Tag Archives: December 2022

End of December 2022: Time and Time Again

It’s the last day of the year and time has never felt more vivid. Happy New Year’s Eve!

How was this year for you? Some have said that 2022 has felt like a continuation of 2020 (AKA the Lost Year, AKA a year that didn’t happen). I don’t think this sentiment rings true for me, though the pandemic and its effects are still widely felt. I’ve found that the people around me have had a renewed commitment to living a certain way this past year. I’m not really sure how to describe it more precisely, but there is a different energy. [I am trying not to use the words “vibe” or “vibes” but it turns out that this is very hard?]

I time-travelled recently when I was traveling home from a trip. I left Singapore at 8:00 AM local time and arrived in Seattle at 8:30 PM local time in the same day, but had travelled for 31 hours in between. OK, maybe time zones don’t count as time travel. But I was contemplating the year during those hours spent in limbo between time zones. I felt time stretching around me while the hours were simultaneously condensing. Though I guess I was so tired I would have believed a lot of things.

Yesterday, I ate breakfast with Anne, one of my oldest and best friends, and we talked about resolutions. They are so hard to set and keep for some reason! I think there is some science about why they do not work. But there is definitely still value to goal-setting. At this point in life I am still just trying to figure out how to do it better. So no resolutions to write about at the moment. Sorry.

Tangential sidenote: Something else that makes me very aware of the passage of time is the Vanity Fair Billie Eilish interview that comes out every year. Change probably just feels more palpable for young people, especially for someone who is in the spotlight and thus feels pressure to keep reinventing. I love reflecting (hence this entire blog) but I don’t necessarily like reliving the past. Nor do I like watching videos of myself or hearing my own voice. But that’s probably a different thing.

I wish everyone reading this a great 2023! I have a feeling it will be a great year with many challenges and new revelations. This blog will be continuing into the new year (because I forgot to turn off auto-renew for WordPress yet again) so stay tuned. Or don’t! Change your whole life! Or don’t 🙂

Year in Lists: 2022

Goodbye, 2022! You were very good to me, though I had kind of a flop year in terms of media consumption. I am also usually fashionably late to things. Nevertheless, here are some lists of things I enjoyed that came out this year.

Movies and Film

- Fire of Love 
- Cha Cha Real Smooth 
- Everything Everywhere All at Once 
- RRR
- Fire Island
Television (new episodes this year)

- Ziwe (Showtime)
- Wednesday (Netflix)
- Money Heist: Korea - Joint Economic Area (Netflix)
- Succession (HBO)
- Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend (Netflix)
- RuPaul's Drag Race (VH1)
- The Rehearsal (HBO) 
Albums

- The Loneliest Time - Carly Rae Jepsen
- Being Funny in a Foreign Language - The 1975
- Hold the Girl - Rina Sawayama
- Renaissance - Beyoncé
- Midnights - Taylor Swift
- Crash - Charli XCX
- SOS - SZA
Podcasts/Webseries

- Modern Love (New York Times)
- Las Culturistas (Big Money Players & iHeartPodcasts)
- 5-4 (Prologue Projects)
- Anything Goes with Emma Chamberlin (Ramble)

- Make Some Noise (Dropout)
- Game Changer (Dropout)

- Never Too Small (YouTube)

A few lists full of non-media items: Fight me!

Overrated in 2022:

- The word "vibes" 
- Cow milk
- Two-factor authentication (I'd rather get hacked)
- Stress culture 
- FOMO 
- Living in fear of “The Big One” (this is just for me)
Underrated in 2022:

- Using Venmo like social media
- Trader Joe’s Taiwanese Green Onion Pancakes (sorry these are so good)
- Going to restaurants alone
- Sitting on a bench in the sun with no other stimuli
- Juice... especially orange juice
- Dressing up for things for the sake of it
- Using the US Postal Service recreationally (huge advocate)
- Facetiming your sisters and playing Splatoon 3 together (when possible)
Forecasts for 2023:

- Demise of Facebook (I hope) 
- Demise of NFTs (I hope)
- Legwarmers become mainstream fashion
- Resurgence of wired earbuds and headphones
- Elon Musk appears in a Marvel movie
- Teenagers on TikTok mobilize to solve a major crime
And?
- Everyone reading this has a great year 🙂

Things to Love

Dear world. To save myself from finals-related spiraling and from listening to way too much Lana Del Rey, here is a blog post slash poem slash meditation slash prayer.

Lately, my days are not very dynamic. I am severely vitamin D deficient and I feel like my body is hibernating while my mind works too much. So I have been compiling a list of things that are life-affirming to me. I am inspired by a poem called “Love” written by Alex Dimitrov, who is one of my favorite poets (and also my former professor). Every line of his poem starts with “I love” and it continues indefinitely on Twitter, one line a day. Anyways, as an exercise in gratitude and poetry, here are some things that I love. They make me feel more real. Here is the (non-exhaustive) list now while I am feeling earnest. Thank you for reading and I hope all is well with you!

THINGS TO LOVE:

* A good night of sleep
* Orange juice
* Friendships that last years
* Sunlight and how it streams in through the window unapologetically 
* Laughter that hurts the ribs
* The color red
* Hearing people talk about what they love
* Preparedness, until it doesn't make sense
* Sweaters and my favorite jeans
* Doing nothing because I can't help but think about everything
* Being alive because it is so hard sometimes
* My pothos plant 
* Music that people put their entire souls into
* Seasons and what they represent to people
* Calendars
* Cinnamon rolls 
* Aestheticism, beauty, things that exist for no practical purpose
* The solemnity of mornings 
* The solitude of nights
* The squirrels that run across the power lines outside my window and chase each other 
* Impractical clothing
* Birthdays (not mine)
* Dusk
* Writing letters to friends, of course
* This poem by Eileen Myles, called "At a Waterfall, Reykjavik":

	I still feel like
	the world
	is a piece of bread
	
	I'm holding 
	out half
	to you.
	
* Brutality (only in theory)
* Bone broth 
* The feeling that I am becoming my own person 
* Movies with stunning combinations of sound and color 
* Looking forward to other things
* Dvorak's New World Symphony
* Flowers as gifts
* Clarity 
* And bravery (may we all have it!)