five things I am grateful for this year
Lots of things changed for me in 2021. I moved back to the UK and decided to stay here for the conceivable; I got a new role in a new sector, moved into a new house, took up a lot of new hobbies; I met someone world-changing. I am always careful to summarise my years so that I don’t forget them, but often this catches the Very Big stuff and the Very Little stuff and misses the crucial struts underpinning it all and the threads that run through - the new activities that became fundamental to my day-to-day, the crucial bits that made the year what it was. So here are five of those from 2021.
making
This year I Made Things, things of such variety of medium and scale that I am truly surprised by looking back. I have always kept an annual scrapbook Moleskine, and a pandemic year of online classes with lovely Lily had got me regularly sketching both on paper and my iPhone notes app, but 2021 was a year of arts and crafts that exceeded anything in my childhood. Not only did a queer lino-printing class lead to endless prints this year, but I became a repeat offender at Art4Fun producing more silly little mugs and plates than between the ages of 6-10. But one cannot be confined by medium! I also made pasta from scratch in the shape of a first date spot, participated in a multi-layer progressive pride flag cake, and produced an exhibition’s worth of hand-written and drawn ephemera for a loved one that is best to leave off the internet.
But what I’m perhaps most proud of this year is the undertaking of some hearty projects that required true innovation and commitment. One of which became one of the most complex of my personal and maybe even professional life, involving much of my personal and sometimes even professional network, and culminating in physical objects of two very different mediums and a digital trail a private investigator would die for. (The other projects are confined to conditionally formatted spreadsheets. For now.)
my bicycle
In 2021 I became a London cyclist - and a cyclist of lots of other places besides. Besides the improvements to my fitness and my wallet, travelling everywhere on two wheels feels like it has changed my experience of the year more than most other things; my sense of independence, my relationship with my city, my ability to balance my time and my decisions in a life of work/study/inter-city relationship. Being able to leave an event whenever I fancy without the bother of oyster card or Uber, finishing a meeting late with no panic about bus delays to get to university on time, visiting a friend’s dog in a lunchbreak that would be too far to walk to but is perfect on a bike. Speeding across London Bridge and through Piccadilly Circus and down the Brighton seafront and over the Sussex countryside. Freedom! Independence! Savings!
the sea
A friend I rediscovered while standing beside its gentle roar, kissing with our trench coats flapping around us. Loving someone sea-adjacent has made the Sussex sea omnipresent this year - immersed within it, stood beside it, judging its wave height from afar like a temperamental colleague. But also the pebble beach at Deal and the undercliff lido at Margate and tumultuous Cornish waves and tiny teas beside a smoggy Turkish shoreline. The sea has been a great friend and companion in 2021.
learning
I started a new job - a new role in a new sector. It has been a steep learning curve that I have been repeatedly challenged by and grateful for. Learning moments this year have included travelling to Istanbul for work, speaking on a virtual UN agency panel around digital futures, and making extensive and international video content with Google. And also balancing a nearly full-time job with study as I went back to university to do a part-time MSc in Digital Anthropology at UCL. Beyond digging deep into The Digital in an academic sense that I’ve been craving for some time, I have learnt a huge amount from my coursemates, from my workplace’s accommodations, and from the act of plate-spinning. (Although perhaps I’ll feel differently knee-deep in my January deadlines in a week’s time.)
love (bleurgh)
In the spring I found wild, deep, possibility-filled love which has flooded the year, elaboration on which is reserved for long-suffering friends. But it’s love of lots of different kinds that I’m grateful for. The neighbour’s cat squeaking her paws across my window every morning in January to slink in and snooze near me, as though sensing I needed the company. My kind friends who sent me flowers and cards and cakes, and my mum bringing me endless cups of tea and a safe place to reframe in a desolate January. Traff spending a day Tetris-ing his car to drive me across London and move house. My family’s group chats proliferating into virtual support across continents, through separation and bereavements and illnesses, with photos and memes and the weekly Guardian quiz. Beautiful moments of coming together with people I love with long walks, weeks and weekends by different coastlines and hillsides, my beloved book club, afternoons painting plates hungover.
I am grateful for a year that has been so much, so astronomically better than the year I had predicted. I owe much of that to those I love.