I have no idea where the time went, but here we are at the mid-point of 2023 already.
The fact that these six months seemed to go by so quickly is, I guess, a testament to how much fun they were, overall. There were concerts and shows, lots of movies (36 as of this writing), three trips to Florida (not always fun, admittedly), a good birthday, lots of great TV, meetups with friends, my niece and nephews’ first visit to Boston in three years, and plenty more.
Earlier this year, in the instant-classic third episode of HBO’s The Last of Us, Murray Bartlett’s Frank said what was one of the most memorable lines of the entire TV season: “Older means we’re still here.”
At the time he said it, Frank was trying to comfort his partner, Bill (Nick Offerman), after Bill lamented that he was getting older too quickly. Frank’s point was that, in the show’s post-apocalyptic world, it wasn’t about being older. Simply surviving, and still being there together, was the important part.
Context aside, the line has stayed with me ever since I heard it. And today, as I celebrate another birthday, it’s top of mind again.
Well, we’ve come to the end of another year, and what a difference 12 months makes. A year ago, I was frustrated and disappointed, feeling like there was no end in sight for the pandemic and like I was on a bridge to nowhere.
And now … well, if I’m not entirely in a positive frame of mind, I’m at least in a better place. Generally.
2022 was, in many ways, the kind of year I’d hoped 2021 would be: Less crazy. More normal. More fun. The pandemic clearly isn’t over yet, but this year, I found ways to live with it and be more comfortable in scenarios that worried me a year earlier.
Usually, on this day, I publish a kind of “state of the state” blog post where I take stock, recall highlights and lowlights of the last 12 months, and reflect on who I am now and who I’d like to be a year from now. But as my 48th birthday approached (yes, really), and I started brainstorming about what I would write here, I realized that this year, I just didn’t have all that much to say.
Nothing new to say, anyway.
Actually, I haven’t had a whole lot to say all year: My blog has been dormant since my last post on December 31. I’m not even doing my Happiness Project this year. So I considered just skipping my traditional birthday post.
After 2020, when so many of us were home-bound, frustrated by the government’s divisive and unhelpful response to the pandemic, in and out of work, and alone, 2021 was supposed to be the year things got back on track. We had a new President, vaccines were becoming available, and change was coming. Better days were ahead. “Normal” was going to make a comeback.
So I always looked at 2021 like a “bridge year,” one that would take us from the doom and gloom of the pandemic to the new new normal. This year was all about crossing that bridge to get to the other side. Accepting things for now because I knew they’d be temporary. That things would be better and more desirable on the other side, by the end of the year.
In 2021, I had so much I wanted to do. I was going to make up for lost time with friends and family. I was going to work with other people face-to-face again on a regular basis, maybe even (hopefully) in an office. I was going to put my feet back in the dating pool. I was going to go on vacation. I was going to be spontaneous. In short: I was going to live a normal life without having to worry all the time about an easily transmissible airborne virus getting into my body.
And yet, here we are on December 31, and it feels in many ways like we’re back to where we were a year ago. In spite of multiple safeandeffective vaccines being widely available, Covid case numbers are not only up again, they are higher than they’ve ever been. We’re being asked to scale back our social lives again and keep taking precautions to keep ourselves and each other safe — even if we’re “fully vaccinated.” And, as if we need a reminder, nearly a year after the attack on the Capitol, our political climate is more divided than ever.
If 2021 was a bridge year, it feels like it was a bridge that just kept on going and going, with no end in sight, kind of year.
When directors make movies, they work with a music supervisor and a composer to create a soundscape for the film that will deliberately help drive the narrative, boost the desired emotional impact, and leave a distinct impression in the minds of viewers. When done well, hearing a particular song or musical motif included in the movie may trigger memories of that work.
In real life, the process happens somewhat in reverse: The “narrative” of our lives moves forward organically, and the music that triggers memories of certain times and events is not necessarily planned. And, rather than the music itself telling a story, it’s up to us to look at the collection of songs and pick out the themes from the soundtrack in hindsight. In this way, music serves to remind us of the times we’ve lived through, and the music that was playing while we lived — with this caveat: The soundtrack often reflects the times we want to remember. More importantly, it’s made up of the music we want to remember.
I listened to a lot of music in 2021, and my “Now” playlist was everchanging. But as noted, the soundtrack of my year — a.k.a. my 2021 Time Capsule Playlist — largely reflects what was good about these last 12 months.
It happens every year: Labor Day comes, and the pace of the year speeds up.
We get to Halloween, and it speeds up even more.
So one thing I enjoy about Thanksgiving — in addition to the time off from work and the turkey and gravy — is that it’s an occasion to pause and reflect on what we’re grateful for at that moment, before we all get swept up in the frenzy of the December holidays.
Today is my birthday, and I have a confession to make: I’m not 100% sure of how old I am.
No, that’s not some Peter Pan–ish form of denial. And it’s not an indication that I’m so old I’ve started to forget basic things.
It’s just that, over the last year or so, I’ve had to remind myself multiple times of what year it was and how old I was. Really.
We all experienced that to some degree over the last 16 months or so, didn’t we? The pandemic year warped our sense of time, causing days to blend into each other, and leading us to forget just when we were experiencing things, or when we had experienced them. Things we thought we did “this year” were actually done “last year.” Many predictable or scheduled events were either postponed or canceled outright. And a few milestones that should have been a bigger deal took place during the pandemic without as much as a whimper, leading some to think they didn’t even happen.
Birthdays, for example. I know I had one in 2020, but since the celebration was so muted (by necessity, and because of everything else that was happening around that time), did I really turn another year older?
It was March of 2008. Barack Obama had not yet been elected President. No Country for Old Men had just won Best Picture at the Oscars. Among the most popular songs were “Low” by Flo Rida and T-Pain, “Love in This Club” by Usher, and “Love Song” by Sara Bareilles. And around the country, many Americans were unable to identify the Founding Father whose name and face were on the $10 bills they used every day.
That month, after a successful and Drama Desk Award–winning run Off-Broadway, a new show moved uptown to the Great White Way, carrying with it the hopes of producers and investors that it would bring new, younger, and more diverse audiences to Broadway and fill the void left when Rent closed later that year. As successful as this production was, though, no one could have predicted that over the course of the next decade, its creator and star would break boundaries and revolutionize Broadway.
That show, of course, was In the Heights, and its creator and star was a young up-and-comer named Lin-Manuel Miranda — who, as if you need to be reminded, would go on to write the pop-culture phenomenon known as Hamilton.
In March 2008, Miranda was just 28 years old and still largely unknown. He’d traveled the world and performed as part of Freestyle Love Supreme, the hip-hop improv group he co-founded, but Miranda surely wasn’t a household name yet. Nor was he the social media influencer he is today — though, at the time, he did have an amusing YouTube channel where he shared home-video clips of his younger self lip-syncing to songs like “King of Wishful Thinking” and freestyle-rapping about the heat with his friends.
Martin's Musings 