Tag Archives: new year

End of 2024: List of Love

Happy end of 2024! I love the new year and its shiny promise… but for now, I made a list of the things I loved most over the last twelve months. Best wishes to us all in 2025.

  • Old friends
  • New people and optimism
  • Carrot juice
  • Wavy perms
  • Caffeine twice a day (once on the weekends)
  • Audiobooks in the car, especially
    • Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
    • My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
  • Calling friends weekly
  • Sweaters ugh I love them
  • Staying in
  • Jump rope for fitness
  • Malatang and other spicy soups
  • Having multiple beverages at once
  • Songs by women with short titles
    • “Impossible” by Clairo
    • “Scott Pilgrim” by Plumtree
    • “anything” by Adrianne Lenker
    • “Track 10” by Charli XCX
    • “Heaven” by Mitski
    • “Dreaming” by Blondie
  • Movie scores while studying
  • Relearning how to be alone, after forgetting
  • Big daunting academic projects, now done
  • The lasting desire to be a better reader
  • The lasting desire to be a better writer
  • Forgiveness and stillness and not saying anything
  • Video games, alone and with friends
    • League of Legends (yeah)
    • Stardew Valley
    • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
    • Mario Party Jamboree
    • Night in the Woods
  • Hoarding many of the same picture of my dog
  • Wearing the same four outfits all semester
  • Feeling melancholy about school
    • But saying bye to nostalgia
  • My Yoshitomo Nara flip clock
  • My Gentle Monster Kiko sunglasses
  • Unexpected letters and postcards from friends
  • Zines, as always
  • Selfies
  • Ibuprofen
  • Sleeping well
  • Feeling like myself, again
  • French fries
  • Lamb biryani

See you next year ❤

End of January 2023: On the Interior

So it’s another year of end-of-month posts! I am choosing to break from my pattern of titling each monthly post with a gerund, so maybe these posts will make even less sense. There are no rules this year. Who knows what will happen!?

Right now I am thinking about the future and watching the squirrels run across the power line outside my north-facing window. Usually there are two of them, chasing each other up and down the big tree. Sometimes I stare out the window until they show up. I wonder if they can see me.

January was a long month for me. I am reading Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse again. It’s one of my favorite books and feels especially appropriate this time of year. Maybe it’s something about the coldness of the prose or the way that time moves throughout the book. Woolf also knows exactly how to write about introspection and the interior lives of people. That really resonates with me. I think she is such a genius. Few books make me think as hard about the human condition as that one.

What else? Here is a list for you: I have been saying yes to doing things with friends. I have been watching a bunch of movies. I have been drinking a bunch of orange juice. I have been writing letters. I have been trying to observe the moon. I have been walking a lot. I have been sleeping strangely and logging my dreams. I have been drinking two cups of coffee a day. I have been stressed. I have been hopeful! I have been.

For the best of times
For the worst of times

Time Warp New Year

 I have been hungry to write this poem 
 ever since November clipped the days 
 blue and short. The horrible thing is that…
  
 I walked past the General Grant Memorial
 defending a song by keeping it on, pausing only
 to remember when there was no snow.
  
 Two days ago a man catcalled me saying
 Hey! Relax!
  
 Some things are just human, like never drinking
 enough water, or always choosing the bench which
 faces the sun.
  
 Or wanting to feel new and different. As I sat there,
 a man threw snow at a tree and left walking west
 in the other direction.