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!

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!

“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.

Live first, write later.

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. 

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.

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.

And just this afternoon, I finished my annual report for my venture into becoming a full-time artist.

Because I want my art to be centered on something good and true and for me to not get sidetracked doing things that God would not want me to do, I decided to write a Personal Mission as an Artist.

After I greeted her and encouraged her to chase her dreams, she told me to do so too, along with these words that helped me see the relationship between our life and our art:

“Your work tells a lot about your journey.”