Last year ruthlessly settled into this year—2022 rolled in and receded a bit, and I finally found a Sunday afternoon to ruminate on the year we just left behind. More than anything, 2021 left us: a once hopeful reprieve that spiraled and thrashed in a final disappearing act. In that year-long unease, this is what I read, wrote, did, and resolve to do more of.


a year in review

In 2021, I watched thirty-one seasons of tv and twenty-four films; read approximately twelve books; and mindlessly tabulated myself in other ways: like first adult apartment, seven spice jars and fourteen sauce bottles, and six strands of christmas lights.


what i read

Rather than rehash how I’ve failed my Goodreads reading challenge once again, I’ve sifted through my favorite reads from my Instapaper archive. To know what someone reads is to know how they think; and to know what resonates is to know who they’ll become as a result.

read: lighthouse


what i wrote

I wrote without any desirable consistency here, but I wrote a few things elsewhere that I’m quite fond of: and i was thinking on the drive down (thoughts about the places we go); knowing all the words to your old favorite song (music and memory, and the passing of time in-between); fighting fire with fire (from no. 006, the little fires everywhere in our pandemic year); and seasons mmxxi (how i actually felt as the seasons changed in the past year).


what i did

The true highlights of the past year are documented through digital photos or sharp anecdotes: there’s a lot I did (and didn’t do)—in life, at home, or for work. This, however, is a shrine to all the little things I did for myself that still matter, but didn’t make it to the front page.

I received a boarding pass for my first flight in two years (seat 15C), found a gift card that had been missing since late 2018, and filed my taxes through the grit of self-determination and free tax software. I assembled furniture with my bare hands and a tiny allen wrench, cleaned and tidied as a practice of care rather than an oppression of chore, and spent ridiculous sums of money on storage bins to contain the sprawl of my transposed and newly-acquired possessions. I also started writing collections and valiantly continue my attempts to collect myself to write more, set-up my Instapaper and e-mail newsletter-sorting system that feels like the better part of my brain if I actually took the quiet time to read everything I saved-for-later, and collaged my reading highlights into word-panes of the lighthouse. I celebrated the end of the To All the Boys era by writing one last email, reclaimed the songs of my pre-teen days (Taylor’s Version), and even caught up on Succession and Sex Education (arriving about three-years late to the cultural phenomenon). I changed my mind about the sprawl and steady influence of the streaming industry, finally understood why cookbook publishing is thriving, and found a faintly-floral fragrance I’m quite satisfied with—apparently maturation is finding appreciation for former derision.


what i acquired

The cliché is that no year should end in a bountiful celebration of consumerism, but while the global supply chain had a mild meltdown on open ports, my dwelling became a cavern of hollowed-out cardboard packages. I carried a select few of my worldly posessions across the country and purchased a number of shiny new objects to a fresh address. Possessions have become near and dear since that fateful March—there’s been so little to savor, so few real things to hold onto—that if we can hold onto the material items that spark joy, we can throw everything else into the raging bonfire outside. There’s a lot money can’t buy, but money did buy me some of my favorite things:

  • for the kitchen: tongs (guaranteed to compel you to roast vegetables at twice the rate) and a swivel peeler (knives are hard, okay).
  • as many mason jars as would be appropriate for a circa 2010 suburban homemaking fantasy pinterest board.
  • the enduring americana icon, the lodge cast iron. humble, sturdy, and hardy. also makes for an excellent gift.
  • this is technically not a purchase since it’s been in my possession for nearly two years, but a plaid-checkered stole worn for the first time during the early fall, and even though the leaves didn’t change this year, the day felt as crisp as a new england afternoon.
  • the continuation of (partial) work from home bought me an L-shaped desk and the separation of physical-digital space has been life-granting.
  • a 25oz pink prosecco candle that smells like an expensive holiday ceremony. candle burning as a non-renewable ritual.
  • two artificial budget christmas trees (one is adequate, but will never be appropriately enough) and a champagne-colored ornament set that was upsettingly out of stock later in december.
  • as the basis of all foods that need a salty-sweet-spicy kick, an unassailable tub of gochujang. even better when slathered on foods that pair well with a sheet of nori. the diet of a meandering cook who reliably grocery shops along a single stretch of japantown.
  • painting with butter london nail polish, a gentler and glossier outfit for my nails.
  • finally catching onto the trend of smart color-changing light bulbs as anyone with agency over their room lighting should do.
  • a series of vintage cavallini decorative posters in need of proper frames for celebration, printed in vibrant inks and yellowed textured paper, that scale the white walls of my surroundings.
  • starting afresh with an old dot-grid notebook to operate my life and abandoning the orchestrations of notion (kindly request that we stop endorsing life OS as a desired object of manifestation).
  • alongside the many spice jars and sauces, at least three variations of salt: kosher, flaky, and iodized table. the past few years have left behind some big wounds to brine.
  • random restaurant receipts from eating outside at new spots and conversing over a shared meal and still talking long after the food is cleared. a treasured reminder of what we lost and still have to regain upon return.
  • and finally, a sense of corporeality. realness, again. of people. of locations to visit, of places to stay. of time passing too quickly because good things are happening. of interactions and encounters. the easy, familiar ones. the new and awkward ones. the ones still to come.

—inspired by this very good newsletter about favorite things.


what i disposed: the antonym of acquired ought to be disposed. in fact, I acquired new dislikes as well (and may have been unsuccessful in the dispossession); however, to dwell on dislikes is to poison the marrow of daily existence. the short-list for this would be putrid personality traits, steeply-sloped hills spanning multiple city blocks, abandonment as an antagonist, the new hbomax gossip girl reboot, organic tree-lighting ceremonies, and inertia. that last one, is the one that cannot be moved.


what i resolve

It would be unkind to make resolutions for the new year, as I’ve unsuccessfully done for so many years in the past. I do, however, have a few themes I’m resolved to continue exploring in the third year of this new decade:

unlock what makes me tick: taking notice of the small things where I’ll go the extra mile, that uplift and delight in opposition to mundanity, and unabashedly wielding these weapons of self-indulgence; things like clever turns of phrase and alliteration, or well-considered artifacts (format and presentation, itself, as a craft), or cultivating an abundance of supply rather than cowering against scarcity. finding the absolute greatest joy in being extra because doing any less would be deflating.

attend the academy of real-life: “adult enrichment” is one of the funniest phrases there ever was, advertised as if being an adult were thoroughly devoid of enriching activities and the buck stopped when we last pursued resume-padding extracurriculars in high school; there’s something entirely ridiculous in the notion that learning stopped after that last diploma and tuition debt. there also is, perhaps, an endless queue of subjects I’ve signed myself up to learn under the pretense of inching closer to mastery—such as writing creatively about reality, dissecting and then weaponizing comedy, growing at my job discipline, even working clay on a kiln, and if a future impulse purchase comes to be, melting wax into candles or a driving class for good measure—alongside everything else I’m supposed to learn about living with a newfound modicum of financial independence. doing everything also means doing nothing; life is long and hobbies are a dime a dozen (“so what do you do for fun?”). there are a lot of things I want to do and conquer in the new school of life, and my starting point needs to be simply showing up for class.

making do with what’s here: maybe, just maybe, there’s less novelty in racing toward the finish line when the time horizon has moved back by a few dozen decades. this means I’ve been slowly attempting to remind myself into reinforcement: the gift of discontent is to have something to start, and the courageous disposition to want better for yourself. so stop doing whatever you think will sound good when you say it out loud, and focus on what feels good if you just stopped to do it.



and onwards to the next

Somehow I think writing this over a span of two months and a long afternoon was an unconsciously proactive attempt at evading nostalgia before it strikes; and writing this year in review was certainly less tumultuous than writing the one from the year before last. But I sense there’s an unrealized mechanism of self-preservation at play here: if I don’t make the conscious effort to concretize the hills and valleys of the last year, the sandstorm will blow through and flatten my memory into soft blurs of a pandemic purgatory. Maybe this will be how I prove to my future self that the current of change carried me through even as time stood still. It’s so easy to forget so much, and these annualized diaristic tendencies keep the topography alive and wild. Over the next year, I’ll capture everything else: what I thought, acquired, valued, and foresaw.