27 & another spin around the sun. This year has flown one into the next and as I begin this one, I can’t help but be oh so grateful for this beautiful life. This year has been wildly steady in many ways, while also a complete uprooting in others. To feel somewhat steady even amidst the circumstantial change feels like a massive growth - this has not been the case for most of my years.

The best way to move on is straight through the wilderness. Trying to find a way around just makes the journey longer —

I penned this in a journal of mine, and it eventually made it into a blog I wrote after a particular season of big life change and heartbreak. A week ago, a friend of mine told me he had saved the blog article this was from, and used this line to help create a mood-board for a new film he’s working on now. He told me this line helped put words to something that even now he’s still processing, and creating art around.

I wrote that four years ago.

For the first time in at least a few years, I don’t feel as though I am concluding the year in a cloud of disappointment. Most years, I have sat on the beach, as I do to end and begin the new year, to reflect on the things that I had to let go of, the things that were taken, that didn’t turn out the way I though they would. This of course is mixed in with the sweetness of the good in that year — but it is most typically outweighed.

at the start of last year, my golden — 24 on the 24th of April — I felt hopeful. I had thought it would be the sparkly kind of golden, the kind that catches the light, valuable and beautiful and esteemed. in many ways however, this year was one that was hard and painful, things broken off and broken down and lost, heavy emotions and deep hurt. I was on the move for most of it, seeing new sights, breathing in the atmosphere of new area. for the latter part of the year, I didn’t spend more than a week and a half in one place. I did a lot of travel alone, spending more time with myself and my own thoughts than ever before. but while it was beautiful and wild and adventurous, I was carrying a broken and tired heart along with my little pink suitcase, and when back in the City, life didn’t always feel sparkly and good. that’s the thing about life though, it can be beautiful and momentous, right up against painful and hard. they run along the parallel sides of the same track.

2021 was something. When I sit and think about it all, last January seems like ages ago, and in many ways I was almost entirely different. I spent today as I usually do, on the sand with my journal and Bible to reflect and be still, to process and dream. It’s a tradition I’ve kept for the past serval years, one that I intend to keep for many more.

I had really only packed winter things, and I know only un petit peu of French, but the South of France had been a dream destination for as long as I could remember. So, when I found a $30 plane ticket to Nice, I decided to roll up my pants and wear my dresses without tights, and go to what would become the most beautiful place I had ever seen. I travel a fair amount, and I’m used to being alone for a bit when I do. But usually I travel alone to meet up with others, to attend an event or a wedding, etc., not with the intent to be alone, alone.

last week, I packed up the last of my things and moved from the place I’ve lived the longest in New York, which is funny, considering that when I moved in, I only intended to stay for three months. now, everything is wrapped and boxed and put in storage for me to bop around New York and the world for a bit and I find my self thinking about how funny is is that spaces can hold so much more than just tangible things. that this apartment, this corner of the city, holds so much for me. moments when I couldn’t stop smiling, similar moments, but with tears instead. running in the crisp, Fall air through Central Park, biking the avenue in the dead of winter - alternating one of my hands in my pocket at all times to keep it from freezing off entirely. sweet, late-summer, rooftop dinners with tables made of palettes stretched out on the ground & decked out in lights & dried flowers & seasonal taco ingredients, surrounded by my favorite people. anxiety on my little gray rug, a full year of working from home in isolation, brilliant morning sunlight & the cutest sliver of the Ward’s Island Bridge that I could see from my window.