2024 - No Mud, No Lotus
It seems to be a common theme for many that 2024 was a fucker of a year.
A brief recap:
Right at the start of the year, I had just tested positive for Covid and continued to test positive for the better part of four weeks. Then there was a paradigm-shifting family emergency. Then I got laid off from my job. And that was just January. Next up was general strife and the worst anxiety I’ve ever experienced, which was barely treated by the strangest therapist who has ever lived. Then medication….and some relief. But the unemployment persists. The months slosh by in a slurry of freelancing, play readings, mirages of mini golf, abandoned arcades, giant minions, heatwaves, and visits to Descanso Gardens. I go to Palm Springs twice. I go to New York in the Springtime. I shave my moustache. I triple-dip into my savings. I am alive and in Los Angeles. Every creative industry is imploding. David Zaslav has tied Hollywood to a chair with no bottom, and he’s Casino Royale-ing us for fun. I write an adaptation of Noah’s Ark for numerous personal reasons. I explore the city on weekdays. I start to figure out who I am outside of a career. I become myself. Actually, I realize that I have been myself this whole time.
A professor of mine in college introduced us to the phrase “No Mud, No Lotus”. You know what it means. I never expected this year to happen the way it did. I didn’t plan for the mud. And yet it did happen, and I made it through, I did what I had to do. I was scrappy and lucky and adaptive and empowered by the safety net I am fortunate to have, and I didn’t get into cryptocurrency, and I’m stronger for it. I figured it out.
In August my unemployment was going to run out, which meant it was time to find a job again. I spent a couple wonderful months selling pens and notebooks at a stationery shop. I auditioned to be a puppeteer at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater and was brought on as a seasonal puppeteer for their Halloween and Nutcracker shows. I walked to work. I got to know more familiar faces in my community. I made new friends. I got free donuts and matcha lattes from local businesses. And it was exhausting and rewarding all at once.
And then all of a sudden the old job called with a new offer, and now I’m back to doing that. And I’m so happy to be back. And then another unexpected turn: the strife from the start of the year has settled. It no longer looms over my days. This year started with so much hurt, but it has ended with joy and healing. The uncertainty has passed.
There’s an odd feeling I can only describe as gilded bookending, to be sitting here almost exactly where I was a year ago in so many ways, but for so much to have changed in the middle. It’s like a shit sandwich on delicious Bub and Grandma’s bread. But there are old patterns I don’t want to fall back into. I want to spend more time out of my house, exploring my city, being with friends. I want to think of myself beyond my career (or whatever this is). I don’t want to be glued to my computer and my desk. I want to push beyond my anxieties and fears. I want to charge on through the mud. I heard there are lotuses in there.
Anyways, that’s the jist of it. I also got to end the year doing a show at Dynasty Typewriter which was such a special day and a reminder that most things are pretty accessible if you just ask for them nicely.
Goals for 2025:
Mira and the Whale rewrite
Focus on giving gifts and being more generous
Enjoy your new 3D printer and do more 3D printing projects.
Keep things on paper. Maintain a paper planner, fill up paper notebooks, express yourself visually and analog.
Embrace the cringe, kill the shame