The year I moved back to Saint Augustine; the year I started my business. The year of the trans-continental solar eclipse whose totality shadowed me in Charleston. The year I ditched everything to live overseas for two months, to drink wine where it’s grown and eat ham where it’s cut and walk through the ruins of civilizations cited by Homer. The year I went camping for the first time, curled against the cold in borrowed clothes in a borrowed sleeping bag in a borrowed car outside of Portland. The year I met Nathan and Dawn and Eleni and Rose and so many others; the year I had more than forty Christmas cards to send. The year I took my aging mother to see the live-action release of Beauty and the Beast, her favorite Disney story. The year I finally left him.
The year of Hurricane Irma. The first year of Donald Trump’s presidency. The year of the Vegas shooting and the Texas shooting and the Fort Lauderdale airport shooting and the bombing at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester and so much more international violence and suffering I’ve honestly stopped paying attention. The year I wrote over 500,000 words of copy but not a single poem I love. The year I wondered if I was still an artist.
2017’s been beautiful and challenging and energizing and enervating and definitely a learning experience. I’ll spare you my color-coded matrix of Type-A resolution craziness, but it’s safe to say that 2018’s looking bright and bewildering, too.
No matter where you find yourself when midnight’s magic grants us a clean slate (or at least its illusion), here’s to a 2018 filled with joy, discovery, and all the right mistakes.