How in the hell is it already January? The apartment sits quiet as I settle into my seat –a pair of twice-painted storage chests from Ikea I repurposed to build our dining nook a handful of years back. One of several, though rare, successful pandemic projects. 12:47 am strikes at the top of my screen and I find myself wondering if now might not be the worst time to start working on another piece. Protesting sleep, no doubt.
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Skimming through the writing I managed to push out during the last couple of months, I’m embarrassed to admit how long it’s been since I’ve actually published anything net-new. For the longest time, getting this place ready was a mix of midnight UI sessions, and endless catch-up writing –putting words against photos from events that happened months into the past. Albeit productive, I guess I got into the habit of setting things aside to be published at a later date, and now have to re-learn the value of punctuality as it shows up for those who actually read here. I’m not writing a history book, after all.

Alas, very much in the spirit of catching life as it attempts to zoom right past me, I’m forcing myself to sit down and write for a minute. Something current for a change. Though I’m seldom lucky enough to get any kind of feedback on my writing, I was grateful to hear someone recount their take on some of my pieces a couple of weeks back, and lingered –as anyone might upon collecting assessment– on the note that an undertone of optimism had been woven into the majority of my work. And I have to say, It was one of those thoughts that felt like it may as well have been my own given how helplessly obvious it seemed once I’d heard it, but it’s also something I confess I never purposefully incorporated.

So I gave it a think, and here’s where I’ve netted.

But really, if I didn’t at least try to see what the possible lesson in going through something difficult is, I risk convincing myself that there’s no purpose to the whole thing altogether. And genuinely, I don’t think that’s true. Difficult, painful, challenging, sometimes unbearable, things happen every day. Everywhere, and to every single one of us, and the only thing we can do in the face of all of it is to try and learn something. Anything.
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Our chances of evading hardship in life are so minuscule, it’s almost comical. So of course growth has to be our best revenge. And who knows? Maybe naively I’m hoping that eventually I’ll be so set into the practice of sniffing out these hard-learned lessons, that life’s punches will feel more… balanced?
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It’s certainly a nice thought.
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And one I FULLY borrowed during this past Christmas,
which –to quickly murder cliffhangers– I spent entirely alone.
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Let’s talk about that for a second.

Though it’s been a solid minute since I’ve visited relatives during the holidays (I’ll skip any pleasantries as you can read all about that here) I’ve consistently –one way or another– managed to spend the big goopy calendar days surrounded by close friends and loved ones year over year –the chosen family, if you will.

But for too many combined reasons far beyond my reach this year, things ended up being the exact opposite. I guess it was bound to happen eventually. Between some friends reconnecting with family and going off to visit them for the holidays, and others getting tied down with unavoidable responsibilities that kept them elsewhere during the actual physical days, I was down to the company of just one… Me.

And it was a strange process coming to that realization given the possibility of isolation has always been very much my reality. No, I don’t mean that in the sob-inducing tone it inevitably beckons, but rather in the very literal sense that I chose to move hundreds of miles away from home and to a city where I didn’t know a single soul… feeling alone was never really so much a lingering fear as it was just another part of circumstance.

So no, it didn’t hit me like a bag of bricks. In fact, thanks to the big work campaign chaos that took over my life the last two weeks of December, I almost entirely missed it. Dinner ingredients had been bought, gift orders had been placed… I even had a fourteen-pound turkey defrosting in the fridge! So what was a girl to do when word of delayed arrivals and postponed visits came knocking at my door a mere 48 hours before Christmas Eve?

…Is nothing an option? I wondered. Because that’s exactly what I did.

Little more than a handful of hours after hearing the undeniably sad news, I decided that before anything else got resolved, I needed to dip out and grab any missing ingredients for the night of the 24th. I’d been plotting this indulgent spread of festive eats for days, so finishing that up felt like the easiest decision I could make… After all, even a party of one needs to eat!

But it wasn’t until I’d made my way a couple blocks south of our apartment that day, that I realized I’d stepped out with little more than a loose puffer jacket amidst an unforgiving thirty-degree front that had swooped in over the weekend. Those of you who know me personally know I can’t stand the cold and typically wear anywhere between three to five layers when the temperature really dips, but for one reason or another, here I was prancing down the street with nothing but a handful of pending recipe ingredients on my mind.  

Oh god…did it actually happen? After five long years of suffering, did I finally acclimate to the cold of the North East? I reached for my phone inside my pocket, convinced I’d read another temperature by mistake.

And there she was. A frigid 33 degrees Fahrenheit staring right up from my screen.

And here I was, staring back in my bewildered indifference.

This notion that you can wake up and just casually… learn you’ve somehow fundamentally changed stayed with me for a minute. Because in that same unbothered way, I’d just received some arguably heart-breaking news earlier and found myself… well, not heartbroken. Sure it was unfortunate that I’d be spending a major holiday on my own for the first time, but it also just felt like the picture it painted was much more tragic than how I actually felt. And this too, was new.‍

I think that for someone who grew up with a pretty dense network of relatives, moved away, lost them to proximity, moved again, then lost them to morality… this notion of family and unity has always been a difficult subject to discuss. Hurry up and build a community, surround yourself with people you love –but also don’t get too attached or you’ll be screwed again when you lose them for whatever reason. Rely on just yourself always, but not so much that god forbid you end up… alone.
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The list of intrusive thoughts goes on and on. It was something I’d been running from for years.
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Yet against all odds, when the unspeakable finally happened, and I did –in fact– find myself alone, I was somehow… okay?

I realized that being away from everyone was nothing more than a matter of circumstance, and choosing to be upset about it was ultimately up to me. Like so many other things that come my way, it was out of my hands. And by god, the last thing I wanted to be was upset! I was about to be on vacation, for fuck’s sake!
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So I learned two things that evening: First, that after years of hoarding sweaters I can finally give my winter Michelin man look a break (thank god). And second, that if you keep working on the things that scare you the most at times, you might actually wake up one day and find that progress has indeed grown. The only thing left to decide now was how I was going to show up for myself, if at all for this. And that was the easiest part. If I was planning to slave in the kitchen for hours and create this incredible dinner spread for my friends, then I just as easily could be doing it for myself too… And probably should.
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So I did.

‍I cooked up enough food to keep me well fed for the better part of that holiday week, set out the table the same way I might’ve if more people had been present, and sat down to enjoy one of my favorite holiday movies from Netflix, Klaus. A beautiful take on the Santa Claus origin story, can’t recommend it enough. And sure, I’ll admit my Christmas Eve probably looked a little different than most people’s around the globe, but I also have to say… I quite enjoyed it! I was dead tired by the time I actually sat down at the table, but I vividly remember thinking, This is how you do it, kid. This is how you show up for yourself.
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‍It’d been a minute since I’d seen this version of myself staring back from inside the mirror, just teeming with intention and immense power to tread ahead… this was not a moment I wanted to forget. And of course, I inevitably solved the one remaining mystery of what to do on actual Christmas Day the following morning. With most friends still out of town, and a stocked fridge full of leftovers, I had every little freedom I’d been dreaming of for months to dive into some projects, and pull the cameras off the shelves. So the first thing on that list was capturing this person I’d just watched myself become.

These are the photos I’m leaving here today– the part of me that fights. Something to look back on in case of darker days ahead.

I laughed hard in our kitchen that night. Partially because I forgot to crack open a window, and after about four hours of inhaling oven gas I could barely feel my face, but also because I was right there for me, showing up. Listening to music, dancing, laughing at my favorite shows. This person that I get to be, and bring, and share with other people, I get to call upon him too.

For the longest time, I thought the phrase Brace Yourself described the physical act of locking yourself into place ahead of some sort of meaningful force-driven impact and only years later did I come to use it in a more emotional context as well (likely because I first heard it in some poorly-subbed movie airplane scene, but I digress). Yet the more I wondered about what to possibly title this thing once wrapped, the more I thought about the actual embrace part we give to ourselves when we choose to push through a difficult time by leaning on the tremendous force of nature we already know ourselves to be.

There’s a moment right before the leap. This out-of-body split-second breath of an event where you just know you’ll be right there to catch you. You’re right there behind you. Because you have to be. Because you’ve always been.

We come into this world alone, and though I know I’m up against the romanticized notion of partnered life, just as well as the criticism of an overdone self-centered outlook, all I’m saying is we… do.
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We come alone, and we leave alone, and –when you look at it from the right perspective– I really don’t think there’s anything wrong with that! This isn’t some all-out knock on the notion of partnership or even company, but rather an honest realization on our ability to be present for ourselves. Myself, anyway.‍

So of course I spent Christmas alone and then wrote about what it taught me. Sue me.
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It’s sappy and it’s goopy, and dear god it’s optimistic. But guess what? It’s mine and that’s what this place is for. You can go write your own cynical take on a website that took you over two years to pull together if that’s your jam.

It’s certainly not mine.
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Be well friends, near and far. I’ll be sure to check in sooner the next time, I promise.