2022 in five lessons
Only four of which I've really learned
Disco Diaries is a free series of essays and vignettes. If you love it, consider sharing it with a friend, or supporting this project financially. For $5 a month, you’ll receive a monthly personality quiz (see here and here for examples), as well as my eternal gratitude.
I mistakenly thought that the last weeks of the year would be slow and easy. Not so not so! My brain feels like a melted banana split. But the maraschino cherry is still there doing the heavy lifting, carrying me into the new year with snack-size rituals for 2022 reflection.
Like, I’ve looked at all the pictures and videos on my phone from this year, put the best ones in a 2022 album, and marked a handful for printing. And I went back through my agenda from this year to recall what happened in hopes of drawing up some neat conclusions about what 2022 meant in the context of my whole life.
This 86th issue of Disco Diaries is a result of that activity. Here are some of my year’s experiences condensed into five little lessons.
The wins stick more than the failures
My Moleskine agenda is a sloppy mess. Regardless of how many YouTube videos I watch about neat bullet journaling. Its pages reveal the all-overness of my brain, and only a portion of it since other notebooks take the heat as well.
Flipping through the weeks from last winter, I found a dozen long to-do lists in colored, felt-tipped pens. My handwriting gets more hectic as it nears the bottom of the list, like I’m running out of time (because I always feel I am).
The lists contain everything from small house chores to major creative projects. Some of the things never happened. Others did, but took a while to be completed. What really stood out, though, were the major items that I went for and didn’t get. A fellowship with Roxanne Gay. A film audition. Tickets for SNL (lol).
As disappointing as it was to be rejected for these things, they didn’t even come to mind when I first thought back on what happened this year. Instead I remembered the things I did accomplish, the trips I took, and the visions I followed through on.
One could argue that this is because the failed opportunities didn’t happen. Or I could decide that it’s because this year I learned the value of acknowledging achievements of all sizes. Because what I also found in the margins of my weekly planner—albeit less often than the sprawling to-do lists—were lists of what I’d accomplished in a given week. Perhaps that timid practice helped more than I realized.
Slow burns are a respectable part of life
Also on those long to-do lists from January 2022? Items on my to-do list for January 2023. Some are small, like “resolve old laptop,” and some are big, like “plan Analog Fair [music festival].”
This can be discouraging. But, I also notice how the Analog Fair journey is progressing, even if much slower than I expected. That has to count for something. Some things have to simmer.
And my book of haiku, Comforting Voids, came out this past May, but not before I had declared that it would never happen. I once drew a cemetery for all the ideas I didn’t follow through on, and there was a special tombstone just for this book. What a waste of granite!
Time management isn’t my strong point but that doesn’t mean I suck
Early in the year, there was some buzz amidst my care team (my therapist and my doctor) regarding whether I have ADHD. My doctor maintains an uninvested tone of disbelief, while my therapist began adjusting many of her suggestions and observations in the context of neurodivergence.
Whatever the paperwork says, it has been helpful to adjust my lifestyle for an AHDH brain. And through that process, I’ve found patience and forgiveness for myself and other people in my life who may struggle with time, focus, and production.
I owe a lot to the Queer community
Our city has a very special Queer burlesque and drag group called Smoke and Queers. I went to my first show in February 2020 and cried and grinned and laughed at performances centered around self-acceptance, body positivity, gender fluidity, and the playfulness of a body in general.
I go to their performances as often as I can, and had the opportunity to debut my drag king persona, Johnny Trav, at a show in November. Their shows have been a huge source of inspiration, teaching me self-love, curiosity, and the value of embracing one’s truth.
Don’t define yourself through the internet
I said these were lessons, not wisdom I’ve perfected. The internet is very good at making us feel bad via the constant feed of other people’s best news. Just today I was losing my mind over a New York Times Magazine article about unfinished basements. I’m not even linking it because my 2020 essay on basements is exceptional, and the byline envy is so fresh I’m still bitter.
I’m more creative than competitive. The internet changes that. It never feels like I achieve loud enough to be heard by enough people. What starts as an earnest drive from the depths of myself turns into a metaphorical screaming contest and nothing else.
This is the source of a lot of unhappiness. I hope I can make this lesson stick in 2023. I’ll save this David Bowie quote as a little reminder.
Never work for other people at what you do. Always remember that the reason that you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest it in some way, you would understand more about yourself or how you coexist with the rest of society. I think it’s terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people’s expectations.
Happy New Year, sweet readers. See you on the other side!
Kudos!