Hi, there—
Happy holidays & happy new year!
This is less of a Christmas letter and more of me simply sharing about the last twelve months—“stream of consciousness” style—after 2020 has already begun. It’s longer than a Buzzfeed quiz or a tweet, but I hope you’ll take the time to read it despite the word count. But, even if you don’t, it feels good to write it anyway.
I haven’t put pen to paper much in the last twelve months. I don’t even think I wrote a letter last year. I spent most of 2019, somewhere between my head and my body—either painfully trapped in thought or acting without any thought at all. New York has this uncanny ability to make you feel you’re dancing naked in the rain; vibrant, hopeful, and alive while simultaneously being wrapped tightly in an asylum straightjacket —lonely, scared, and barely breathing.
Living here is a bit of a kink.
2019 was a blur. I got to speak on stage at the largest gathering of mental health professionals—the National Alliance on Mental Illness convention in Seattle—and share some of my story, as well as unveil a campaign that will be rolled out nationwide later this year. I shot a print ad campaign for the Skin Cancer Foundation that ended up in Entertainment Weekly. I wore a tuxedo to the Plaza. I planned our presence at the Cannes Festival, backpacked Kauai and hiked the Scottish Highlands. I moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan. I met incredible people, saw shows, and fell in love with someone on the Q train every time I took the subway downtown.
I also continued to wrestle through my own mental health. I went through a couple therapists. I struggled to sit with myself and therefore struggled to write and create… forgetting the fundamental rule of creativity—you have to feel the feelings before you can bring them to life with words and pictures.
It can be hard for an introvert to be alone & find rest in a city that never sleeps.
I struggled with the internet and social media. I don’t think we were made to be everywhere or constantly connected, despite how omniscient and omnipotent Apple makes us feel.
I want to share my experiences and be fully present in my life at the same time.
I want to show the beautiful places I go and the job I enjoy, but also express the loneliness I feel and the heartache that comes from getting older in a lonely city.
I want to be known but I don’t want to get hurt and I’m learning you can’t have both.
I’m realizing the trouble with growing up is you’re always just becoming more of who you are—but you never fully arrive—and that’s the Catch-22 of it all. We’re always evolving and growing but the echoes of who we were, and where we’ve been, never really leave us.
Whew, is that too much for Christmas? My bad. Maybe this letter is more for me than for you after all.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is this was a year of contrast, a year of growth... a year of becoming.
What yet? I’m not really sure.
A friend of mine recently told me that viewing life as stepping stones was a shallow way to live and I think he was right. Every day is an end in and of itself.
My word for 2020 is “ground” because that’s how I want to live, with two feet planted firmly in the present.
My favorite poet, David Whyte, says this about ground—
“To come to ground is to find a home in circumstances and in the very physical body we inhabit in the midst of those circumstances and above all to face the truth, no matter how difficult that truth may be; to come to ground is to begin the courageous conversation, to step into difficulty and by taking the first step, begin the movement through all difficulties, to find the support and foundation that has been beneath our feet all along: a place to step onto, a place on which to stand, and a place from which to step.”
So cheers to the ground beneath our feet.
And cheers to hanging on for another decade—not for dear life—but to it—it’s a dear, dear, life. What a rare & beautiful thing to get to exist.
xoxo,
-jm
