wait, what!?

just a bunch of personal jerk about the year end and things I liked - extremely navel gazing, but I had to do it. xx.

I guess I feel like I want to and am obligated to do one of these posts. But I did used to like writing these in the various blogs I’ve written, and had some pretty fun ones on Tumblr/Livejournal back in the day. I also really liked making year end mixes, but this year just ain’t it. I mean, it just isn’t, right? If you’re one of the few, semi-happy few band of whatevers reading this, God, I hope you’re hanging in there.

But it’s New Years and I couldn’t get any part of me together to try and do anything — not ride out to a campsite I researched moodily for hours, not go to anyone’s thing, not buy tickets for the Queer Party of Three! Stories!, not go to a concert, not dance, and frankly the fact I showered today seems like a real win. I think generally we should all be wary of Gregorian New Years. Mine have run the gamut:

• Threw a last minute grad school cocktail hour and ended up at lights up, last call Skylark, and I assure you there were regrets;

• The year we all thought the Mayan Calendar said the world would end and honestly, it WAS 65 degrees that night in Chicago, which I remember because I committed to a risque-New-Years top and ended up schlepping a keg from Lincoln Park Binnys over to Palmer Square;

• High School where someone snitched on my sad, alone diner night I lied to some friends about because I just wanted to be sad and lovelorn and like, cry over some guy, you know?!

• Possibly #1: flying out to SF the year after graduation and crashing in The Mission and ringing it in at the Bear Bar (Truck?) with a really good crew, and being lucky enough to be offer the back of a giant bear when I needed to take a leak and could not cross the dance floor (Him: I GOT YA, JUMP ON! Me: YEE HAW!)

Anyway. Let’s get into the whole: things that were okay this year.

Books: I’ve gotten a bit better at my reading this year but I could work on it and w/r/t “new books”, well. But here we go anyway. X - Davey Davis. I will not shut up about this book but if you are NOT someone who’s been deep in the queer/sexuality studies / IS SQUEAMISH / stays far away from, uh, I dunno man, leather? - DON’T READ IT. That being said, I could not forget this book and Davey Davis’ newsletter is equally wonderful, but again, stay away if you aren’t down.

The Locked Tomb Series - I have not read Nona, yet. I’m holding off because these books are a real speed read for me. I believe the blurb on “Gideon the Ninth” is something like LESBIAN NECROMANCERS IN SPACE and as someone who is not super familiar with necromancy, I was in for a real ride! That being said, I would like to bring Big Gideon Nav energy to my life (aviators and cut fuckin shoulders, natch).

A Creature Wanting Form - Luke O’Neil. He writes Welcome to Hell World, which I’m now getting on the train, but his piece in The Small Bow is what made me curious. This book is desperately funny and also heartbreaking and for those of us with the whole climate/the world is not what we signed up for dread, I think it makes you feel less lonely.

Saving Time - Jenny Odell. It took me, no joke, months to read this, partially because it just kept knocking me over. I don’t know. I aspire to internalize a lot of this stuff more and try and live a better life. Jenny Odell is a genius. (“As we learned with the moss, to think you love and appreciate something or someone is, unfortunately, not a guarantee that you can assign them their own reality or that you know them at all.”)

Movies/TV: I saw Barbenhammer and thought both were a fine use of my money. Also Spiderverse kicked ass in the theater. I sort of suck at movies, which I’d like to adjust.

Shows: I came way too late to the “For All Mankind” train and I could probably rewatch Seasons 1 and 2 forever, because I’m not quite through Season 3, and having FEELINGS, but people say good things about Season 4, so I guess I’m cool with Mars, I guess?!

“Andor” came out in 2022 but I waited til this year to watch it. Will probably rewatch a zillion times. I am, and will always be, the sad and fight your fucking hardest even when you fail Star Wars fan. Baby Yoda is meh.

“Somebody, Somewhere” - Fuck I love this show. I’m holding off on watching the last episode of Season 2, and I would like to bring also big Fred Rococo energy to 2024. Is it because I also find show choir endlessly bemusing? Is it because it is just actually really funny and sad? The weird two instrument soundtrack? I wish more people watched this show!!!

Music: This was a great year for albums that I could really feel all my feelings to (aka cry while walking down the street????).

Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love - Kara Jackson (who has also had some en-pointe takes on white lady victimization during a literal ethnic cleansing)

First Two Pages of Frankenstein - The National (yeah, I mean, either you’re on this train or you’re not but the New Yorker profilething about them was really interesting)

Heavy Heavy - Young Fathers (I think I heard Geronimo on the Current?? Anyway, I’m always sort of bummed Young Fathers is not as liked by my friends)

The Will To Live - Titus Andronicus (Ok, technically 2022 but I saw them play most of this at Bottom Lounge and was honest to God one of the only not dudes there, but 69 Stones is just… a good song)

Defector has easily been the best investment I made this year, with the finest writing. Autostraddle has just slid straight to VC Hell, and when your favorite bike website is publishing articles like HOW TO ORGANIZE YOUR MULTIPLE SETS OF BIKE-FLESHLIGHT-EQUIVALENTS IN YOUR TRUCK like, probably it’s not my party anymore. Defector, on the other hand? Worth every penny. Samer’s words on Palestine should win every prize in the book. Also this by Soraya:

Some other things:

I self published a bunch of essays that were gradually crumbling into the internet seas because fuck all, that’s why. It has given me a lot of feelings. I think I’m still glad I did it.

We are witnessing something so incredibly tragic and heart-rending. I don’t think I’ve gone to the side of: get out of my life if you can’t acknowledge it, but I don’t know. I suppose mostly I need a lot of time to try and make any good in the world and be just very sad a lot, and I think sometimes that just ends up being a diverged road. Maybe I’ll have 2k words on that in a few months, who knows.

I’ve shrugged off a lot over the past year, year and change, partially because who hasn’t had the last 3 years which aged you thirty? And it just seemed like, well, in the face of insurrections and illness and isolation and endemic loneliness and living through a military curfew and and and, well, what was there to get hung up on? But honestly? The past couple have been really fucking hard! I’m very fucking tired!

At the end of last summer I got assaulted on the CTA. It was pretty horrifying, and I wasn’t alone, but I already have complex PTSD b/c of, I mean, you can guess, and it was not great. Instead I skipped town for work a week later and thank God for someone like Guarina who let me spill it all out and held me really tightly, reminding me shit is fucked up. I finally got back on the Green Line two weeks ago. I’m getting there.

I had a bike stolen. I mean, at this point I just move on, but I really liked that little Trek.

I got pushed out of the job I tried to build from nothing to help people like, I dunno, fourth grade Black and Brown kids enjoy a little camping trip or just give people the option to enjoy the natural world in a less conquesty-way, especially if they never had access to that. I was really proud of it, and it was a LOT, and it was very isolating, and the organization was effectively a fucking mess of microaggressions and white lady feels, and at the end of it? There’s nothing to show for it. They refused to lay me off, then after I resigned, laid off like a quarter of the org with severance. I wish I didn’t hold onto this, but I’d like to fully move the fuck on in 2024. That being said: it sucked! It did me a lot of damage and I just kept going, and like, I don’t know. I’m never doing any diversity or inclusion shit for work again. Maybe I’m done with “bikes as identity” for a while. Which is hard, because I liked bikes, and what some of the people were in bikes, for a long time.

The low-stakes job I took at the brewery was not low-stakes! And I did not make any money, and they union-busted, and also forced me and my coworker to quit before firing literally all the FOH/BOH staff. They also did not pay us minimum wage for a while, so I fought their ass, and that was okay and I got a lil back. But still.

I got in a really shitty crash and I pushed past it, but yeah, I had a bad concussion. I did get back on the bike, though. I’m still riding and feeling good about it. I do need to get a helmet, though. I promise, Brotherface.

I guess I’m glad I’m still here, and if you’ve gotten through the airing of the grievances, thanks. I’m kinda out. I hope putting this down means I can lay some of out down for a while, and maybe then it’ll just dissolve to something not too heavy.

Resolve?

God, I don’t know. For the purposes of people not being jackasses: my tarot, which we can connect to Jungian psychology and Campbell’s hero’s journey, indicated that my spirit needs a real good resurrection. That’s not predicting the future. But I think it’s true. So what do I want? I resolve nothing but:

• Don’t spend a year stuck in Chicago;

• Stop driving in the city so much (I’ve actually been enjoying NOT driving as much the past couple months, so that seems promising) but definitely enjoy a long ass car trip going very fast in the middle of nowhere this year;

• Go to more live lit stuff;

• Make a play list called “Songs to Stay Alive” which is sort of the opposite of what I do which is mainline sad shit!!! I’m going to work on that tonight and tomorrow;

• Be better about music. I like buying records, but generally they’re on a whim, and old country/soul/whatever that I’m curious about. I’m going to try and buy more music or at least be Less Spotify, and honestly that stuff is hard! People be like, “JuSt UsE BanDCAmp” but also like, my laptop is a piece of shit, and CDs? In this nomadic lifestyle? I’m working on it, and my dear, smartest pal Soma has now given me Tidal access (p clutch!) and helping me figure out MUSIC. I’m TRYING;

• Buy and Support More Art From Artists I Know or Barely Know!!!

• Try to keep writing, and maybe just keep it away from everyone??

• Buy more books!!! Then read them!!!

• Stop working in non-profits. This year for sure, forever? God fuckin’ willing.;

• Think about attention and wrench it, as hard as I can, to something that will help me keep going. Because more Jenny Odell (from “How To Do Nothing”): “It is with acts of attention that we decide who to hear, who to see, and who in our world has agency. In this way, attention forms the ground not just for love, but for ethics.”

Take care of yourselves out there, and hopefully the attention that can provide a clarion type of care with writing in this newsletter is one that feels true, and I will endeavor to keep writing.

xo

“Wait …What?!” or a song, for well, I guess it’s 2024. Godspeed, kids.