OK fine let’s reflect.
In 2021 I did change my life. In 2021 I was the lowest and finally most broken down of all my 38.5 years and had no choice because the choice became binary, to live or not to. I didn’t really consider the latter, but even seeing it on the list scared me enough, scared me into the brief clear eyes of an emergency. Change is the only constant, and I bet the farm on that.
In 2021 I made a bunch of art that I didn’t show to anyone.
I also sold a zine for the first time in literally one hundred years, which was actually a world record. I wrote a bunch of poems about depression and flowers lol and was thrilled and humbled by the fact that PEOPLE WANTED IT. Lots of people!!! I mailed packages of typewritten poems with hand-written addresses to friends and strangers and it consumed my days for a few weeks and felt like a fun intimate mail club.
In 2021 the bells of what I did not want rang so loud and horribly clangy in my body all the time. I tried to tune in to what I did want to hear instead. What sound, what frequency did I want to be on? What sheet music could I pass to the bell ringer, or could I just grab the mallet myself or what?
In 2021 I took an art history class online at the community college and got a 98% until I didn’t notice that the final exam deadline was (had been, past tense) Friday, not Sunday like usual, and absolutely just missed the deadline and didn’t do it, didn’t do any of the three parts of the final exam. When I figured it out, I laughed so hard because okay G*D, I get it, I cannot control the outcome ok fine fine fine.
In 2021 I started watching The Real Housewives of New York and then I watched what some may call “a lot” of The Real Housewives of New York to which I reply LAY OFF ME I’M GOING THROUGH SOMETHING
This is huge
In the last quarter of 2021 I started writing down my ideas. My new thing is, when I glimpse an idea or important thought, I catch it by the tail like a garden snake* and sketch it, photograph it, describe it in any way possible as discovery work for my future self. I tote a little plastic chest of index cards around from living room to bedroom as I move throughout the day. I add them to a network of thoughts in markdown files on my laptop. I make long videos on my phone of myself pacing and reflecting aloud, circling some central idea.
Or I make something like this in thirty seconds, look at it and go
and then forget about it for the rest of my life.
Wrap it up honey
In 2021 I drove alone through the Badlands and cried thinking I did it I did it. In 2021 I did insist on being vulnerable. In 2021 I bought a green velvet couch. In 2021 my dad bought me a 100-year-old dresser. In 2021 I did art history homework at my office on the weekends. I wrote thank-you cards. I started conversations with “I have bummer news but you only have to hear it once.” I brought most struggling plants back to life (but, importantly, not all). In 2021 I bought pink dishes. In 2021 I and most of my friends got meds. In 2021 I raised 30-something monarch caterpillars into butterflies. In 2021, not to be dramatic, but I absolutely sobbed on my therapist’s couch while wearing a black dress, the first time in three years I even shed a tear in front of her. Masha frickin Prozorov over here.
Oh, in 2021 I finished Anna Karenina, and by that I mean I finished listening to 35 hours of Maggie Gyllenhaal reading Anna Karenina to me.
In 2022 I will bring back the paid option for this newsletter and just make a bunch of shit for it and have fun and be soft.
Happy new year, babies.
<3
Lindsey
*lolol of course I have never caught a garden snake
I was *just* hoping you'd post something. Happy New Year. my friend.