Welcome back this week everyone, and thanks for reading.
I’ve noticed something this year. A pattern and an insight that this is something I’ve experienced before. This past year has featured some of the most difficult pitfalls that I’ve encountered in some time, and along with that some of the most unbridled optimism I’ve felt about my future as well. The dichotomy between these two can often be disorienting, and it can sometimes feel like I’m unable to appreciate all of the newfound goodness in my life because I’m struggling to process all of the overwhelmingly negative shit that’s been happening hand in hand with it.
When my Mom passed away 10 years ago, 2013 very quickly cemented itself as the worst year I had lived up to that point. But along with that tragedy, that year also featured some of my fondest memories, times that I still look back on and am forever grateful for. That period of time stood out equally in the best and worst ways possible. How could one measly year hold such tragedy and hopefulness and still maintain its shape without collapsing?
10 years later, 2023 appears to have taken a similar form. A real positive leap forward in many aspects of my life, where I have been able to put many lingering demons to bed while watching my life take meaningful steps forward, all while getting to build it with people I love. It also featured massive roadblocks and missteps, false starts, and difficulty putting one foot in front of the other some days.
These positive moments that have happened, these moments of peace that have interrupted moments of sheer hopelessness, sometimes feel like a cruel joke. Like I’m being handed something by an unseen force that it knows I can’t fully appreciate, a joke that is being played on me when I’m my most helpless. It makes me fight harder though to appreciate the daily minutiae of what is going on around me, to try to find something worth holding onto when I’m not grasping anything of permanence other than loose dirt.
I could also stick to what I do during low moments and complain that it’s not fair, that I can’t even be given something good in my life without also being given a heaping scoop of something bad to balance the scales. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that perspective, and I would be a liar to say that I haven’t spent many days this year lodged in that frame of mind, frustrated that I can’t see a path forward when I’m presented with a dizzying kaleidoscope of emotions.
I talked to Kenna about this the other night, and I asked her “Why do all of these good things keep happening along with all of these terrible things?”.
She said, “So you keep going”.
Thanks again, and talk next week.