looking back
bits and bobs with some reflections on 2023
Good morning. I’m working on a couple super fun projects for 2024, and in the meantime, reflected a bit on my 2023. You can find that, as well as a couple other bits and bobs, below.
bits
Chatting with the folks at Grey Matter about music has been one of the highlight’s of my year, and I’m really grateful for the opportunity to tell my story on this week’s edition of For The Record. If we’ve worked together, odds are you were mentioned!
You can join the Crate Coalition Discord here.
bobs
I’m launching a new content series under the Grey Matter umbrella in the new year. It’ll be about music but also about the internet and whether or not the way it’s changed has made it easier or harder to fall in love with it. I can’t wait.
A friend sent me an album they made this fall, and it was one of the first times in a while where music excited me in the way it regularly used to. We’ve decided to put that album out together under a new label called Angel Baby Records.
Anyway, thanks for being here. I dove deeper into my own year below, and I’d genuinely love to know how yours has been too.
Talk soon 🧌
I spent a lot of this year in recoil. Last spring, within the span of a few weeks, several key pillars of my life were either shaken or knocked down with little to no notice. The result of this led me to, at least subconsciously, withdraw just a little bit from life in an effort to control and prevent any more change that I deemed painful or uncomfortable. Of course, that didn’t work, and life kept on happening. The things that did work were taking care of myself, running, writing, talking, letting myself grieve all of these abrupt changes and, most of all, time.
A friend told me back in May that the answers I was looking for — the why, how, and what next — were not in my head. I had to let myself be confused, scared even, without any real knowledge of where things were going next.
I remember the first time I really surrendered to that change. It was mid-May, two weeks before my current lease expired, and I had just returned home after visiting a beautiful and spacious apartment that I found on Craigslist. I couldn’t sign a new lease elsewhere because I didn’t have a job, and so I was left to scour the internet in search of a place for the summer. Mike, the tenant-stroke-landlord, let me know that there were several other potential tenants set to view the place, and that he’d get back to me in a day or so.
I’d thought we got along, but I couldn’t know for sure, and none of this process was really up to me. And let me tell you - I really wanted to stay at this spot. I’d have my own backyard, a fully furnished living room, and in-unit laundry. Most people don’t get more than 2 of those things in Brooklyn, and I had the chance for both. Even so, I had to work towards letting go and trust that I’d be okay either way.
Mike texted me the next day and said he’d love to have me at the apartment if I was still interested.
Since then, I got a new job and moved (again). I’m still very grateful to Mike and the other people in my life who have been so open and kind. If you were to have asked me six months ago how I wanted my life to look today, I would’ve said something totally different. There’s just no way I could’ve known how things would’ve unfolded, changed, and grown. I’m so glad that I’m not the one who gets to decide how things pan out. Life is easier that way.
I’m grateful for the time this year’s afforded me to reflect on how I want to move through and interact with the world. Somewhere along the way, maybe even always, I began to attribute my sense of self to the way people, places and things made me feel. I don’t think it’s reasonable or even right to expect anyone to never look outward for approval, security or love, but when so much one’s sense of self-worth is tied up with the outside, life becomes a consistent, cyclical refueling of that bottomless approval pit.
I’m still working on achieving that balance (and probably always will be), but lately, I feel like I’m giving a whole lot more to myself. I know this because the effects are tangible. My relationship to music has improved, and it’s led to a whole new swath of ideas and projects that I’m excited about. I’m more present. Life has continued to move, like it always will, but I feel just a little bit less hesitant to move with. I’m reengaging with the world in an authentic way, and that brings its own fears, but if this year has showed me anything, it’s that I’ll be okay no matter.
There’s a lot of freedom in that liminal space between the choice to let go.