the underlying questions of this year related to things much larger than myself: what is life, and how do i grapple with the opposite? without self-indulging too much, these questions were rooted in an uncharacteristically dark ongoing reflection after my 26th birthday that my time is finite, which is not a brand new understanding of course, but one i tend to address every few years around life transitions.
as a self-professed "peter pan" i think what was different about this year was that i began to face my age honestly, seeing myself as beyond youth, but also seeing all of the beauty and fullness that comes with it: having the tools and credibility to pursue my realest dreams, and realizing now is the time to do so, knowing i will always only be as young as i am today and using that pressure to prioritize.
this sort of truth-facing allowed me to begin to imagine a more sustainable trajectory for my adult life that reflects my values in the deepest sense, from the major to the mundane. when i allow the pressures of the world to fade into the background, what is front and center? what do i really want? how to continue to become my best self and not rely on achievements of the past?
on a major level, it's practicing gratitude everyday and with intention. in moments of fear and anxiety about time, about life, this is what i kept coming back to and what settled me. all we can do is be grateful for life and change in the greatest sense. there's not much beyond that; i can't think of anything that is more important - or even basic - than remembering and celebrating how fortunate we are to have the gift of living.
for the mundane, my reflections this year have sparked a renewed interest in my body and health -- after all, what more have we? ive doubled my time at the gym with my brazilian dance class, which allows me to perform again - albeit in front of older women and gym rats who watch on if only to question if our class is really exercise, or just glorified ass shaking - and has nurtured an actually pretty intense interest in brazilian music and culture at large. like quebec, like NOLA, brazil is a hybrid culture, undefinable, made up of myriad identities and fused societies, which is probably why i take to it. and i picked up where i left off on childhood joys, including taking ballet classes again and starting to coach the new trier high school figure skating club, which i founded as a student over 10 years ago(!).
i'm spending more time experimenting and prepping lunches in the kitchen, and had my first real fine dining experience at boka, where nikki, hana and i enjoyed a five course meal which involved picking salmon roe out of a dainty hollow egg shell with a miniature spoon and ordering my first ever veal as an entree (i called it what it was: "deer.") nikki and i enjoyed our third annual visit to the thoughtful french restaurant bistro campagne, this year eating a few weeks earlier than our usual october date to enjoy the last few warm days of the year on their leafy, fairy light-sprinkled terrace with its quaint tables and views into the luxuriously-lit interior.
krista tippet's book "becoming wise" was a sure growth moment in considering wholistic wisdom - from body, to mind, to world. her chapters on words, flesh, love, hope, and faith illustrate the ways straining to work with - not against - the Other (from our environments to other humans and cultures) reveals an understanding sans acid that our growth is intrinsically a part of the growth of our surroundings. by giving up a bit of ourselves - whether thats having faith in the other side of a political argument, giving precious time to a soup kitchen and those in need, or cultivating good food from the land, profits aside - allows us to create a better, more caring world, which inherently does have the power to heal us all, if only we try in earnest to relate ourselves with that which lives outside of the self. the golden rule, expanded.
as a consequence, i sought out literature that sits uncomfortably outside of my world view, from maya angelou's heartbreaking "cage bird sings" to stories of indian immigrants living in america. rather than sit and complete my own list, i sought recommendations from others. i found that my aunts, uncles, friends, and grandparents became the voices of the books they wanted me to read, the narrators of the authors' words. while i imagined my grandpa reading to me the pages of "the road to character" - sharing what felt like his wisdom and recommendations for living - my own voice took over the pages of david sedaris's "calypso", the only book i selected for myself.
with family, i had the immense privilege of playing 18 holes with my grandpa on his 80th birthday, reclaiming my prowess on the golf course under years of his tutelage with an 85. i enjoyed watching my brother move from second city grad to producer, creating his own improv series from soup to nuts, from renting the space to performing with his troupe throughout november. around that time, one of my aunts appeared on national tv as an audience participant on the stephen colbert show. then, in december, i was lucky (or unlucky, depending who you ask) enough to host the extended family for the first time for christmas, showing them by way of my home that my teenage rebellion has yielded an organized adult, albeit one extraordinarily obsessed with 'zen' aesthetics, hand crafted furniture and thrifted artworks. one of my truly greatest joys in 2018 was helping my grandpa list his prints online, where i am native and he is not, and just getting to have a project to work on alone together.
other cross-generational 'wins' included seeing greta van fleet at aragon ballroom with my dad, where we came together over our shared love for zeppelin and left understanding each other better. while it didnt quite have the same spiritual outcome, my mom took me to 50 cent at ravinia, which was as amusing and contradictory as it sounds. as always, i had many notable concert experiences this year, ranging from the chicago symphony orchestra at millenium park, to george clinton and the flaming lips at the taste of chicago, to tame impala and mount kimbie at pitchfork, and doja cat and all of the
bitches who dressed like cows for her show at chop shop.
cold months were spent well, including watching unprecedented figure skating in the pyeongchang olympic season - a 15 year old taking the gold from the 18 year old she trains with (ouch), and nathan chen, the quad king, changing the evolution of skating altogether. we spent chilly fall sundays having brunch and watching football as part of an all-girls fantasy football team, and for halloween, nikki and i ventured west to san francisco, soaking in some of the last warm days out there on a private cove called 'shell beach,' eating fresh oysters, and soaking in the size of the great redwood trees and the quiet forest floor in their shade. dressed as a sheep and ed sheeran, with my former montreal roommate sydney, we went to a freaky afro-funk halloween party in downtown oakland, where we burned sage and herbs under palm trees and stars and watched performers in purple feathered costumes deliver drum solos that made your heart feel its thumping presence and exploded with passion and fury, as if this were the last concert on earth, our last nights to be alive. the morning after, we made bagels and walked through golden gate state park, taking in the felt energy of the hashed and re-hashed peace sign spray painted at the base of strawberry hill, where the hippies buried their beads at the end of the summer of love. we went on to explore the intersection of haight and asbury, and later that night, learned backgammon in the oldest bar in the city.
around the corner from halloween was thanksgiving and birthday season, and for nikki's birthday we went bowling at pinstripes with her family and introduced them for the first time to my mom, and we also went out for a highly recommended experience at chicago magic lounge (it is full of surprises, so i'm not going to spoil it for you.) for my birthday, i invited friends for a creative evening in the west loop, eating lou malnattis pizza and trying out ice curling for the first time at kaiser tiger after.
nikki, hana, and i enjoyed moving in to a new apartment in the spring with an excess of space and my first ever dining room and backyard. our house philosophy, "reckless hospitality", is a spin off the museum world's notion of "radical hospitality" which is a commitment to going out of your way to provide visitors a warm welcome. our version merits not only going out of our ways for our guests but making questionable decisions for them that ends up prioritizing our parties over our neighbors, because fuck it. to this point, we hosted late-night bonfires for our friends around 3 nights a week over the summer, which opened and closed with two massive house parties with friends of all different groups, neighbors our age trickling in from down the block, and a DJ who got away with playing electronic music into the wee hours of the morning on our porch outside. the spot also granted us room to grow herbs and vegetables and plant bulbs that we picked up on a bike adventure to the chicago botanic garden (set to bloom in spring 2019.)
the summer was kicked off with my best wedding experience to-date; for whatever reason, weddings have tended to be tear-jerkers for me in the last few years, and not always in a good way. but this time, i saw my best childhood friend caroline marry a man that reminds me of her beloved childhood golden lab, wrigley, making me feel oddly comfortable with the arrangement and overall lucky to be a part of the bridal party. after the early june trip to the wisconsin dells, to experience "the best and worst of america in one place," as i often repeated when telling back the story of the bachelorette party, the weather started to turn for the better and i began to enjoy a summer filled with sailing, kayaking, and long, beautiful days at the north end of gillson sailing beach.
the scene - hammocks and slack lines tied to trees, fire over the open grill, congregations of multiple generations of sailors and "north end" tagged onto the picnic tables as the sunset painted the skies with surreal pinks, corals, and reds - is where my heart lives. one evening we cooked mussels and pasta, playing beach golf with real clubs and frisbee with Sky, the kokes' icy-blue-eyed mini shepherd who twirls, and sometimes flips, to catch whatever is thrown. one night, we invited my mom to join, and we watched the beach go from day to night, and she must have been a good luck charm, because we also saw a real, red fox come down from the hill, and Sky was a good by and stayed still. another evening, i remember ripping downwind on a southeaster into a setting sunset, breaking over waves and blasting tunes with an all-girl crew, laughing at the boys on shore, and relishing in our community that appears each year around a lake and a small piece of land that we have claimed as our own.
we took some beach friends up to nikki's lake house in wisconsin, where we dunked ourselves in the frigid natural spring that feeds the lake and partied (almost to a fault) with a sailing family we met next door (nikki even delivered on a promise to sail a regatta with the dad the next morning, while the rest of us slept through our hangovers.) on another trip up to wisconsin, we entertained our friends niki and josh the week before their engagement, keeping the secret of josh's proposal while watching the shooting stars strike across the sky all night long and waves lapped quietly against the pier. at the end of the beach season, nikki and i enjoyed our first hike at the indiana dunes, where i was swept by seeing lake michigan and the 'other view' of chicago as we emerged out of the cool forest and onto the sandy peaks that rise and fall for stretches and stretches of beach, untouched by gators, multi-million dollar homes, and 'no swimming' signs.
as i reflect on my blessed life, i also must make room for hopes and shortcomings, and while i have achieved increasing professional satisfaction with my day-to-day work, and my writing there, i know there is more i can be doing to grow personally. i dream of carving out more time to experiment and create, and each hour spent with eyes fixed on a screen or reading friends posts on social media makes it easier and easier for my creative aspirations to slip away. i contributed to this blog, but not nearly as much as i could; i spent time taking photos, but haven't spent the time to organize or give value to them. i have potential projects sitting around the house, and a head full of ideas to bring the beauty of the world to light and to others.
while i continue to focus on my body and health, i want to ring in a new year of meaningful contributions and more thoughtful time management: not a second to waste these beautiful thoughts. in a time when the world needs optimism and a reason to keep on, i wonder if i can help. i dare myself to be more vulnerable in my writing and in my relationships, to throw caution into the wind, to say the unpopular thing, to immerse myself in the uncomfortable and lead others to take that leap with me.
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