The End of 2019: A Personal Review
When I was a teenager, I was one of those people who had a tiny notebook in my back pocket.
When I was a young adult, I used to have a tiny notebook in my back pocket. I had a kid, and then my written record became spotty. I had another kid, and I opened my planner yesterday to find that it had been three months since I wrote in it. I started scribbling about what a failure I am when I realized I was writing in the wrong week.
It’s the end of another year, and I have stopped taking time to write down something that has happened during my days. I don’t want to say this is a thing I am going to start working on in 2020. Writing a single daily note in my planner is something I am going to start doing again. Today. Right now.
If I have a look-see (anyone else play The Emperor’s New Groove for Play Station?) across my last five years, I feel mostly sad that so many tiny, boring moments have gone without note. I can remember time I got in a fight with my partner and I said that I couldn’t even continue the fight because it sounded like a heteronormative sitcom dialogue written in the 1950s only because I asked my brain to make some a microscopic folder to store that in. I could remember more things if I wrote them down. I want to remember more of my life.
Usually, when humans review their year, they look at accomplishments.
In regular homo sapiens sapiens fashion, let’s look at the big things that happened this year:
My family grew another baby and we had him safely at home.
I started making printed garments exclusively with GOTS-certified organic fabric that I designed.
I took on the descriptor “Unisex” in my business and ditched binary apparel.
I cut all of my hair off a few months ago when the postpartum shedding started.
I have had several director sessions in my film career.
I got kicked out of my wife’s clothes and am wearing my own clothes for the first time since I was 20.
I like myself again.
The “accomplishments” aside, what I really want to say is this last year was scary. I feel afraid being in public places and I blocked family members who feel no empathy, and the rise and visibility of hate and the platforms hate speech been given terrifies me and I can’t believe how many humans just don’t care about people who aren’t themselves. The other day I told my wife that sometimes I think that in 2016, the rapture happened and David Bowie and Alan Rickman and Prince and Gene Wilder and George Michael and Carrie Fisher and Christina’s dad all ascended and the rest of us are in fucking hell in a sea of red MAGA hats chanting to lock people up. That is how I feel about 2019. I want change and I want Elizabeth Warren to be our president and I want rich people to be forced to take their money made off the dehumanization of laborers and I want it to go towards treating people with more dignity. I want people to stop saying that no one deserves student loan forgiveness because they were smart and paid off theirs and I want the loudest voices to be the ones who care deeply about other people.
So, this year.
How was your this year? What did you like about your last twelve months? Has your Earth shifted? Are you feeling stagnant or atrophied? What is your overall mood? What is your personal pantone of this last year? Here’s mine:
