Twenty Twenty-Two

I used to love the new year, because it held promise. As the years counted up, there was always something to look forward to. The numbers themselves held a kind of magic. 1985? Why, that’s one year before 1986, the year I have had on my sleeve since sixth grade!

A new decade was rich with possibility. Raised in the 1970s, the year “1980” was freakish! What will happen? Ten years later I was older and wiser and felt it when George Michael sang;

Now everybody's talking about this new decade
Like you say the magic numbers
Then just say goodbye to the stupid mistakes you made

Oh! My memory serves me far too well. And yet, we continued. Onto the 1990s, and new millennium, and on and on as we had children and did our work and then my mother died and the odometer passed onto the third decade of the 21st century and I became acutely aware of my own mortality. When your parents are gone, it means you’re next. That is by design.

How the fuck did I lose twenty years? Well, you know what John Lennon said.*

You do know what John Lennon said, right?

I'll say this, the past year has been more fruitful (and far more harmless) for me than for many others. I'm not even talking about loss, though there has been plenty of that. But when I sat down at an in-person rehearsal last week (more on that soon) and heard so many artists sharing their sheer delight in engaging in their first artistic endeavor in twenty months, I felt a glow of gratitude for the projects I have participated in, just this year.

But what are my plans for 2022? Continue my MFA, for one thing. We’re going remote again, at least at CSU. I have loved being in a classroom with others, but I also got a lot more work done when I just needed to log on and off my computer for class.

I will have a ten-minute play produced as part of the NEOMFA New Play Festival, something new (of course). I should write more ten-minute plays, as an exercise. And because there are a godawful amount of ten-minute play festivals in this world.

And at long last, there may be witches. 

Other than these events, I await word on a dozen or so submissions of that play that I have been submitting this year.

So, you know. The work continues, until the pen drops from my syphilitic fingers.

*Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.