As I’ve had more years come and go, they seem to be passing quicker. This, of course, isn’t actually true, but that perception is very true. To a child, a year was a lifetime ago, the aching slow passage of time. To me, at 30, I remember 2020 as if it were legitimately last year (alas, it was four years ago as of midnight).
This year was painful for me, but it also brought about amazing life changes and ideas that will carry me prosperously into 2024 and beyond. I’ve been growing personally and professionally, and have some huge plans on tap in the next year. (Step one is a visit to Hawaii in a couple weeks!)
I do a lot of reflecting in general, but what better day than New Year’s Eve than to do some more? I’ve come to the realization this year that I have two modes: lazy as absolute hell and go-go-go. I can lay in the apartment and do the bare minimum to exist for a full week and then the next week walk 50 miles and get a month’s worth of work done. And those are just average weeks – never mind the ones where I fly halfway around the world and climb a mountain.
Through my budding meditation practice, I’ve come to accept that about myself. That is my “middle way,” though I am still working toward a more even-keeled home life.
The first real highlight of 2023 came for me at the end of February with my new favorite tradition, attending the Innings Festival in Tempe, Arizona. I’ve been every year since 2020 (meaning I’ve gone in 2020, damn Covid, 2022, 2023 and have a ticket for this February, too). It’s an incredible music festival that keeps me connected to baseball. What’s not to love?
In March, I saw the incomparable T-Pain perform an intimate set at a new venue on the Sunset Strip. In April, my mom came for a visit that included seeing Reba at the Hollywood Bowl and a snowy visit to Grand Canyon. Later that month, I’d watch the icon Willie Nelson celebrate his 90th birthday at the Bowl.
In May, I attended Just Like Heaven (a one-day music fest at the Rose Bowl) and got to check off a bucket-list band, MGMT, who performed one of my favorite albums – Oracular Spectacular – in full. Live music, it should come as no surprise, is quite the through line in my life. I’ve been fortunate enough to see many sets like that, where artists play some of my favorite albums, or like in 2022 when I got to see one of my contemporary favorites for the first time (Kacey Musgraves) do On the Road Again with none other than Willie himself at Palomino Festival, another one-day event on the Rose Bowl grounds.
In June, I went to Outloud at WeHo Pride, another music festival that checked off a long-awaited band from my list. Passion Pit played their first show in four years and it was an all-around magical night, capped by pop superstar Carly Rae Jepsen, who I saw at Coachella the year prior. (That’s the thing about the festival circuit is you can’t help but run into a few familiar names.) That was honestly one of my favorite nights of the year.
A week later, I spent time volunteering and attending pro golf’s U.S. Open at the Los Angeles Country Club, another special experience that only happened because I was depressed as shit early in the year and started watching hockey and golf. When I learned the U.S. Open would be in town… pure kismet!
During the first half of the year, I also went to Vegas to see Katy Perry’s residency and saw Louis C.K. film his special at the Dolby Theatre. Plus, I saw one of my other favorite comedians and C.K. friend and collaborator Joe List.
July was mostly quiet, but I did sneak in a trip to Sequoia National Park a week before I flew to Japan, which was my month of August. Sometime early this year I started to plan that trip. I felt the need to do something big – that ended up including the summiting of Mt. Fuji, the highest peak in the Far East.
You know, it’s funny. Japan wasn’t actually too far up on my list of places to travel. In fact, I recently pulled up an actual list I made many years ago that included about 20-25 countries and Japan wasn’t even on the list. But after coming down from that whirlwind trip, I was dumbstruck having remembered a song (yes, song) I wrote in the summer of 2012. I first started toying with lyric writing the previous fall and most of my work was about love or escaping my life in Detroit and traveling.
One song, not so subtly titled “See the World,” included the lyric: I wanna see the world / Hope that I can find work / Where I can just go / And I never have to slow down.
By some miracle, I’ve managed to finally make that happen and I’m proud of myself for doing so. Oh, and another lyric from the song was a bit more specific: Climb Mt. Fuji and travel from sea to sea / Places they don’t know me.
Some highlights from Japan included meeting a pair of new friends in Yamanakako (and seeing one of them the next month in Los Angeles); dining on my 30th birthday at the restaurant featured in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (which I had just rewatched ahead of my trip); bicycling around Fuji Five Lakes and Setonaikai National Park; popping over to South Korea; and road tripping the entire island of Hokkaido.
Back home in September, I started a strangely fulfilling security job at the Wiltern Theatre, which has filled up many of my nights since then.
But, of course, I made time to head out of town for a week in late September into October to see family in Washington and Oregon and make stops at the last remaining Blockbuster store and Crater Lake National Park (another major bucket-lister). I also drove coastal routes through Redwood National Park and Muir Woods National Monument, then took the quick way back to L.A.
In October, I saw my faves Matt and Kim and a week later their PG14 project band. One of my last posts on this Substack was about that first show (even though the second proved to be somehow even more perfect; Kim even read my nerdy post, which warmed my heart).
In November, I was plane-bound to see another favorite, Kesha, with a friend at Detroit’s Masonic Temple. I saw her again a couple weeks later at the Hollywood Palladium (where, funny enough, I’m heading in a couple hours for a working shift at that venue, my last “first” of 2023). Her album Gag Order really defined a good chunk of my 2023, and her sonic growth has been an inspiration. Incidentally, writing about that show was my most recent Substack post here on Beaming With Joy. (I encourage you to follow I Make Photos as well!)
I’ve been sick a decent chunk of December (feeling great now!) so it’s been another quiet one for the past month or so.
I feel the itch to go-go-go.
So, these were the highlights. It’s good to remember, and good to look forward to things, but it’s also good to just be here, happily tapping away at the keyboard with barely a sniffle left and a whole world of possibilities. It’s also good to remember that there were lowlights, that no life is sunshine and rainbows 24/7.
As the years pass, perhaps it’s best to remember that everything must pass. Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives. (HAHA to anyone who gets that reference, and thanks, Grandma, for coming in clutch with that line.)
Love this post!!