2022 Wrap-Up
We have almost done it! It’s nearly the end of the Gregorian calendar year! Just three days left! I couldn’t be happier to kiss 2022 goodbye. This has definitely been the worst year of my life out of all 40 years I’ve lived so far. The list goes like this:
Top 5 Worst Years of My Life
2022
2019 (the year I fell down the stairs and broke my left ankle and leg, needed surgery, spent 3 months on bed rest, and still have health issues as a result)
2020 (self-explanatory)
2008 (lots, but mainly a bad breakup)
2021 (see number 3)
It would be easy to throw this year in the bin and write it all off as a horrible lost year and be done with it, but I don’t think that’s ultimately very helpful, as it doesn’t teach us anything. With my Stubborn Gratitude that I’m committed to, I’m going to try to find the good in the year and share some of it with you.
Things That Didn’t Suck in 2022
Taylor Swift’s new album Midnights
I have not always been a Taylor Swift fan, and sharing a silly meme about her on FB got me unfriended by someone who couldn’t abide the fact that I enjoy some of her music. What can I say? I have really loved her last few albums. On this particular album, I’ve listened to “Bigger Than The Whole Sky” (from the 3 am Edition), “Anti-Hero,” and “You’re On Your Own Kid” on repeat for many hours now. I’m not interested in a debate on the character of the artist herself, but in the last few years, her songs have been on heavy rotation for me.
Octavia Butler. Always Octavia Butler.
This year I did not have much time to read for pleasure, but I did listen to her Lilith’s Brood series during my commute this summer and found it strange and amazing, like much of Butler’s work.
Dara Horn’s wonderful podcast and book of the same name, People Love Dead Jews.
The book examines antisemitism throughout history and why, for example, many people venerate Anne Frank but then do nothing to stand against contemporary anti-Jewish acts. Horn is a fabulous writer, and the podcast is a great way to peek inside her process, which is something I love to do as a reader and writer. I think this is an especially important read right now, as antisemitism is on the rise in America. If you want to read more about that, Vox had a good recent article about it.
Speaking of which, our local synagogue has faced several violent threats, but that didn’t stop them from hosting a wonderful Hanukkah party on the first night of Hanukkah, and there was a really wonderful write-up about the party, interviewing the rabbi, and showcasing the community, that’s well worth a read.
I am so grateful to have found her work via Instagram this year. She is an autistic poet and artist, and has books and apps, and just today I learned she has a podcast. Her artwork is so beautiful, and her writing succinct and profound. I’ve used her work from her app as Phone wallpaper all year, and I so appreciate her wisdom.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.
I reread this novel, which is one of my all-time favorites, this fall and just reveled in the gorgeous writing. I wrote extensively about the book in a previous newsletter. In 2023, I hope to read everything else she’s written, but I’m also a bit nervous, because can I love anything as much as I love Station Eleven?
The new If Books Could Kill podcast
I love every podcast Michael Hobbes has been involved with, from You’re Wrong About with Sarah Marshall to Maintenance Phase with Aubrey Gordon, to this new one, in which Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri discuss the airport bestsellers that captured our hearts and ruined our minds. I also love Sarah Marshall’s other podcast, You are Good. All of them feel like having an intellectual conversation with smart friends who can back up their opinions with research, and that is my sweet spot, especially when they can snarkily disprove popular and problematic public figures. Though in You’re Wrong About, they also defend maligned figures who did not deserve the approbation they received. Mostly women. Peeling back the layers of systemic racism, misogyny, etc at play in the way so many misunderstood figures were represented at the time is fascinating, and I always listen to these podcasts the minute they show up in my queue. For all of them, bonus episodes are available via their Patreon, and it is so worth it.
Everything Everywhere All At Once, written by Daniel Kwan, & Daniel Scheinert
I was late to watching this movie, but I wanted to see it as soon as I heard about it, and finally watched it on Christmas day. It is incredible. I loved reading what poet Chen Chen wrote about it for Variety, where he describes it like this: “This film is a love poem to queer kids, to Chinese immigrants, to broken hearts aching for a larger space in which to heal.” I am still processing the film and will likely watch it again and again, but I love complex, funny, smart, nuanced, cinematically beautiful, and emotionally rich conceptual movies like this. I might write about it more in its own newsletter if people would be interested in that because it is definitely a film that has anchored itself in my brain now.
(NB: Later in the Variety article I linked, a writer recommends the awful and harmful film The Whale. Do not watch that piece of trash. Read Roxane Gay’s article about it in the New York Times if you need to know why. The very idea of that film makes me sick, and no hate to Brendan Fraser, but ugh, what a nightmare of a movie.)
I don’t think I could do any better than Everything Everywhere All At Once, so I’ll end it there and with a poem.
With any luck, next year, all our troubles will be miles away.
Here’s a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye to close out the year.
Burning the Old Year Letters swallow themselves in seconds. Notes friends tied to the doorknob, transparent scarlet paper, sizzle like moth wings, marry the air. So much of any year is flammable, lists of vegetables, partial poems. Orange swirling flame of days, so little is a stone. Where there was something and suddenly isn’t, an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space. I begin again with the smallest numbers. Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves, only the things I didn’t do crackle after the blazing dies. Naomi Shihab Nye, “Burning the Old Year” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of the author.
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