Traveled: Mazatlan, Las Vegas, Barcelona (fuck, just getting to travel again is a gift within itself)
Saw Live: Amenra, Billie Eilish, My Chemical Romance, Youth Code
Bucket list ✔️: First trip to Europe/Barcelona, Museo Dalí Figueres, The Lion King Broadway production
Notable Moments:
Trip to Disneyland for Reza’s first Bat’s Day on Mother’s Day
Monet Live art installation
Sharing Art Alive with M. and watching him check off some really big things.
Long overdue reunions with Bee and Carolin who I hadn’t seen in years.
Overdue time with friends.
My new passport getting a glorious pair of stamps
Visits and eats with my birthday twin.
Crying with Reza at the MCR show.
Catching COVID after 2.5 years of evasion (10/10 don’t recommend)
Mazatlan with my Sisters
Got a new tattoo
That even at this point in my life, I still get to feel and experience beautiful “first time evers”
The unspoken language of flowers and intimate poetry
Watching and helping Ginny move to her new, out of state chapter
Kept most of my plants alive!
Every moment of the Barcelona travel magic we had. Story and trip of a lifetime.
Stolen breaths behind and on a gothic cathedral wall
So many wonderful sunsets
Reza turned 16, Lucifer 1, Gomez & Judas 11, me? 48. Damn.
Watching my people get their due slice of happy.
Music
My 22′ Release Favs (in no order):
The Weeknd “Dawn FM”
L.S. Dunes “Past Lives”
Night Sins “Violet Age”
Beyonce “Renaissance”
Crosses ††† “Permanent Radiant”
Holy Fawn “Dimensional Bleed”
SZA “S.O.S.”
My Chemical Romance “The Foundations of Decay” (a single that I played into oblivion)
Author & Punisher “Krüller”
The 1975 “Being Funny In A Foreign Language”
And honestly? Discovering older things I hadn’t given a chance
The highlights were fucking brilliant… especially after the absolute shit shows that 20/21 were. Gotta love the abject stupidity of a pandemic to put so many things to a halt. They weren’t all bad and brought so many eye opening perspectives and life changing connections. But 22′, what can I say? She was a semblance of a little bit of normalcy, whatever it is we call “normal” these days. Regardless of which, this year was a squinty eyed emergence on the horizon and a bit of fresher air after being stuck in an airlock.
She was risk and reward, lessons of trust, faith and surrender. She was a limit testing, breath stealing, emotionally challenging, heart swelling, tear inducing, blood racing, blasphemously delicious blur. I’m so grateful I got to see and feel so much of it and that a lot of those moments were shared. I cried a hell of a lot – sometimes from sadness, happiness, joy, pleasure. Sometimes all of the above. And sometimes it was from the jagged edges of disappointment.
On the morning of New Year’s Day 2023 I opened my list of hopes and intentions I wrote the year before. It has become one of my New Year rituals. I was pleasantly surprised to see that a handful of those things came to fruition. They were things I worked and sought to make reality and boy, did they come true in beautiful ways. On the other hand there were things I didn’t even come close to touching and perhaps that is where I am being called to focus this year. I keep coming back to words like: more. abundance. desire. manifest. ease. gentle. And perhaps that is how I will approach the year to come, with unapologetic truth and the mouth to match.
