2021: Wasted

Look at me, blogging again. What the swear word?? If only for today, I win — but what a fail of a year this has been.

Okay, maybe I’m being dramatic (shocking, right). I just feel the need to release the steam of my failed ambitions for 2021 — the 50 blogs, the 12 videos, the song (LOL), and the countless other creative resolutions that seemed so shiny and promising back in January, February — only to flame out by wildfire season.

I look back on this year and can’t help but feel the wince of apparent wasted time. The lethargy of a lingering pandemic, the apathy of my creative soul, and the heavy, sometimes brutal work of ministry. Of holding less and less tightly to relationships — even if it means letting some go.

My 34 years of life feels increasingly like a bell curve. Isolation and worthlessness filling the lowly cracks of my adolescence; a rising wave of optimism for my twenties, filled with new friends and adventures aplenty; and a steady decline of ambition into my mid-thirties —

an autoimmune disease; several devastating relational wounds; and a bellowing inner cynic that beckons me to do something new with my life, to put it on paper, metaphorical or otherwise, to make a living from it, a true living, to stop living paycheck to paycheck, and to stop holing up with hours and hours of Ted Lasso already.

(Okay, but Ted Lasso is also really, really good.)

Of course, life isn’t as simple as an absolute up-and-down curve; certainly, life hasn’t totally sucked since I was 28. Even this year of creative darkness has been lined with sparks of undeniable light. We held a YOB retreat in August that reaffirmed the spiritual beauty of our community. In May I embarked on a national parks tour from Yosemite to Death Valley and remembered what it was like to lose myself in wonder again. I’ve also built greater connections and laid deeper roots here in Asheville despite a certain stuckness that comes with pandemics, diseases, and losing one’s vehicle.

Right, that happened . . . in case you missed it! I totaled my car in August and lost the primary source of my wanderings (along with some of my income via Doordash).

I was dejected. I was angry. For like a week or two.

And then I wondered if maybe this might be a good thing. To be forced to stop again. To settle. To walk and bike and take the bus and ask my friends for rides. To stay put and keep spreading these roots. To kick up my feet (metaphorically, for I don’t own an ottoman) and let home do what home is supposed to do . . . surround me. Shelter me. Be there for me.

It’s been awful at times this year. Looking out my living room window, feeling trapped. Alone.

But then I also look around my living room, at the decor on the walls and shelves, the plants still growing, the ones I’ve somehow kept alive, including an acorn I’ve nursed to legitimate baby oak with roots and shoots and leaves . . . and I feel a sense of pride, being here.

Nothing loud, nothing neon. But a whisper of pride that follows me from living room to bedroom, from kitchen to studio.

Nothing about 2021 has gone like I hoped or expected. It’d be easy to “phone it in” on this blog or any other creative outlet until the calendar just reads 2022 already. Blogging today feels like an attempt to “salvage” something of this year. Maybe I’ll even blog again next week, and then for four more to close out this lackluster year, for 2021 not to feel like a total waste when the ball drops on New York City (wait, it is actually dropping this year, right?).

How I long to shift from salvaging a year (or a month, a week, what have you) and just to live it.

Maybe I’ll actually blog every single week of 2022 like I set out to do this year, or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll finally put out that next book or write an actual song that I actually play on an actual guitar, or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll finally travel to Alaska and Europe like I said I’d do these last two years, respectively, or maybe I’ll continue learning this art of staying put.

To maintain hope and ambition, and not be crushed by falling short: this, the art of life.

I feel like I’m still in kindergarten, learning that art — my crayons drowning in a pool of Elmer’s and glitter.

But hey. I’m here now. Back at this old blogging grind today. Gluey crayons in hand.

Clinging with sticky fingers to the echoing promise that nothing is wasted. Even this year.