2019 was a lot of disparate things. After all the heartbreak this year, I’m shocked that right now, hours left in the decade, my heart is full—I feel strong, I feel hopeful, I feel full to bursting for love for every one of you.
I’m seeing a lot of accomplishment posts making their rounds online this week, but I’m also a part of a group that shares and celebrates our artistic rejections, and the mix of those two kind of posts colliding in my timelines is awesome: celebrating both victories and failures this year radically changed how I saw 2019 as I looked back through it.
Love and loss lead the way this year, and all work fell in step behind it. As it should, I suppose, but there was so much more progress on projects I wanted to make but couldn’t. I’m grateful that I run a business that can flex in years like this and allow me to take care of family and my health when the need arises. Websites were built, videos were shot and edited, DVDs/blurays of the film were shipped, and somehow, despite the chaos of change and duties that come with bill paying, some art was still made.
There were nine months of injury, illness, recovery, and loss with our girl Lilo. Two months of pregnancy, resulting in a loss, with me. Amazing, blow-our-minds and humble-our-hearts generosity in June and November for Lilo from total strangers online, friends, and family—allowing us to make Lilo better for a time and have some fantastic final adventures.
I took a roadtrip across the country with my Dad, explored New England with my mom, and got them settled in their new home. Wrote with Claire. Held hands in tattoo parlors with Emy. Spent Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas with our best friends. Got to see another best friend and my godchildren twice this year. I got to know a lot of amazing new people this year over coffees and dinners. I started leading a new DnD campaign with friends, and am engaged in another one with my cousins. Vasant and I celebrated our 14th anniversary, started our fifteenth year and as of this afternoon, as we sat in a cafe drafting up what we want this next decade to be and reflecting on what the past decade has been, we’ve never been more in love with each other.
Creatively, we traveled with Promised Land and spoke on panels with Claire, Rachel, Tony, and Aaron. We began a new project with the Chinook. We got out on the road for our new space film (although, with Lilo’s issues, not as much as we wanted.) I was paid to illustrate for six separate commissions, each for writers and poets I am wowed by, and the final one was published (making it my first illustration published.) I wrote and sent out two new short stories, and started a novella (again with Lilo, I’m counting this reduced number a win—it’s hard to find creative time in caretaking years.) My most recently finished short story has been shortlisted at five of the six places its been submitted to, another story is ending the year waiting in the editor’s second-round queue, while the rest sit—after their own mixes of enthusatic, personal or cold, form rejections—in various stages of consideration across the submission ether. The new space film, while off to a great start with an amazing advisory board, has gotten the silliest rejections for funding (I kid you not, one grantmaker wrote “why should art funding go to a film about science?” 🤦🏻♀️) or has straight up been ghosted by two funders after making it to final stages.
But when the rejections have piled up, I remind myself of what’s worked this year. The film is in year four (since its film festival debut) and it was screened twenty times this year and has ten screenings booked for 2020 already. My illustration work was published. I’ve been invited to speak at conferences and classrooms.
I’ve struggled so much with my writing not finding a home, but my illustration and film work have found theirs. The latter, however, gets funded for the most part and funding = time to generate work. It’s my hope that in 2020, I’m able to do more of all of it. More progress in the new films. More fiction. More illustration. The new films are in development, and that means time at home to write and draw. What sidelined me this year was the loss of Lilo and a pregnancy. And I can’t say what will sideline me this year.
We can start each year with all the dreams in the world, but life is rough. It’s hard, and unknown twists and turns are always ahead.
What I hope for, what I hold onto, is that in 2020, whether I am able to run towards my goals or inch toward them microscopically, I’ll succeed regardless because of Vasant, my family, my friends, my artist network, and I want to make sure I’m that kind of resource, support, and encouragement to those around me as well.
That goal, to hold onto love and to give it, is the foundation to all my creative, professional, and personal goals next year and in the decade to come. That’s why I feel strong right now (despite having a post-Christmas flu). This love fuels me—my healing and recovery, my art, my activism, my connections to others—it, more than the type of job I have, flexes when life is rough. Love holds strong.
In 2020, I am excited to add more stories, in all the mediums I use, to the hopepunk movement and can’t wait to see many more rise up in the film, literary, and visual arts communities this next year. We need smart art about resilience now, more than ever before. I’m excited for old friendships, new friendships, new adventures, new cities, and creative collaborations in 2020. I can’t wait to see us band together to fight for every person’s access to justice, equality, and equity this year. I cannot wait to be here, one year later, counting up all these achievable blessings alongside my setbacks and finding that, once again: I’ve moved forward more than I’ve fallen down.
I may be worn out by 2019, but my hope has not been worn away.
2020, come on. I’m ready.