I tried some stabs at a "reflections on 2021" newsletter but they felt a bit too self-indulgent at first. I try to put most of the self-indulgence in my diary instead, or share it with close friends. That said, I think that sometimes it just feels awkward at first to perform as yourself, but it's necessary anyway. Performance to others is not a lie, but an opportunity to render yourself legible to the world, a kind of active sharing.
2021 will go down as a year that I started getting my shit together professionally. I'm constantly embarrassed that it took me this long, and that it will likely take me longer until I make enough money that I can meaningfully save some of it and get some life projects underway. But hey, life through till now has broadly been weird (and thus good) and sometimes fun, too. For that I'm thankful. I re-committed to my PhD in 2021, and it has paid off with my first-ever sense of professional capability and opportunity. For me, it's been about finding a pathway into which I can stuff nearly everything I care about: fun abstractions, pedagogy, fabrication, landscape evolution, sustainability, social trust, infrastructure, etc etc etc.
I used to hold some resentment for folks who were really passionate about their careers, who intertwined their identity with their work. I think at least partially out of an immature contrarianism to my perception of my parents' paths through life (hi, mam and dad). But 2021 was also a year I got a lot better at being honest with myself, and in that I was reminded that of course I want to be passionate about my work. All by "my work" I mean all of life, not just "my job." I read The Will to Change by bell hooks just weeks before her death (RIP) and the parts of the book most meaningful to me were about integration and how compartmentalizing parts of one's life may be holding us (men?) back from genuine connection, vulnerability, honesty with ourselves and the world. My inner life is pretty chaotic, and in reading hooks' words, I realized how much I have held my internal soup as a point against myself, as an example of my insufficiency to be clear-cut between the elements of my life. I tried to put up rules and boundaries for myself, denying how affected I am by everything around me, and how much I want interrelationships and passion between everything in my life. I find myself now more often bored and limited by the scope of dispassion in general. I'm beginning to see my enthusiasms and experiences and patterns of thoughts and as just the palette I'm working with in life, and how unique that palette is. (I am excited to see it change as well.)
I feel very thankful that I have friends who let me play gonzo environmental epistemologist and that I've managed to go surfing a lot and pay my rent at the same time.
Otherwise in 2021? I tended to a creek in San Diego County while the seasons changed, I went to the desert for a week by myself (one of the most pure brain cleanses of my life), I enjoyed the dancefloor of some great techno shows, I bought some pink pants, I read a lot. In 2022 I want to plant a garden, work on my spanish, and, fingers crossed, schedule fewer things.
Anew,
Lukas
2021 will go down as a year that I started getting my shit together professionally. I'm constantly embarrassed that it took me this long, and that it will likely take me longer until I make enough money that I can meaningfully save some of it and get some life projects underway. But hey, life through till now has broadly been weird (and thus good) and sometimes fun, too. For that I'm thankful. I re-committed to my PhD in 2021, and it has paid off with my first-ever sense of professional capability and opportunity. For me, it's been about finding a pathway into which I can stuff nearly everything I care about: fun abstractions, pedagogy, fabrication, landscape evolution, sustainability, social trust, infrastructure, etc etc etc.
I used to hold some resentment for folks who were really passionate about their careers, who intertwined their identity with their work. I think at least partially out of an immature contrarianism to my perception of my parents' paths through life (hi, mam and dad). But 2021 was also a year I got a lot better at being honest with myself, and in that I was reminded that of course I want to be passionate about my work. All by "my work" I mean all of life, not just "my job." I read The Will to Change by bell hooks just weeks before her death (RIP) and the parts of the book most meaningful to me were about integration and how compartmentalizing parts of one's life may be holding us (men?) back from genuine connection, vulnerability, honesty with ourselves and the world. My inner life is pretty chaotic, and in reading hooks' words, I realized how much I have held my internal soup as a point against myself, as an example of my insufficiency to be clear-cut between the elements of my life. I tried to put up rules and boundaries for myself, denying how affected I am by everything around me, and how much I want interrelationships and passion between everything in my life. I find myself now more often bored and limited by the scope of dispassion in general. I'm beginning to see my enthusiasms and experiences and patterns of thoughts and as just the palette I'm working with in life, and how unique that palette is. (I am excited to see it change as well.)
I feel very thankful that I have friends who let me play gonzo environmental epistemologist and that I've managed to go surfing a lot and pay my rent at the same time.
Otherwise in 2021? I tended to a creek in San Diego County while the seasons changed, I went to the desert for a week by myself (one of the most pure brain cleanses of my life), I enjoyed the dancefloor of some great techno shows, I bought some pink pants, I read a lot. In 2022 I want to plant a garden, work on my spanish, and, fingers crossed, schedule fewer things.
Anew,
Lukas