Where do I even begin with 2022?

My whole December was a blur.

On the last day of July this year, I attended the Art as Essential to Survival: Healing through the Arts Workshop, one of the dialogues at the first ever Modern and Contemporary Art Festival (MoCAF).

Last March 25 and 26, I joined the Summer Create run of BGC Art Mart at the BGC Arts Center. It was my first time again to join an in-person art fair after two years, so I was a little bit wary again of interacting with people. There’s the risk still always of getting infected. But safety protocols were placed as always for everybody’s safety!

We have a new ginger kitten brought in by Half Moon.

His name is Kyo, named after a favorite character of mine from the manga/anime Fruits Basket. (He would turn into a ginger cat when hugged by a person of the opposite sex!)

My Mom and I would feed Kyo in small portions of food that’s easy for a kitten to chew, swallow, and digest. One pack would be good for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

This was such a hectic week—I think it’s the most hectic I had this 2022. I met friends, my cousin from the US, attended the wedding of one of my closest friends, and working on projects. Thankful for this week!

A writer spends most of the time in her head, with the characters she’s still getting to know and the world she’s trying to build. She stares at a blank screen or a blank page for a long while, thinking of how to construct a sentence or shifting through metaphorical file cards in her mind for another word for ‘said.’

“Bonnie! Bonnie!”

I kept calling Bonnie within our vicinity. I checked the usual places she’d be in—the bushes, under the car, in the trellis—but to no avail.

I put in a lot of work this week. Phew! And also adding weekly thank you’s at the end of this post, so that I can practice my gratitude muscle!

Cats arrive in our lives when it’s time for them to arrive, and we read books when it’s time for us to read them. A contract between fate and a series of our decisions lead us to meet.

Live first, write later.

I came upon this New Year Thought Guide by MAGIS Creative Spaces. I started answering their prompts in my journal already. I’ll be sharing my answers here for the 5 Lessons to Take into the Year Ahead prompt!

As I start this annual Examen, let me first be present with where I am—Mom is taking a nap beside me, one of our cats Dylan is sleeping on his little bed, it’s almost lunchtime, and birds are singing outside. 

Should you find yourself in a writing rut, dreams are brimming wells of bizarre and nonsensical material (some are sensible though and connected to reality) and inspiration for a story.

I’ve always thought that the word confidence wasn’t good. Being confident wasn’t something that I aspired to be, because I thought that if I were more confident, then it would make me arrogant and full of myself.

I wrote the text above from a writing prompt I did for myself last August 2020. I listed down words for each day of August, and then I would come up with something that should include those words.

There are many things to learn from plants and how to take care of them. There’s also the lesson of seasons—how there’s dryness and death, and how there will be bearing and beauty again.

But now that I’m nearing three decades old, I’ve learned that no one can be 100% okay all the time nor we would ever get over a loved one’s death.

The About Time theme by Nick Laird-Clowes plays through the speakers as I contemplate on this year. Like many others perhaps, I am by myself, separated from family for safety. I can’t complain, but I just want to say that it is sad.

Last year, I was with my parents and our pet cats in our home in the province.

I still remember how I cried when the clock said 12:00, Jan. 1, 2020. I thought:

“We made it.”

During the last days of the year, in our living room with the warm light pouring in the from the window, I sat on a white chair before a small working table. I laid out a sheet of paper towel on it, brought out the air dry terracotta clay we bought months ago that I never got to use immediately, and began kneading it, molding it, trying to discover what creature was inside the clay, what it would become in my hands.

“Your posture has improved.”

My cousin Ouel told me that when we saw each other again for the first time after two years. In 2017, he and his brother Jango told me that I was hunched.

Eventually, I found out about Schoolism too when I was in college if my memory serves me right.

Think of Schoolism as an online art school where your mentors are award-winning, talented, and hard-working artists in the industry.

And when there’s school, there’s homework!