a volcanic landscape and feeling the sand beneath my feet, breathing deep in the 9 PM sunlight.
2. Chatting with a potter in a trailer/shop in San Francisco about her pandemic year and about the ceramics her studio makes (a few pieces of which are now a part of my increasingly-ecclectic set at home)
3. A long conversation with a Japanese woodblock print gallery owner (who inherited the shop from his parents); discovering a print that I'd fallen in love with was drawn from a Noh theatre play and immediately deciding to buy it.
4. A post-quarantine-and-testing visit to my wonderful friends John and Krista to meet and hold their lil baby for the first time, and to introduce said baby to Cats (Tom Hooper, 2019)
5. Getting to re-visit this baby at the end of the year and see him figuring out how to use a spoon in real time
6. Holding and (somehow!) successfully calming my friends Hilary and Pete's baby!
7. Walking down to a community event from my new Michigan apartment the day I moved in, and having a near-immediate connection with a person who would become my favorite person in the state
8. Snuggles n smooches for the first time since the pandemic put dating in the "time out" box
9. Not, perhaps, a memory, but getting to experience hands-down the best relational communications I've had in my life, a glorious lesson in patience and openness and trust for complicated chats.
   
10. Doubling back: conversations with my State Department pal about the possibility of entering the foreign service (wow, we were in a very searching place in late winter 2021, weren't we)
11. Conversations with Peace Corps friends about their work as I mulled THAT career jump (see #10)
12. Renée Fleming singing Bjork while I drive from the Reykjavik airport up to Akureyri to start my Icelandic ring road tromparound
13. Hugging my sister and her husband in the wake of vaccines and her (at the time) successful cancer treatment. Long walks through Chicago remembering why they are two of my favorite humans on the planet
14. Careening into NYC to visit aforementioned pair for a Paul F Tompkins show at the Bell House and a heart-filling debrief on the stupidity and ecstasy of this fall
15. A picnic table breakfast with my friend Jon, picking each other's brains as we both launched into the deep end of college teaching
16. A biking/camping trip with my dad, pushing far too hard in too much heat, but loving every evening by a fire or over a cooktop. The best and most necessary ice cream stop of my life.
17. Seeing Bisa Butler's amazing quilting portraits at the Art Institute with my brand new membership, totally unaware that in a matter of weeks I wouldn't be a Chicago resident any more
    
18. The giddy nervous energy of a teaching demo in Michigan on a blisteringly hot day
19. Loopily losing my mind doing bits as Chester on my final Unwell recording of the season
20. An exuberant, dizzy cast party for Unwell once we'd all been vaccinated. Seeing folk I hadn't seen in person in over a year, gathering in that glorious indoor/outdoor Chicago-alleyway-apartment setting that I now miss terribly
21. A classic Chicago backyard cookout with my friend Caroline and her sprawling tribe of Chicago pals, surrounding her during a massive upheaval in her life
22. A student who'd never seen a play before getting animated in an introductory class about (a) realizing she could see the effect of lighting design on a scene, and (b) finding something about acting clicking for her
23. Another student pulling herself back into class from rough family stuff and finding that she has a distinct eye as a director
24. "Ur Name on a Grain of Rice" shuffling up on a Discover playlist at the moment that I dropped off my favorite Michigander at the end of our first outing
25. Walking from Tribeca to the UES and (most of the way) back for a classic Ross Walk
26. Restarting my marathon training at a cottage by a lighthouse at the top of the lower peninsula
27. My friend Julie's toddler instantaneously, no-hesitation grabbing my hand and taking me on a playground adventure when we met up in the fall
28. Best sushi dinner of my life at a small suhiya outside of San Francisco
29. Meeting up with my Scotland-dwelling friends EKF and Anne, being part of the goofiest and most obnoxiously fun table at a too-swank-for-us restaurant in Chicago
30. A perfect baseball game at the Oakland Coliseum with my friend Cameron ending on a walkoff home run. Just the best.
    

I'm gonna call it there, at a little under half of the full list's recounting. In short, thanks largely to vaccines and an utterly unanticipated career swerve, it was one of the most packed, thrilling, daunting, and rewarding years of my life, and based on the first week, 2022 looks to be very much in a similar register. I'm feeling very, very lucky - and increasingly very equipped to retain that gratitude no matter what peaks or valleys come my way. Here's hoping you and yours are in a similar place, and that we can keep fighting the good fight to make the world better for all those we share it with. Big love and HEY let's go have a future!