Sunday, December 31, 2024
Cheers to yet another year. Here’s some incoherent strings of words to commemorate. Claude calls this a “lyric essay.” So I’ll brand it as such. Here’s a lyric essay to wrap up 2024.
Baroque: I think of medieval Europe, with its tone of tan stone, where women with red-tinted lips traverse cobblestone streets reading their books. It's cloudy and slightly cold as they put on their coats and go for walks. They think, they ponder, mumbling commentary about their surroundings, seasoning the air with the residual tobacco in their breath. That girl.
Baroque art evokes emotion—it's baroque because that's its essence. Baroque people are emotional, imparting their feelings onto the lives that exist around them—lives imbued with emotion. Baroque film is the movie you imagine your life to be when drops of rain roll down the window as you try to drown out the sound of traffic by focusing on the cells trudging along under your skin.
I was an internet kid, a chronically online kid. I was a weird kid, a slightly shy kid. Now, I'm an adult. I've spent an entire year as one. I'm still on the internet, still a little weird by at least some standards, and selectively shy—but I tried to help it. A woman now, I guess it's time to be that girl, minus the traumatized lung-induced rasp. Another year is coming to an end and in the spirit of consistency, I return to this blog to write about that fact.
Here, there's no plan. I hope to be candid and care for my future self who will read this again. That said, the candor I owe doesn't cost my openness. And so there likely will be little detail. I like the mystery. I'll brand the uneasiness that comes with remembering that just like that you've spent yet another year around the sun, as mystery. So I guess I like it. I've got to.
I think this has been a year of much growth. I'm really appreciative that a) it happened and b) is something I can recognize. Things were not perfect, but what a middling ideal that is. What did change, however, was that little early-teen Hamidah had stoicism as a label for suppressing feelings that were too overwhelming to contain. While now I feel distant from that past: it is what it is, all of it. The laissez-faire attitude is very freeing. Still, I'm indebted to the ticking time clock of my life. There's always more to do, but it's a blessing that I get to try.
Some phrases come to mind as this year comes to an end. This was the year where I shilled the dollars and time to buy back my curiosity, she'd gone astray to excessive frugality. This was the year of looking around and appreciating all that I'd got: the relationships, friendships, memories, lessons and all. This was the year to realize that writing a narrative for one to follow is to write a play. And I don't want my life to be an act. This was the year of whispering under my breath, "may we lead meaningful lives." This was the year of letting go, starting off with the lows and letting the shed weight lift me up. This was the year of inching towards something that I can't even articulate, but it glimmers with hope.
I used to live in the shadows of what I felt like I had to become, and it was holding me back. It turns out that the more principled you try to be, despite the breadth of possibility that exists, the more fulfilled you'll be, the more conviction you'll have, the more you'll care, you'll love, and the more you'll be.
This year you'd grow: Part of this aforementioned growth will be ascribing this period of roughness to growing up. Must I repeat it again, that dignity is a virtue and you can only run so fast from the voices in your head—your stamina for this sort of thing pales—rather start walking; listen to the voices: Do NOT attempt to proceed and just hear them, don't be dumb and ignore them, and do NOT listen to them and wallow in the sound.
I'm pretty happy. I don't think happier is the right word here, but depression—something that still is very strange to me, and especially strange to have voiced—sucks so much. When each day fades into the next, hours pass and your body hasn't moved an inch, and tears stream down your face when you think of a ball rolling down an aimless road, maybe to be kicked, then you know it's time to get help. You'll think you know it all, and have planned what will come next. That you know what you have to do, and it's just a matter of doing. That you just have to muscle through to the next week and the rest will sort itself out. Recognize that there are the wiser who are just one piece of advice away from making your life manyfold times more meaningful. This was the year of learning once again that the character in those past chapters feels like a stranger. You'll learn it's not etched in stone that you'll never meet her again.
Next, AA was a major force in a lot of the decisions I made in the latter half of the year. To her, I'm very grateful. She made it clear that the time to do everything I wanted to do was right now. I needed to hold myself accountable, I needed to really let go of proxies for satisfaction, success, and so on. Make yourself satisfied. Find the things that you want to work hard on. I tried to find those things. I'm continuing to find them. Easy-to-define purpose feels very much like a hoax. I always felt maybe ashamed that I didn't have my thing, but I did have my quests. And I think that's the model that works best for me.
Last but not really, I used to feel weird about the time I spent alone. I wasn't necessarily yearning to be with others all the time, but it did feel like I had to be. I realized that people and community are great, but independence and solace are the baseline, the default. You should be able to exist and not only cope with this fact. I spend a good amount of time by myself, by choice—I enjoy it, I treasure it—it's a blessing and it's something I hope that I'll continue to feel whole by. What's life if you can't live with reality? I think it's only possible to do this in solitude.
As for the year to come, I hope to build better systems, and to lead the projects I now have better visions for. I plan to take SL's advice that was given at just the right time. I'll be an age that scares me quite a bit, but all I can do is sit with that feeling and see what it means. I hope to continue on this thread of life that is present, strive to make each day worth something and let those days never just serve as a means to the next. I plan to write. I hope to stay true to myself and grow into whoever I become, stay steadfast on the spiritual journey that's been a forward path at last. I hope to see the next year, sit on more benches and look at nice views, see more quests through, and write another one of these in a year's time.
"Stay restless."—E.O. Wilson, Letters to a Young Scientist (2013)
To a great year ahead. See ya next time.