Here's what stood out to me this year....
Our family moved from California to North Carolina in May. Jonas has a wonderful new job here, the boys are going to a public school that all of us love (free lunch! no homework!). We hope to buy a house in Fall 2022. We really miss our California people, but otherwise love it here. I got to see my nephew Francis be born in October and am anticipating a nephew on Jonas' side in early 2022! I turned 30 and visited friends in Columbus, Ohio, where the strawberry cream pastry at Fox in the Snow was the best thing I ate this year. Honorable mention to the Korean fried chicken wings at M Koko in Durham. I also visited Richmond, Virginia very briefly. This year I've been working a few hours a week as a freelance editor, and volunteering with Abolition Apostles, most recently as the co-coordinator of the Legal Working Group. For Christmas this year, all of my siblings were here in Durham, which was wonderful despite some of us getting COVID for the first time since the pandemic began.
We started taking Soy on short car rides around Santa Maria to acclimate him for our cross-country ride. My brother Bradley escorted the boys on a flight to NC and Jonas and I drove our cars, mine filled with plants and Jonas with Soy. Literally all personal pictures get posted to Instagram.
Many people have moved in the past two years, and I know that many of you can commiserate with how difficult it can be to make friends in a new place, especially during COVID. When I was looking back through other year-end posts I've done, I saw that I used to have a "best new friend" category each year. It feels a little childish to do that, but looking at who I named across the years, I realized that I do continue to meet people that I like every single year. Those relationships may not be immediately deep, but they do grow.
I read a lot (for me) this year! I LOVE the Durham public library system, especially their extensive graphic novel collection. In all my reading, I'm focusing on learning from those who have perspectives I don't have, and the most impactful book I read was recommended by my incarcerated pen-pal. That was The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, and it is an exceedingly important book for anyone living in the United States to read. Other impactful books I read were Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin, The Erotic as Power by Audre Lorde (essay), The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler by John Hendrix (graphic novel), and Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel Malory Ortberg. The full list is on Goodreads.
On this blog in 2021, I wrote about marriage and anarchy in the Bible, media that helps me process leaving church, why to embrace extremism, being a mom, pre-Reformation prayer, a Christmas carol, and reflections on 2020.
Best things I watched in 2021:
- The Green Knight
- Tear Along the Dotted Line (Netflix)
- Midnight Mass (Netflix)
- The Choe Show (Hulu)
- Broad City (Hulu)
My top music of the year (Spotify can't know this because Ishmael owns my algorithm, lol) was H.E.R., Jon Baptiste, and James Blake (I'm officially set in my ways). All of my podcast listening is theological; my favorites were the series on Alternative Orthodoxy on Richard Rohr's Another Name for Everything podcast, Carol N'gang'a on the Inverse Podcast, and Faith & Capital.
Goals for 2021:
try more of the Lompoc underground food scenefix my hairsource my dream 2-piece suit- plan a Japan trip
- more crafts/creative projects
focus less on imaginary/undefined evils(got better at defining them, haha)
2022 Goals:
- Buy a house
- Begin prison visitation(s)
- Make some tactile art
- Get a new essay published in print
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