2023 in review
Some housekeeping:
Please consider donating e-sims to people in Gaza, so that those on the frontlines of the genocide in Palestine are able to communicate with the outside world. Mirna El Helbawi has invaluable resources on how to do this.
I'm off Instagram once again, hopefully for a long while this time; I promise I'm not ghosting you.
I write this to you in my PJs at 5pm because I have Covid - please stay masked up, it’s going around bad.
Reply to this email with your mailing address if you want a mid-winter best wishies card in the mail (in lieu of my holiday cards because, 2023).
Well, I am once again walloped with the same guilt that I get every December. Gift-guilt, money stress, and an overall sense that I haven't done enough over the year. I haven't even written a retrospective newsletter like this since 2020, when I had the accomplishment of having read sixty books to stand on. What do I have to stand on now?
A lot, actually. In an effort to prove that I have in fact been productive and "good*" this year, I'm choosing to write about how 2023 has gone for me.
* "Good" being fully subjective.
January: Community and Accountability
In January I started going regularly to a group called "Shut Up & Write." The premise is simple: show up, introduce yourself, say a bit about what you'll be working on, then shut up and write for an hour. Afterwards, we go around again and describe how the hour went for us. Some of my hours have been wildly productive. Other hours have gotten lost in the same Wikipedia/social media hole I routinely get sucked into when trying to write. Neither of these are, exactly, the point: showing up and doing the thing is all it takes.
Attending regularly meant I got to recognize other regulars. Later in the year, I started going to another version of this at the art museum near me, and I got to know some more familiar faces. Here, at the end of the year, I am considering volunteering to sponsor a local group for Shut Up & Write, since our current sponsor is leaving.
It's no wonder that I've found these sessions so impactful: "body doubling," a focus tactic for ADHD folks, has become mainstream enough that groups like Shut Up & Write have massive potential. I've found ways to interpolate this into other corners of my life. My sister, who I spend 86% of my time texting, has even agreed to put her phone down when we both need to be productive. I'm lucky to have a partner who comes with me to Shut Up & Write meetings to write his own projects. As I write this, my friend Dan is on the other side of a FaceTime window, writing with me. (Hi, Dan.) The built-in accountability of a community can go a long way, if you're willing to show up.
February: Nesting
The month I turned 28 ended up being more tumultuous than I expected. I started dating again - albeit with some trepidation, some distance. I grew closer to a now-core group of friends in town, and we went out and partied a lot. I began to do something I was barely, if ever, able to do in New York: host people in my home.
Right around my birthday, my sister Sarah came to visit, and directly after that, my friend Emily stayed with me for a few days. Being able to provide for people I care about filled me with some purpose, and I realized how much I'd been giving up by living in apartments in New York that were barely big enough for one person. I started to make my place more of a home, and to invite people into it.
I had a grand old time on my birthday. Emily and I went to Joe's Inn for dinner before a get-together at my bestie Mac's place, where I shared a huge chocolate peanut butter cake with a handful of people who I didn't know were about to become my coworkers, and some of my closest friends.
I also prepared for a different kind of arrival. I'm lucky to know Pam, who I call my "kitty godmother." Pam fosters kittens for multiple cat rescues around Richmond, so she routinely has a few kittens in her home. One day, she texted me a photo of a tiny gray cat with tiny white socks. She then said, "You should come over for kitten therapy sometime."
A few weeks later I'd decided that two of the tiny gray puffballs in Pam's house, Mr Socks included, would be coming home with me. Named after Fences playwright August Wilson, my two tiny puffballs have now done what all kittens eventually do: become big honkin' cats. August (with the socks) climbs on my lap and purrs when I'm sitting cross-legged at my computer, and Wilson gets up in my ear to snuggle with me every night. I couldn't be more grateful for these stinkers - even though they've already eaten more than half of my houseplants.
March: Rebuild
In baseball there is the sentiment of a "rebuild" season. Often, it's easy to tell which teams have the chance to vie for a title, which teams might duke it out in the middle ranks, and which teams are looking to focus on rebuilding their roster. Rebuild seasons forsake the current year's chance at victory for future gains, strengthening current players and seeking sometimes drastic restructure. As a Red Sox fan, I have written off many seasons as a "rebuild" season (see: 2012). As an artist and a writer and a 28-year-old in America, I have already experienced many "rebuild" seasons of life.
At the end of February I lost my job in the arts. Since I was a freelancer, I had no unemployment built up in Virginia, and since January and February were slow months, I had very little to fall back on. This happened a few hours before I went to Pam's house to pick up August and Wilson to bring them home. I drove to a grocery nearby to buy a decadent rotisserie chicken, brined in feta for 24 hours, so I wouldn't have to think about dinner for a couple of nights. I drove the cats home with the chicken and sat on my couch and watched The Fifth Element and wondered exactly what the fuck I was going to do.
I'm lucky to have Mac, who worked at the grocery store with the good chicken. 72 hours after I was let go, he told me that his store was hiring. That afternoon, I came in to talk to Grace, the manager, expecting to hand her my resume and have her run off to be busy at work. Grace and I talked for an hour, and I started a new job less than a week after losing my old one. Sometimes rebuilding is rapid. Sometimes that's a very good thing.
I’ve been grateful to a lot of people over the course of 2023, but I would be lost without my two sisters who look after me by sending surprise rotisserie chickens and stockpiles of Annie's mac and cheese and Mexican Coca-Cola and heart-stoppingly-good carbonara from Eight and a Half and homemade soup and surprise pastries and stickie notes with affirmations and hugs from my niece when shit hits the fan. I wouldn't have been able to get through this year without those who have reminded me to put on my own oxygen mask first, to take time to care for myself, and to not take setbacks personally. Every team has to rebuild at one point or another - even a team of one.
Speaking of freelance opportunities, I wanted to point out that all this feeling sorry for myself does not always reflect reality: I had a photo published in Vogue Business this year.
April, May: Expand
(cw: transphobia, dysphoria)
At the end of last year, I ended a relationship. Among the usual heartbreak, I kept thinking back to a few choice facts about my ex - specifically, transphobic opinions he'd mentioned over the course of our relationship. After we split up, I self-flagellated for staying with him after he had said some things that dehumanized my closest friends, things that still make my skin crawl over a year later. I self-flagellated for someone else being gross! This year I've spent a lot of time trying to curtail that urge.
What resonated with me was how personal the attack felt - which surprised me. I looked around and saw that a wide berth of my friends are trans, and those who are not at least love and protect the trans people in their life. But until then, I had not considered that I, myself, could be trans - even though I just typed and deleted the sentence, "in the past, I've felt fine with identifying as a woman."
Let me put it this way: there have been very few times in my life that I have felt like a woman. Similarly there have been even fewer times in my life that I have felt like a man. If only there were a word for this shape of identity! It took a couple of months of looking in the mirror and feeling like the woman doing math in her head to realize what, after writing this out, seems obvious.
At the beginning of March I got to know Hagen, who would change the course of my year for the better. I like to say I engineered our introduction, but I could have never engineered how wonderfully this year has gone with him by my side. One thing that sets him apart is that I introduced myself to him with they/them pronouns, and he’s become a staunch supporter in this wild gender journey. It helps that Hagen didn’t know me before I identified as nonbinary, but to me, it has more to do with the ways that he shows up for me, daily. As someone who can have a hard time sticking up for themselves, it goes a long way when someone else defends my gender (or lack thereof).
(and my ugly house shoes)
I know that my gender journey is most interesting to me, alone. I understand that others don’t even see the seismic shift that I've felt. In a lot of ways I am the same: and this just speaks to how different I’ve felt for years. I sort of thought that coming out would end with making an Instagram post asking people to use new pronouns for me. I also thought more people would respect those pronouns, or notice that I'm not a woman, or not "ma'am" me, for just one day. I don't think I ever expected my problems to be solved by "coming out" for the second real time in my life - it is immensely hard to be a trans person of any variety in the world right now, and I am among those who have it easiest (the cis-passing) - but wow, did I not anticipate the swath of new problems!
In May, I cut my hair very short, which felt as freeing as it always does. But I woke up a couple of days later wracked with something besides the usual dread. It was my first work day with short hair, and I remember a moment in the shower where I said to myself, you know what, I'm overreacting. I'm not really trans. I'm just trying to figure something out. I can be a woman, and not chafe against it. I'm just not so good at being a woman right now, but I can get better at it.
This conflicted knot sat in my stomach as I headed to work. When I came in, an older coworker saw my hair, and sang, "Ohhh, pretty girl! Pretty girl!!" the same way someone might get excited about a corgi. The same realization crashed into me again, like a folding chair against a wrestler: nope, I'm definitely not a woman! It goes to show that, sometimes, being misgendered can be a blessing.
June, July: Wrangle
(cw: weight)
I keep writing "thrive" for these months, but it didn't seem that way in the slightest. In my mind, I haven't done much in those slow summer months, but when I look back all I remember is being busy as hell.
Karina came down to visit in June to go see boygenius at Merriweather, where I cried at a concert for the first time in years. In July I drove Hagen and Mac to northern Virginia to what used to be the Nissan Pavilion (somewhat dignified) and is now Jiffy Lube Live! (cursed) to see Fall Out Boy and Bring Me The Horizon, two bands I knew a lot about but whose music was new to me. I put more miles on the car over the summer, compared to the rest of the year.
June especially didn't really seem like a month where I thrived. I felt bogged down by work, upset that I had been in foodservice for three months with no prospects for another job panning out, and still not making enough money. I was so tired, I kept missing out on having a life, and taking care of myself felt harder than ever. I was (am!) gaining weight that I didn't want to be, and felt like I had no control over it.
This happens to me often in the summertime: the world comes alive with things to do and ways to be seen, and I continue to want to lie underneath the air conditioning unit which throttles our planet, doing absolutely nothing. I could blame it on all the sad music I was listening to, but there were definitely other factors at play.
I upped my Wellbutrin at the end of June, and it had the same effect as when I first went on medication: the difference it makes when you replace your windshield wipers. Sweet relief. I don't want to discount the other things I did for myself (start to be stricter about bedtimes, eating vegetables, and hydrating, for the love of mike), but I'd be lying if the medication didn't do a lot of heavy lifting, too.
That lift gave me the space to enjoy the heat. I flung Ruby up and down in the kiddie pool in her backyard, and we stayed inside and watched Moana and Frozen when the heat was too bad. I drove to Dunkin for iced coffee after working eight hours at my Illy-slinging cafe-grocery amalgam. I thanked myself for replacing the AC compressor in my car in April. We planned a beach trip to go see my uncle at the beginning of August. If I wasn't thriving, I was at least wrangling my way through summer, more able than before.
Evidently, I parroted enough wisdom while running around with a portafilter in one hand and a spanakopita in the other to have an effect on my foodservice coworkers. I said something self-effacing and my 20-year-old coworker repeated what I'd told her when she was being hard on herself: "your brain can hear you, and it believes you when you say bad things about it!" My 17-year-old coworker saw how Mac and I would pick up tasks left undone, and she wrote about this kindness in college application essays. Having an effect on those younger than me led me to put serious thought into teaching. In July I looked into graduate programs again, following this curiosity.
August: Trepidation
The whole time I've been working in foodservice, I've been applying to other jobs. Some weeks this meant applying to every Indeed job I found while on breaks at work; some weeks it meant sending one or two detailed, multi-step applications. The result was largely the same: little, if any, feedback, and no bites until early August. I interviewed for my current part-time position at a history museum in downtown Richmond, walking distance from the State Capitol and City Hall.
The same day I interviewed, I drove to Nags Head to see my uncle and spend the weekend with him and my family. I put my Civic to the test and she excelled. Does anyone reading this reward their car with affirmations? I can't be alone in this. My pause in enjoying a short vacation came from fears that my fifteen-year-old car wouldn't get me home, and the fear that I was losing money, but I tried to keep it out of mind as much as possible.
Agreeing to work two jobs brought forth some serious hesitation. I wanted to be excited about "coming back to a desk job," to some degree, but A. I do not characteristically get excited about work, and B. after having worked more than one job in the past, I didn't want to be stretched thin again. This cartoon sums up my attitude towards having multiple jobs. Still, I held my breath, agreed to work two jobs with one benefit between them, and dove in.
September: Renewal
I had a few moments this month where I came back to earth, in which I was in my body in a comfortable way. Sitting around and watching The Office with my family on vacation, playing Ocarina of Time again, returning to my fiction writing after long stretches of neglect, looking up at the stars on the beach at Ocracoke. Most importantly: dunking my head into the wild September ocean, tasting the saltwater, and using my body to ride a wave back to shore.
When I was younger I would bodysurf with ease. Lately, either the waves have become wilder or I've become weaker, and controlling the path of my body while in the ocean seems out of reach. Sentiments about my body have been laid out in previous months, but there is nothing so equalizing as the ocean. The ocean does not care what you look like or how much you weigh: it will do what it wants with you. My anxiety told me that I had to fight it to stay safe. Consider this: a water sign, fighting the ocean.
But the fighting made me tired. I let Hagen show me how to let a wave carry me where I wanted to go. Our hands locked tight around each other's forearms, right under the elbow, not letting go among the foamy surf. Soon, my legs remembered what to do. My body remembered when to crest above a wave and when to dive under its bough.
I remind people who complain about being childish, locked in the past, stuck in habits, that we are all every person we ever have been. We are who we were in childhood, in adolescence, in early adulthood. I am still the ten-year-old kid who would swim for so long in the ocean that they'd get carried down the shore before seeing how far they'd gone. It was easy to forget this, but thankfully it was just as easy to remember.
October: Reward
One of my writerly idols, Jami Attenberg, recently wrote a newsletter about doing copy-edits for her current project, and it ended with this:
"You just sort of have to keep going through your project until you get to the end of it all. There is actually always an end to a story, one way or another. I do believe that. That if you keep writing, eventually the ending will surface for you, and you will have been able to give yourself everything you need to get yourself there. All of a sudden, that last line, the last edit, or the last word you need shows up, like a goddamn poem. One step in one direction. And then you know you’re done."
The second I wrote the last word of my novel, that same sensation washed over me. It was like someone put a hand on my shoulder - not to condescend, but to signal recognition. There it is. I finished the first draft of my fiction novel, the first full-length book I've ever written, on October 9th. The draft is over 100,000 words long and took three years and four months to write. Boom.
I thought there would be more fanfare, somehow. I told those who know about the project, who celebrated with me, and I think I ate a cinnamon roll to commemorate the occasion. Much like my gender journey, the book has long been my secret, a sequestered space I tend to after everyone else has gone to bed, in the few hours I have to spare. I don't think it will always be that way - I'd like to get it out into the world, somehow - but this private joy, now, is enough for me.
November, December: Perseverance
The leadup to the holiday season becomes shorter every year, and 2023 was no different. I started to get whiffs of Christmas in mid-October, and by the end of November it was in full Mariah swing. The holidays, which demand we be merry and cheerful, even amidst multiple genocides, the resurgence of a pandemic, and inflation. I guess it was in November that I started to panic, in earnest, about money; like most people I know, I have bills that are being raised in 2024, while my income stays the same.
Nevertheless, I came up with a plan that has options stretching out with different tree-like arms for differing paths. It felt vital to visualize what my future might look like. I forgive myself for not having everything figured out (present tense because I do this every day), and I tell myself I will figure out one thing at a goddamn time, even if it seems small. I've written countless times about taking things one step at a time, but I repeat it because it is both vitally important and often forgotten.
This plan is fortified by knowing something I didn't know about myself at the beginning of 2023: I went through a lengthy test and was diagnosed with inattentive-type ADHD. A lot of suspicions I’d held about my learning style and general ways of moving through the world were confirmed. Whatever plans I have will be cognizant of this important factor!
December saw me visit New York with Hagen, showing him my favorite spots and taking him to places I've heard about but never visited. The city reminded me that I was small but mighty. I came back to Richmond with some renewed purpose (and a freezerful of bagels). I shared my family's Christmas Eve tradition with Hagen, who had never seen Die Hard until a few days ago. I watched Ruby press the button on an ornament we've had for decades, which sings Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, and tear around the living room, squealing and dancing and twirling.
On one hand: I didn't do NaNoWriMo this year. I barely wrote a single poem in October, a month where I like to write a poem a day for the whole month. This newsletter is the longest thing I've written in months. I didn't read sixty books, or thirty - I'll be lucky if I finish book #21 tonight. I haven't roller skated since February and I haven't been to the gym since April. I still don't have a job with healthcare and I am, financially, here.
On the flipside: I have two reliable jobs and connections I didn't have at the start of 2023. I have ideas for freelance work to make a little extra on the side. I have ideas for fiction projects and spec pieces, and I have the aim of getting them out into the world. I have enough people and pets in my life that, on Christmas, I got to hang out with six cats and a dog. I have friends and loved ones to decompress with. I have two dopey cats who remind me to rest and take care of myself. I finished a fucking book this year.
It is easy for me to focus on what I haven't done. However, like my life paths, I am choosing to instead focus on what I do have, and what I can do. Of all the things that have surprised me this year, I am most surprised by how measurable growth can be. The tiny seeds of self-confidence I have planted and sown in therapy, in journaling, in meditative practices and appreciating moments of joy, have grown into a wide sprawl of grass in which I can lie down. In some places the grass is patchier than others. It's still growing. So am I.
This comes to you from my desk in Virginia, in my pajamas at 5pm, with Mingus playing on the record player in the other room. I leave you with the idea of a mantra for the new year. Throughout 2023 I repeated "wealth is subjective" when it felt apt - moments when both cats curl up on my lap, or when I come across something like a hidden $10 bill in the pocket of my jeans. I am still thinking on what my 2024 mantra should be, but what continues to come to mind is, "To be yourself is all that you can do."
Sending you all the love in the world,
E
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