Once again we find ourselves at the end of another year, preparing for the inevitable reality. The clock will chime midnight. The ball will drop over Time Square as everyone breaks out into “Auld Lang Syne” and local fireworks find an excuse for late night shenanigans. It’s the most festive that late night is ever allowed to be. As I prepare for my own version of that, I take the final moments to reflect on what has come and what I hope will happen in the year ahead. I’m naturally too much of a nostalgist, pulling from my own past and deconstructing its meaning. As I’ve previously mentioned, this week is very special to me. It’s the closing of a chapter. So… what does this chapter actually say?
I’m not talking so much for you, but for me. What will be the core memories that I pull from when I get 10 years down the line and tell the next generation about living through this time? In all honesty, it might blur together with the past few years with the only different measure being that it continues the upswing.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had my fair share of bad days. I’ve hurt myself, been depressed, and even irrational from exhaustion. There have been days where I sign onto Twitter and the Post-Elon Musk era has made me loathe the outside world. He may be a man driven by over-compensation and delusion, but I don’t appreciate him taking out his grievances on the public, who take to Twitter for community and are now left with cynicism. The fear of a good thing going away scares me, though it might as well be a metaphor. You see, for as much as the bad days are overwhelming, they didn’t hurt as much as the ones in the past. I was able to move forward productively in a matter of weeks instead of months. For some reason, I take this as a very good sign. Like Twitter, things may be a mess, but the shining light is still somewhere in that broken algorithm of a billionaire’s bias.
Because for all of this, I want to believe that 2022 was the best year I’ve had since 2019. As much as I’m not a fan of society collectively deciding to ignore COVID-19 as a threat again, I’ve worn my mask and taken those vaccinations so that I can appreciate life. I’ve been to so much live theater and most of it had a meaningful response coming out. I love that I’ve now seen Marc Maron live at least once. I love that I now have access to those periphery people in my life, those strangers who don’t talk to you but whose existence gives life more personality. I love that I took a James Joyce class and got to geek out with scholars over “Ulysses”: a book that is somehow both gross AND literary. I love that I was at the game where my school won the Big West regular season in basketball and everyone rushed the court to celebrate. Even a trip to The Aquarium of the Pacific where I saw a South Asian drum group perform for 20 minutes feels special. These small moments may mean nothing to my enrichment, but they make life feel worth living.
Which is the thing. Being restricted access to life did take its toll on me. I felt that inability to be creative and experience something profound. In 2022, I had no shortage of times where I stopped and saw the world in a lot friendlier way. Even having a family friend from France visit for a week allowed me access to what Southern California looks like to an outsider. He claimed that there’s nothing like CSULB where he’s from, and it’s maybe a sign that I need to get back to appreciating small things again. Even on a campus that I had walked for several months this year, not stopping to admire the architecture or even the variety of squirrels meant that I was missing out on so much.
It's why I’ve been more open to general experiences and tried to just find the good in everything. I’ve tried to be more curious and even though I’m not very good at it, allowing myself to indulge has at least allowed something inside me to flourish. Not every moment needs to be on par with seeing Hadestown twice. Sometimes the smaller, more intimate transactions can provide wisdom or a memorable joke. As someone who took four months off of Twitter earlier this year, I was amazed by how freeing it was to see the world independently, looking at things without concern over endless discourse over nonsense. Sure, it was there when I returned, but waking up on one of those days meant I was more likely to stop and think more about what mattered to me, like my career or family.
Which is the thing. Whenever I felt like I was having a bad time, I would pull back. Maybe sometimes it felt premature, but mostly I did it to remember what really mattered. Sure, I’m quickly approaching my Mid-30s and feel unaccomplished in a lot of respects, but as far as things that make me happy, I’ve at least done the plausible ones. I may be too scared to give into impulsive behaviors otherwise, but this was one of those years where I felt more actively engaged with my desires. I let my first year with a Spotify account turn into a mix of movie scores, hyperpop, bedroom pop, and rap. I allowed myself to expand the potential of what I like, and it feels so freeing. To just be myself in these trivial ways is so powerful. I do have other dreams that may take years to achieve (like finally visiting Oregon), but at least I now know the need to work toward them.
Because of it, I’ve felt more inspired. The Memory Tourist in general has been more creatively fulfilling even with less output. I feel like I’m getting to someplace better with the personal essay format in general. While my short story output was even more abysmal, I still am proud of what effort I put into them.
Sure, in various ways 2022 was bad. Anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric is on the rise and the Club Q shooting was appalling. Women’s rights were set back by the overturning of Roe vs. Wade. Even the lack of independent theater chains meant that I missed a lot of great films that were blips on a radar. Obviously, they’re not all equally troublesome, but they’re small things that impacted the year for me, of feeling like culturally the world is going backward.
With that said, I see something like Heartstopper (created by aro-ace author Alice Oseman) become a hit on Netflix and celebrate. I attended a Dear Luke Love Me preview and had the most overwhelmingly beautiful moment of the year where everyone’s openly celebrating asexuality. Did I mention that I love A Strange Loop? In other corners, Joe Biden at least put protections forward for gay marriage (which sure, hey, glad you did *something* besides falsely calling the pandemic over). Elsewhere, I watched The January 6 Hearings and felt some optimism in a society finally addressing recent trauma and corruption in this country. In those ways, it felt like we were healing, moving forward, and becoming better people by acknowledging mistakes.
Which is the thing. I’m not entirely sure how to properly assess the year because, like any year, it had its good and bad moments. Whereas I could at least look at 2021 and find personal healing in a more direct manner, this one is more opaque and full of rocky terrain. I was never at my worst. Sure I finally contracted Coronavirus and survived, so I’ll take that as a highlight. Still, I think in the end, all I can really suggest is that the year being good or bad is totally rooted in your mindset about it. Do you personally feel that you did one thing that bettered your life these past 12 months? For me, there’s several. A lot of them I chronicled here.
As I say goodbye to 2022, I acknowledge the faults and strive to have a better disposition going forward. Next year marks the start of a new era of my life, and it’s honestly very scary. I have no idea where I’ll be in December. That is exciting in its own way, but a further example of life being what you make of it. For me, I look at 2022 and realize that while my overall output was down on The Memory Tourist, I put my efforts into sustaining things offline that means a lot to me. I’m grateful for all of them whether it’s my family, friends, cats, or even the random media that gets me through those bad days. All I can hope is that I’ll wake up on December 31, 2023 and feel like I’m several steps forward. For now, I say goodbye to a time with a lot of highs and lows (for example, my grandparents died) but know that like last year, I set out with goals of how to better myself and I achieved them. All I have to do is apply that formula again and hope for the best. That’s all we can do.
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