Reflections On A Year - Issue #8
I’ve returned to take an honest look back and a cautious one forward.
How’re you, my people? How have you been, floating these last few days of the year? These are some of the weirdest periods because time is somehow melting into itself and still demanding urgency because of the imminent new year.
I started this newsletter this year with a plan to write at least twice a month. We all know how that went. But despite my inconsistency, I’m pretty proud of the work I did here. I wrote about things I liked and cared about, from the mundane to the important, without the pressure of deadlines or a maneuvering of my voice—even though I badly need an editor. My only regret is I wish I wrote more because there were times a piece of art spoke to me so deeply that I needed to get it out but never did.
Like when I listened to Katy Perry’s Chained To The Rhythm for the umpteenth time and realized how the throwback sound could exist on a good number of current pop records and the lyrics reflected the divisive times we're in, or when I found out Lorde's Melodrama soundtracked a specific period of my youth, or the essay I started [and never finished] about identifying with the children of Succession, parental trauma and it’s ripple effect.
In all, I am glad this year is over. Not from a place of gratitude but a deep sense of exhaustion.
This year has been many things for many people: successful, fulfilling, teaching, revealing, horrible and sometimes just weird. A lot of times I find myself confused if an event occurred in 2020 or 2021 because the pandemic somehow fused the two years into one hot mess that I have to pick apart when looking for something.
So, today, I am here to pick apart my 2021 not for any lessons in particular but because reflection and remembrance are important to going forward.
There are some years you experience where you have a profound lesson, a significant victory, a life-changing loss, or just a major epiphany. This is not one of those years for me. Things have just happened so randomly that sometimes I feel like there’s a running cosmic joke to see how many absurd things can be crammed into a year.
I rarely set goals for a new year, I just know that there is a list of things I am obligated to do—most of the things academic. Even when I do set goals, they are broad and nonspecific, almost as if I am protecting myself from disappointment. This is why I should have been very suspicious when I came into 2021 more excited and ambitious than I had ever been. I should have known at the beginning of the year when I started using prescription glasses that I was going to see shege.
I spent most of the year struggling. A relationship took its last breath, my academics took a huge hit it is yet to recover from, my writing did not follow the trajectory I expected, friendships suffered wounds that were never tended to, my health was constantly deliberated in the corridors of a hospital, and I searched for love in places I knew I would never find it.
And now, as the year ends, it doesn’t feel like a conclusion. I know we all say that a new year is just a date, that life continues but, to me, that means struggling continues. It feels like the frayed ends of a rope, there is no knot tied neatly at the end. Why I feel this way is because I still haven’t processed most of what happened this year, at this point, everything exists—raw as the first time they happened—in facets of my mind ready to burst at the seams.
This is not to say good things did not happen this year, they did, but they were few and far between. And by the end of the year, some of the good things that happened didn’t exist anymore. At some point in time this year, I was just existing in routine, feeling nothing and numb to everything. So, even if something good happened during that period, I couldn’t recognize it.
I like to make jokes about being the main character in life and I think the writers took it seriously this year and just wrote a bunch of plot lines that involved my suffering. And by God, I hope this is for character development where I end up being rich, famous and dishing out advice nobody asked for.
I want to say I learnt a lot this year, but honestly, I didn’t. Maybe the year reinforced what I already knew about myself and people, but there was no grand revelation to a well-orchestrated soundtrack or a turning point where I move to a small town to find fulfillment, which is why I consider the suffering very unnecessary.
In a year of constant Ls, I am thankful for all my friends. I am not one to speak about anything bothering me but just being in the presence of people who love me without demanding my performance gives strength. Thank you, all of you.
I have no conclusion to this newsletter which is on-brand considering the year I’ve had, but one thing I want to say is the thing I said when someone asked about this year: there’s a lot you can control and even more that you can’t, focus on the former.
When this will all be over, I don’t know. I am seeing sparkles of hope but those might just be sirens warning me about the coming danger. Nobody knows. It’s difficult to be optimistic.
If you, like me, had a bad year, I hope it gets better and that the work you put in yields results. If you had an amazing year [and managed to read till this point of this depressing letter], I’m jealous of you and you deserve even more amazing years that you’ll get.
I know I didn’t say anything profound but maybe writing this is a step to my getting better. Fingers crossed.
Songs I Loved This Year.
So many amazing songs came out this year so here are a few I loved:
Need To Know by Doja Cat, To Be Loved by Adele, Nobody Knows Me Like You Do by Birdy, Talking To Jesus by Maverick City, Monalisa by Sarz and Lojay, Ke Star remix by Focalistic and Davido, Helen Of Troy by Lorde, Easter by Travis Greene and Todd Dulaney, Traitor by Olivia Rodrigo, Happier Than Ever by Billie Eilish, and a host of others.
I know I’m missing a lot but these are the ones I can get in. Maybe next year I’ll do a whole playlist.
Things I Loved To See This Year.
Unfortunately, I didn’t watch a lot of stuff this year especially movies but these are the shows I loved this year.
Ted Lasso, Succession, The Chair, Shadow and Bone, WandaVision, Squid Game, Invincible, Only Murders In The Building.
Special mention for Dune in the movie section.
That’s all, folks! May the year ahead be kind to you and if it isn’t, may you have the fortitude to get through it. See you in the next issue.