“Look around, look around, at how lucky we are to be alive right now.”
-Hamilton
If there would be a theme for 2021, and I can’t believe we’re already looking back at it, I think it would have to be progress. It isn’t readily apparent, and it really is never linear. The hardships endured and still being endured remain fixed in memory and lost to the passage of time. There’s a numbness there that robs one of the sense of achievement in having made it this far. But I think, as the clocks churn ahead to 2022, I feel confident in expressing that as my personal experience of the year.
Winter into spring was a time of immense personal expansion. A return to North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia for a time, first visits to Washington DC and Philadelphia. Book blogging began in earnest, tied closely with the writing of a second draft of a hopefully still alive NaNo project and the release of the complete edition of A Place I Have Never Been. Culinarily, I got to experience DC steakhouses, actual cheesesteaks, Sancerre on a Floridian beach (got yelled at for that one), and explored the depths of really cool chocolate. Literarily, I benefited from reading my favorite book of the year (A Memory Called Empire). I reinvested time in learning to fly fish, expanded the décor of my apartment and home bar, and worked to keep Raleigh going through another monthslong closure. It felt like a strong start to a year that remained certainly marked by uncertainty.
Of course, my mother’s brother died on her birthday. It was an auspicious transition to a summer marked more by more uncertainty and a kind of stagnation than anything else. Work had the feeling of keeping a place alive, as enjoyable as it was. I like to think the summer was when I began to really feel myself confident in bartending of all things, especially the creative side of developing cocktails and learning more about infusions (I would have been so cool ten years ago). Still, the promise of the summer of vaccines (I am vaccinated) gave way to whispers of worry about variants and reinfection (I got to experience the latter come fall). Life was busy routine as much as anything, trips to Vermont spaced as one could grab them, writing continuing at a regular background pace, prepping for the release of the first part of Another Time and finding inspiration elsewhere as other projects languished. It was neither particularly bad or particularly good. It was life, happening around me, going on for my being in it. A road trip to break up the doldrums did revive my love for DC, and bring me to the Inn at Little Washington for one of the most whimsical dining experiences of my life. I did learn to fall in love with Portland again during this time, and my love for it remains into the winter.
Summer capped off well with a trip to Minneapolis and reunion for the first time in years with my best friend! My first major league baseball game, dinner at Spoon and Stable, and all the newfound pleasures of urban wandering amounted to great growth. Add in a quick thirty-six hours in New York for feasting and seeing Hadestown, and there seemed to no limit to where the year could go despite, as I oft remind others, of “the everything.”
It was still some surprise that fall remained busy until suddenly it wasn’t, mainly because of “the everything.” A reinfection of COVID, this time symptomatic, ground to a halt some of the momentum I felt I was building. A great personal emotional beating followed quickly on its heels, creating an October atmosphere of reversal, depression, and struggle. Coinciding with a return to form for the pandemic, a weakening again of an industry I adore, and further ripples in my family life, and suddenly we find ourselves midwinter and on the verge of a new year.
Still, what lies ahead? There is plenty of good news on the literary front! Some of it remains under wraps for later, but of course Telgora’s story plows ahead in The State in the North. NaNo wound up being wildly successful, the first nonfantasy draft I have ever felt happy with, and I’ve found myself almost 20k words deep in a new fantasy story at that. I managed my Haiku a Day challenge (sort of), joined up with some cool writers online, and stand ready to explore and expand all my creative horizons by really jumping into and buying and supporting art everywhere. Maybe I’ll finally give learning to draw a shot. New Year’s Eve stands to be a busy service under as best circumstances as another year of COVID and weird weather can muster, and although Raleigh will again close for a few weeks it will not be months. A longer season ahead to continue growth and support in a passionate career I still cannot ever see myself tiring of, as good or bad at it as I am. There are trips planned, parties to be had, and some surprising new friendships and a host of new experiences just beginning to have their groundwork set.
So, then, I think progress is the name of the game. It was a year of immense emotional and intellectual education, both a widening and deepening of knowing who I am and how I want to live my life, and who I want to have in it. I learned I really do like photography, and that concerts are cool as hell. I still love driving, and road trips. I love my friends, and am glad to be able to help them and all my family as best I can. It has not and will never be easy. I don’t think I expect it to be anymore. I will always feel like I’m not getting enough done, not writing enough, hell… not living enough. Running out of time, sometimes money. Sure some of that’s cynical. But then when aren’t I a mix of cynicism, romanticism, and melodrama? It’s all summed up well in part of learning how to be, a lesson best summarized in conversation with another one of my best friends, and understanding that:
“Settling in isn’t settling. Like I think what I have to realize is that… this is life. I’ve built, am building, a life.”
When I consider where I was last December, I don’t know if I could have realized just how lucky I was to be alive (there’s a poem about that on the way), and I certainly didn’t know there was so much more life to build. Knowing that now makes me excited, nervous, and a little more prepared for another year looking around at life.
We’re on the verge of a near year of life.
With luck, another year of progress.