constellations #89: twenty-twenty-three

Hi again.

What a strange year it’s been! I spent the last few weeks thinking about how it’s been for me, how I’d sum up this year, and it felt tempting to characterize it as a year of despondency. 2023 sucked, I’d think — a year when, to be honest, I experienced an on-and-off despair that was not unfamiliar in character but was new in depth and frequency, sucking the air out of large gaps of time in which I was stuck thinking about awfulness both around and within me. It felt, you might say, like the blues ran the game for me this year. Maybe it felt that way for you, too.

But the truth is, of course, that the year actually also held so many moments of great delight for me: the weekend of my wedding; visiting Austin and Manchester and DC; going to the ballet; traipsing around the Botanic Garden; getting drunk at karaoke. Being treated with kindness and care by people I love, and getting to do the same for them. Eating home cooked meals with friends. Spending afternoons walking around my sister’s farm, kissing ponies and donkeys and baby goats on the nose. Watching my friends’ kids grow. Being moved to tears (and laughter) in museums and theaters. Getting dressed up to go on dates with Matt and holding hands on walk to the subway. Live music!!!! Seeing my friends’ bands play; my friends seeing my band play. At my band’s first show in many years a fellow musician told the crowd how, back in the day, my music had meant so much to her, that it had been formative for her as a songwriter, and of course I was in the bathroom at the time so I missed it but Matt told me afterwards and it gave me a momentary and transcendent clarity of purpose that felt stable and solid, like I could put it in my pocket, like I could carry it with me. (Maybe you had some of that, too; I hope you did.)

Even more potently: There was a feeling that surfaced for me in the days after my wedding, or maybe right in the midst of it (it’s all a blur), creeping up in the hazy, drizzly light of early autumn on the coast, my energy zapped, my body running on adrenaline and iced coffee, the thought sneaking into my brain in a teeny-tiny-size font but all caps: IS THE JOURNEY ACTUALLY THE DESTINATION?!?!?!?! I know how that sounds, but hear me out, since this time last year I couldn’t stop thinking about what it’s all adding up to, or whether it’s adding up at all. Anyway in that moment I felt, for a second, for me and all my friends and my family, awash in the joy of it all — meaning, gratitude for everything we had experienced, for having been through it rather than just for things as they were in that moment; gratitude for love that had lasted, was lasting, over many years; gratitude for closeness not despite but because of and through whatever challenges we had faced; gratitude for the choices I had made that led me here, even though those choices had sometimes felt like mistakes, or not like choices at all. Is that what it all adds up to? Whoa. (It didn’t last; to be honest it was not 48 hours later that I was — yet again!!! — dwelling on hopelessness and crying to the love of my life about feeling entirely existentially depleted.) Even if it was momentary, the experience really did make me feel like I had glimpsed some actual wisdom, and maybe I could get myself aligned with it in a more serious way if I kept trying.

I spent several days last week totally alone in COVID isolation and I kept returning to that feeling, wondering whether it could keep me afloat in whatever the forthcoming year brings. Maybe not by itself, sure, but I think it could help? My real hope for next year is to try to live a little closer to that truth — that it’s all adding up, already, and look how sweet it is — and see what might be illuminated if I keep myself near it.

So anyway. For the past many Decembers I’ve made lists of the things that guided me through the year (see: 2022; 2021; 2020; 2019; 2018; 2017). In keeping with that tradition, here is my accounting for 2023, plus some other miscellany.

clown emoji 🤡: Probably my most-used emoji this year (aside from my classics: various hearts, sobbing face, angel, smiling devil). I used it to designate, generally, some measure of clown behavior, which could mean “watch out, I’m being a huge idiot” or “well, now, take a look at this dummy” (sometimes those two things were synonymous) but more often it simply meant, “this behavior is embarrassing.” This usually had to do with work (see this classic meme for reference) or running late/the subway in general or strangers being annoying on social media.

chickpeas: I thought I hated chickpeas for a long time (bad news since I’m a vegetarian) but it turns out that roasting them really helps. The thing I probably ate the most this year: an entire can of chickpeas on a pan with olive oil and salt and pepper and maybe some rosemary and cloves of garlic, roasted until crispy. I understand this is not a thrilling or a complete meal but it’s good! Sometimes I’d make them this way but it’s more work; this is the dinner version.

fresh flowers: I’ve tried to make a habit of having fresh flowers in the house since moving to Brooklyn (not just because of a cute girl who works at a local flower shop but not not because of that) but this year flowers were, in general, particularly abundant. My last day at my old job was during the week of my birthday (can you imagine…), and many beloved friends sent me flowers in honor of one or the other occasion or both, enough that I kept making a joke that our apartment had acquired a distinctly funereal vibe. After our wedding in the fall, Matt and I took our floral arrangements — impeccable, gorgeous — home and kept gazing at them, adoringly, googly-eyed, all week. Looking at something with someone you love very much and saying, “I can’t believe how beautiful this is!” over and over is one of life’s greatest pleasures, and we said it a lot throughout the wedding itself, but having the flowers afterwards really prolonged that experience. During the year we sent flowers to friends having hard times, brought them to our families over holidays, admired flowers in other people’s homes; in November, I bought a few stems from a flower shop in Greenpoint and then marveled over how they seemed to last forever and ever and ever. Right now I’m looking at beautiful flowers my dear friend Lyndsey sent me when I got sick last week. (This all outweighs the fact that Matt, in a late-night thoughtless accident earlier this year, closed the living room window right on top of our purple heart plant, chopping clean off the stem where delicate pink flowers had been blooming each day. When I clocked the damage the next morning, I thought I might die. The plant is fine now; I’ll let you know if she blooms again.)

generosity: I don’t think I am a particularly generous person but I was raised Catholic, so I’m working on it; I was instilled with the belief that it’s a core virtue, and that the failure to be generous is a core failure. (Matt has a generosity that I love — materially generous in a totally natural and casual way, to friends and strangers alike. He has given away, among other things, more cigarettes than the human mind can count and will see his reward in heaven.) Material generosity is arguably most important but this year I have also been trying to cultivate a generosity of spirit — trying to force myself to ask, especially in low-stakes situations where I can feel myself becoming unnecessarily petty: What is the most generous possible read I could have of this? Or even, just: What is a different or more generous conclusion than the one to which I’ve jumped? (Your classic: maybe that person is just having a bad day, maybe I misinterpreted, maybe I’m letting my insecurities color my understanding, maybe this other person is overcompensating for their insecurity, maybe they’re on deadline, etc.) I don’t always stop to do this, and admittedly when it does happen, it’s usually only after I’ve exhausted a run-through of my own egocentric view of the perceived slight. But I did catch myself thinking it enough times this year that I can reasonably count it as habitual. That this is a generosity towards others that seeks mainly to soothe myself is not lost on me! But I still feel that it is helping.

getting laid off: I lost my job in the spring and it sucked so much. I still haven’t found full-time employment since (except for a two-month temp position at my old job, followed by another temp job that was promised but didn’t materialize — see clown emoji, above). I lost my job because of “economic headwinds,” which we all know is corporate mediaspeak for bad decisions someone else made. When I was complaining about it afterwards, a former colleague said, “it’s so crazy that they laid you off because you actually really liked your job.” I mean, I had my gripes, who doesn’t, but she was right: I really liked my job. I really liked the mission of public media. I really liked being an editor. I really liked my colleagues. I really liked spending all day thinking about music. I hope I find a new job soon and I hope I like that one, too.¹ But man, did it break my heart to lose this one.

le labo thé noir: Matt and I sprayed this perfume on all our wedding mail — save-the-dates and invitations and thank-you cards, etc. — of which there was a lot, so our apartment wound up perpetually smelling like fig and bergamot and vetiver this year. It was sweet. (It brought us so much joy when our friends checked their mail and then texted us to ask, oh my god are these scented?!, which outweighed the headache of inhaling so much perfume.)

manicures: I have never been the kind of person who regularly gets her nails done but I got a manicure this spring while I was visiting my family, because my sister asked me to, and she has never really been a manicure person either, so I thought the request was charming. Afterwards I felt very chic, so I kept the habit up for a while. This didn’t last long (see: getting laid off, above) but it was really nice while it lasted, and if I ever am making good money again I might get back into it.

planning my wedding: I already wrote at length (once, twice) about getting married, so I won’t get into it again. But it took a lot of planning, so a lot of my mental bandwidth this year was taken up by it, which felt kind of dorky to admit, kind of tradwife heteronormative bridezilla of me. But it also felt like a giant creative collaboration with my partner, and that part was beautiful. At the beginning of the planning process I cried all the time (feeling really overwhelmed out of fear of other people’s judgements, fear of expectations, feeling perpetually behind schedule, not having the answers to the questions everyone kept asking, etc). I think it made me act a little crazy in retrospect? But by the end, somehow, I stopped caring about those things. By the end it was just really exhilarating and fun.

risking vulnerability: I found myself talking about my feelings a lot this year. Some of the time it felt great but often it felt awful, somehow both obvious and overexposing. On the other hand, getting to hear about my friends’ feelings was a precious and beautiful gift, always. So anyway next year I want to get better about all of this.

watching television: I watched so much TV this year, holy moly. All of Girls, all of Veep, all of Sex and the City — the latter two for the first time — plus new seasons of current shows (The Bear, The Curse) — this isn’t even scratching the surface, honestly. I don’t usually watch a ton of TV, so I guess I’ve had a lot of catching up to do? Anyway, I’d love to hear about the best TV you watched this year.

etc: sleeping late; Las Culturistas; baseball caps; big pants; art museums; martinis; strength training; “Padam Padam”; Sudoku; biscotti; having bangs (again); doing crosswords on the subway with Matt; hearing things thirdhand (good and bad) and dwelling on them for too long; being in love

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five books I couldn’t put down: Quantum Criminals; Big Swiss; The Years; Someone Who Isn't Me; Biography of X

five of my favorite things I wrote: this newsletter about work; this one about being in love; this review of the Squirrel Flower record; this review of the boygenius record; this review of the Fever Ray record

five of the best shows I saw: Le Tigre in Brooklyn; Fever Ray in Brooklyn; Strange Mangers in Boston; Wednesday and All Dogs in Philly; boygenius in DC

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Thank you so much for reading constellations this year. Writing this newsletter has been really grounding for me in such an uncertain year, and especially when I felt so much uncertainty in my relationship with writing. I hope 2024 brings peace to you and me and all of us. Thanks again for being here.

xo,
M

1. If you are in the market for a writer or editor or newsletter person or podcast person, I’d love to talk :)