I keep thinking I should have known - I sliced my hand open at midnight last year trying to open a bottle of sparkling cider and was trying to bandage myself up in the bathroom while everyone else toasted to the new year. What a metaphor, right?

2020 was a mess of complicated intersections. I’ll just say that I’m grateful for my husband, my family, friends, my art community, and of course, my therapist.

My 20 for 2020 list was revamped and shifted. I got a few things started, and am adding their continuation to my 2021 list. I also did a lot of things that weren’t on my list, that ended up being important. Like, my boundary-setting skills got a ton of practice, haha. I got to manage an experimental collaborative community art project. My husband and I had a lot of fun playing Animal Crossing together.

I described my experience of a lot of this past year as “having low bandwidth” - this was sort of something I’ve been building up for the past 5 years, and the pandemic + my day job + all the intersections really pulled that back again. I’m hoping to gain some more of that bandwidth back this year. This is why my word/phrase of the year for 2021 is going to be resilience. I thought about how cliche that is, given 2020, but for me, it’s much more than just a superficial come back to like, eating inside a restaurant… Resilience is built into my 21 for 2021 list, and in my 2021 business plans, so it seemed like the perfect word to guide this year overall.