for reasons unknown

It is possible it is the attitude I cloak myself in when I am at the fancy lesbian bar, but I find myself telling Kit I am tired about writing about myself. It is Boxing Day and the interlude between times is a fiberglass inhale with tiny holes bleeding whatever has coalesced throughout the year out into the bloodstream and neurons, and cannot be avoided.

Stupid to say because here I am writing up the little writeup over the end of the year, but I am mostly sick of myself. I am sick of looking at the letter “I” in my journal and even sort of truculent when I read other people writing about themselves. It’s possible this is because I’m thinking of trying something new with another project and there’s only so much I can push out of myself. I suppose there could be another piece in it but I ruminated on why it feels so different now, as opposed to the small pieces I pushed out into the world so long ago (how tender and embarassed I feel about them, collected as they are at least.) I suppose then because it was an easier anonymous world and I had no expectation or knowledge into exactly who I was reading things. I was mostly just thrilled people would say yes, and there they would come. They all could’ve used more editing and I’ve certainly changed as a writer since then, but it was so much easier to do them without thinking about a vast wide world.

Which doesn’t make any sense because what bothers me is the knowledge of the small wide world. It makes me itchy. It somehow physically feels bad especially as of late and I want to bail on the Blueskys and the Beehiivs and as always, like everyone, the grams. We’ll see. In any case I am not quitting, but I’m eyes deep in the weird body of water of this right now, and tired. That in mind, here’s some things about this year.

I’m not unhappy with the posts here and it seemed like a good and right cadence, just that some of it felt a little too precious and insular. Right now I want to really recognize the precious nature of so many things in the world, but not be precious about I suppose how interpret them. That’s maybe just how personal essay or whatever works. But I was always bailing on a blogging platform, so maybe there’s something that isn’t for me about the personal. My longest tenure was Livejournal, in adolescence to undergrad, and tumblr, decidedly, does not count¹ .

Books:

I wrote one, although I wrote one a long time ago and then again, and then it came out. I think I mentioned wanting to write about writing it in here, and now I don’t care. Here’s how it happened: I went to lady college and became very taken with a quartet of Shakespeare’s history plays, full of men! Back then I wasn’t able to articulate it, but it was this swing every few months of non-cis dude Themascyria to the rowdy gang of dudes I mostly surrounded myself with and while the trope of “I just have dude friends!” is exhausting, I don’t know, there’s something there. I started writing weird poems about the Henriad and talking about it endlessly in this twilight period of shifting friendships and time, and then chased that through a very broke period on study abroad, where I once again found myself surrounded by actual men at an actual men’s magazine, drinking cheap beer on my way home from productions of this play. I wrote it as my undergraduate thesis because I refused to pick writing a novel or pulling together a book of poems, truly committed to the liminal space² (aka never able to make up my mind) and then I just drug this book around with me for a good ten years! It got rewritten and pushed around and then I spent a month in glorious exile in San Francisco where my mentor and friend Truong told me to finish something. The book changed, then, my focus on the wounded and the character I’d then found myself in, and the armor it offered. It became something else, then, amongst long walks and night bike rides from studio to spare room, treks across the bay to old friends, old haunts, lots of walks. It almost won a prize, it did not, I tried again and then it happened. I’m very grateful, and grateful to anyone who gave it a shot.

Books 2:

I read a lot less this year because I had less time (thank you, full-time employment) and I don’t know, it just happened. I have read A LOT of the New Yorker, vaguely underwhelmed by the short fiction, and the article about Parking is the one that stands out to me right now (also: Costco, the Doctor who is responsible for rearview cameras, the piece about Capybaras, anything Hilton Als wrote, Jia writing about Elizabeth Gilbert.) I think the standouts were:

A Last Supper of Queer Apostles by Pedro Lemebel, Fellow Travelers by Thomas Mallon, I’m Very Into You by Kathy Acker/Mackenzie Wark, Soft Core by Brittany Newell, Warlight by Michael Ondaatje, old books of poetry by Danez Smith and Louise Gluck and Kemi Alabi. Honorable mentions: Ways and Means by Daniel Lefferts, Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One by Kristin Arnett, Victim by Andrew Boryga, Red X by David Demchuk, and a prize to me: I gave up on Creation Lake!! It wasn’t my year! I honestly can’t really remember the rest, alas.

The rest:

Music-wise I’m trying to get into Bandcamp more and more, and have successfully not used Spotify at all in 2025 (go pocket casts go!). I’ll try and get into Geese, I guess? Danni took me to see TV on the Radio in September and it’s possible this is one of the best experiences of my life, certainly, perhaps, the best concert of my life. It was much needed and something I thought was perhaps a thing I would never experience, but fuck. It was great. I took a little tiny bike overnight and remembered road touring is great, actually? My bike came back to life and it’s been really fucking great. I got back on a mountain bike for about five seconds, which was fine. I have worked at this job for over a year now, and I am counting my blessings, and lucky to work alongside fine people. It has been two years of volunteering at a space that genuinely brings me grounding and feeling less shitty about myself, and I hope to continue and deepen roots there, if possible. I joined an associate board but frankly I’d be happy to just keep volunteering. One year of doing Market Box deliveries, months of neighborhood shit, an attempt to grow vegetables in buckets in the lot next to my place (the kale worked out, and the peppers.)

It is all enough. Be kind, and take care of each other. Godspeed in 2026.

I almost put another Sam’s Town song in here, but just wait, it’s been 20 years since it came out starting tomorrow and I will undoubtedly start writing some navel gazing bullshit about that banger of an album. Apparently I listened to this song a ton in 2025, which, hey: continued 2026 goals. Happy New Years.

1  I still have one!

2  Before it was trendy jk jk jk jk sort of.