When is a word more than a word?

When you bet your whole fucking year on it.

I’m baccccckkkkkk. Miss me?

I am continuing on with the subscription donation project. For December and January, the organization is the Radical Monarchs. If you are new here (welcome!) or need a refresher, you can always find more details of the project on my About page. Also, if you want to be a matching donor, let me know.

I have also decided to extend the paid subscription discount offer! Paid subscriptions are 10% off for the whole next year as a celebration for NYC Decade-aversary. If you want to upgrade, now is a great time.

This newsletter means a lot to me. If you are connecting with the work at all, please consider clicking the heart button and/or leaving a comment and/or sharing it. That would be a real win for me.

---

Let me paint you a word picture. 

It’s 820p at SeaTac International Airport. I arrived on a delayed Alaska Airlines flight from Spokane, Washington around 730p. My red eye to JFK was supposed to leave at 945p but is now leaving at 1121p (so specific). I’m in the N Gates, which were remodeled not that long ago. This means it’s the best food and the brightest, lightest place to be in the airport. After barely having eaten all day, I grabbed a Fried Chicken Sammy from Skillet. The Fried Chicken Sammy is a weakness of mine. It was when I lived in Seattle and still is now that I can access it on my way through the airport.

So, I’ve arrived. I’ve eaten. I filled up my water bottle. And now, I have time to kill. And time to obsessively check the Alaska app to see if my flight will still go tonight. (By the time you get this newsletter, I will have my answer to that.)

I don’t mind an airport. And I’ve always had a personal affinity for SeaTac. Since I’ve flown in and out of it probably more than any other airport, it feels like a sort of a home base. Because it’s the Pacific Northwest, this is a big hub for Alaska. That means the Alaska customers have actually nice gates and terminals to fly in and out of. As opposed to being relegated to some offshoot terminal with very little food available and nothing to do whether you have an hour or nine hours to kill. 

The people watching in an airport is good, of course. But more importantly, it’s a liminal space. Everyone is either coming or going. People who work at the airport too. They have to come in and out like travelers. Time doesn’t exist in an airport. You can eat or drink whatever you want at whatever time of day you want. That is, if somewhere is open. 

As much as I like an airport, I am not always the biggest fan of liminal spaces. Often, I think, people use liminal spaces as an excuse to get away with stuff. It’s not real life so what happens in the airport stays in the airport. It’s not real life so that conversation we had in the car when our feet weren’t planted on solid ground, it never happened. Waiting rooms, funerals, weddings…if you want to get existential about it (more, I guess), the whole internet is a liminal space. It sets up a situation where you can hide. Where you can be a totally different person than you are out in the physical world. That’s sometimes for the better. Often, for the worse. 

Tonight, I’m embracing the liminal space. 

The journey back to New York from Spokane is always a long one, even when departures and arrivals are all on time. It’s a whole day of being nowhere while covering nearly 3000 miles of somewhere. On the other side of travel, it’s at least another day of not being sure what time it is. It’s all liminal. 

Usually I want to try and function in the real world again as quickly as possible. Usually is not today. 

Heading back to New York, to my stuff, to my apartment, to my home routine means that this year, 2024, has officially begun for me. Being at my parents’ house doesn’t feel like real life mostly. Food is always available, I don’t have to pay rent, and they seem to continuously like me all the while. Sure, 2024 began on January 1st in the literal sense. But I was leaning into the unrealness of my parents’ house. I need that break and I took that break. So, my 2024 is beginning whenever I’m back in my apartment. (I’m not going to try and predict what day that will actually be. I don’t want to jinx anything.)

The “New Year” was a milestone I was fighting to get to. Now it’s here, I feel pretty much the same. Look, I knew that writing ‘24 instead of ‘23 was not actually going to solve any of my problems. I’m not usually an all-in on New Year’s sort of person either. I very rarely make any sort of resolutions. And, this holiday happens in winter. WINTER. It’s not easy to do stuff in winter. I usually settle into the New Year come March. The weather warms up and it’s my birthday which feels like the right time to start again. But I can’t ignore the fact that, this year, I was trying so hard to get to the calendar New Year because I was hoping for…because I was hoping. 

At various points in the year, my Mom would tell me that I could come see them any time. Stay for a week or stay for a while. I would often respond by telling her that going to see them wouldn’t solve my problems. Leaving and ignoring them would probably make them worse, in fact. She would point out that that’s not really the point of a visit. I would scoff. 

I was wrong about one thing. I don’t think being out of the city for the holidays made any of my problems worse. I was right about one thing too. Being away didn’t solve any of them either. When the calendar restarted at day one, my mood got noticeably more mopey. I am walking back into what I walked out of three weeks ago. Unemployment which I can’t seem to shake. Career goals that seem very far away. A financial situation that is harder than any I’ve faced in a long long time. So many unknowns. Fear.

For the last couple of years, I have picked a word of the year which is, sort of, my answer to resolutions. I picked it up from my friend Natalie of

Copious Notes

who picked it up from Susannah Conway, I believe. (Natalie you can tell me whether that’s true.) It has been a helpful framing device in general. A way to approach the year mindfully. Something to keep in my brain as I make decisions and try new things and reevaluate old things.

I am hesitant to do that this year. To be honest, my words of the year since I started have kind of felt like busts. In 2020, my word was “Joy.” I wanted to have a lot of fun. I signed up for a tap dance class to kick it off. Then there was a pandemic. In 2021, the word was “Possibility.” It seemed likely that we were going to get a vaccine and I was hopeful for my work situation as well. We did get a vaccine and I did change jobs so, fine, you got me. That year the word fit okay. For 2022, the word was “connection,” a nod to the fact that I needed to get out more. I was unemployed for most of 2022 and I did not, in fact, get out more. Last year’s word was “Quality.” It was a goal of mine to make sure things in my life were quality—relationships, work, my stuff. But then I found myself unemployed and having spent $300 on a linen quilt that ended up not actually being very good quality before I could approach anything else. So, a one out of four success rate is not filling me with very much confidence. I know, I know. “Success” is a tricky word here. Probably not the right word but I’m using it anyway. 

A side note here: my parents and I watched a lot of old bake-off while I was there. Every season my Mom and/or my Dad would point out the person who was seemingly down about everything. They called them “the Eeyore.” I’m sharing this anecdote to let you know that, yes, I do know I am being “the Eeyore” here. Just humor me. It’s my newsletter. 

Being hesitant about picking a word of the year doesn’t mean that a few haven’t crossed my mind. Pretty early in 2023, actually, the word “reimagine” entered my mind. That was at the time when I was not so long unemployed and I was really optimistic about how I could mold my life into what I wanted it to look like. That was when my therapist was calling me “the chrysalis.” By the end of the year, I did not have the same optimism (thanks for noticing me) and I’m having a hard time finding it again. Then, a few weeks ago, I came up with the word “recommit.” I thought to myself, “Well, that has to be the word. And I hate it.” It is precisely because I’m struggling to find any spark of lightness that I thought that was the word, plain and simple. But now, it’s not feeling right. I’m not so sure I want to do anything that starts with “re.”

Expand? Nurture? Radiate? Transformation? Stretch? 

The word is floating somewhere in the ether. So, for the first time in a couple of years, I go into the year without a word I’m trying to be mindful of. I may not pick one. That is very possible. A word may fall right into my lap. That is also very possible. I’m probably putting too much pressure on it, all told. It’s supposed to be something helpful and for fun, right? We should have fun.

No, “fun” is not the word. 

I need a word that feels real. (That’s not it.) I need a year that feels real on the positive side of things. Not real in the “hard reality, how much can one person take?” sort of thing. I need some wins. (Nor that.) I need something that inspires gratitude that I don’t have to manufacture through my daily gratitude habit.

In this liminal space that is the SeaTac airport, I’m not going to figure it out. Even if I did, it probably wouldn’t be real. That’s the thing.