goodbye, 2022

In the end you took more than you gave, but for awhile you were really good. I mean really good. What you gave no doubt better for the long term, what you took, inevitable. You were a year in which I began by leaving a job I'd had for 20 years that was not only a dead end, but wasn't making me happy anymore  A year in which I found new ways to make money in ways that I love and with something I am good at.. In which I was able to explore interests and  passions by putting them to paper. For money, no less. As such, I felt in general more in control of creative work and press work and just the general business of living working from home and without the mental labor of being stressed all the time and herding kittens I wasn't be paid properly to herd. I was not in the constant state of overwhelm that has plagued me a decade or more. 

There were times when I felt isolated by working alone after a more lively environment, but more often I felt exhilarating to spend days working at home at my own pace, on my own schedule. To occupy the day with writing assignments and galleys and poem drafts, but also naps and cats and cooking actual food in my kitchen. To actually feel like I was living in my apartment I pay so much rent for. While I missed, at times, my downtown commutes and scenic bus ride along LSD , I was happy to be free of them, particularly during wintry weather and covid spikes.   

You were also a creative year, with several writing projects started or put to bed., several zine projects and two full-length books launched into the world along with more experiments with video poems. A year of writing poems about writing as a creative medium, Greek goddesses and monsters, and, toward the end, love. Of some ventures into writing short horror fiction and maybe a little long-form smut. 

While the end of the year was brutal, the middle was mild and full of long, summery afternoons and evenings. I haven't even begun to really process the events of the last couple months with the loss of my dad, the swiftness with which it all happened and the swiftness with which everything swept through the holidays to land us here, on the last day of the year. So much of it still has my head spinning. If it follows the pattern of losing my mother, it will take months to unpack and open certain doors I've shut in my mind to function at anything like normal. But then, what is normal?

Tonight, I am actually going out since J is DJ-ing at his usual weekend karaoke spot down along the river walk, so maybe I can catch a few fireworks around midnight.. Most NYEs, even pre-covid, have had me enveloped in my introvert cocoon come midnight, but I find myself, after two years of being denied much celebration of any kind in more public places, I am ready to (masked if I must) kick up the dust on my party shoes a little. Besides I have a new book to celebrate as well, which you can get a copy of here. Tomorrow, we intend to spend the first day of the year binging Wednesday on Netflix and doing nothing in particular, which seems an excellent way to start off the year...