Fallen Out: A Look Back at 2024
This is all about looking back, right? So, let’s start out by looking back at this paragraph from last year’s version of this post.
“I don’t know how to exist without changing. And I’m not even sure where to learn. And I’m not sure if I even want to. But I also don’t want to drop a nuke on my life. It shouldn’t need to be destroyed all for the sake of my ego. Because that’s really what this is all about, isn’t it? Ego. Pride. The need to overcome. That doesn’t need to exist anymore, and yet, its shadow is there, lingering over me and blocking out everything else.”
Well, past Nick, boom.
I swear that I didn’t set out to make 2024 a year drenched in fallout. At least not at midnight on January 1st. But, in hindsight, I guess there wasn’t any other conclusion at which I could have arrived after feeling the way I did a year ago. Then, all of a sudden, poof! The atom split once again, and now I’m 1,300 miles away from where I used to be.
Obviously, I’m writing this in my living room, once again. Only now the living room is in Philadelphia. No one in my life needs to be reminded of that, the most major life change I’ve experienced since moving to Dallas, but I don’t think I can overstate how wild of an effect that this move has had on me. And the funniest part is, I can’t even articulate it properly. But it’s coming through in everything I do. My whole life has indeed blown up, and it was my finger on the big red button. Thank goodness for that.
I’ve learned so fucking much about myself this year. I’ve been pushed in so many different ways to challenge my ego, to stop challenging the world so much and to start challenging myself. Gifted kid burnouts like me have a really hard time doing that. We’re so naturally adept at whatever crosses our paths that it’s easy to become complacent. It’s easy to accept that which comes easily. But there’s nothing that has come easy about this year. And maybe that’s why it feels so good to sit here at the end of it.
And I’m speaking, again, from a very privileged position. I had the help of my family and the support of my friends when doing everything I’ve done in 2024. To have done even a fraction of this without them would be a miracle. Even with all of those benefits, I still find that I’m impressed with myself for what feels like the first time in forever. Who knew that an explosion could be the best thing for the soul?
Unlike other years, this year feels like it’s begging for a short recap, so let’s get underway. January saw navigating a significant change in my relationship status, one that still hasn’t fully settled into anything concrete, and at the time, it felt like any little subatomic vibration would lead to my world collapsing. I doubted the strength of myself and someone who I love very much, and now, I can say that was a huge mistake. I invested so much energy into babying something that was essentially a fully-grown adult, and if there’s one regret I have about this year, it would be the fact that it took me so long to finally understand that there’s never just one way for love to blossom. That it never happens in one instant. That, when it’s real, it’s as omnipresent as oxygen, and that it just takes a few breaths to feel it.
Oh yeah, I also finally got my nose fixed! I had surgery so that I could breathe more normally. And, fun fact, as a direct result of being left to my own devices for two weeks alone in my apartment, I made the decision to start seriously thinking about moving to Philly during my recovery. It only took that amount of time to know that it was going to be the right thing to do, which made for an interesting birthday at the end of the month. How was I going to tell the people who formed the core of my life that, while we’re all celebrating me turning 28, that I’d be up and gone before the end of the year?
That came slowly, as a drip feed over the next few months. The more I told people, the more assured I was that it was the right place and the right time. Of course, I did tell everyone I would be moving in December. That, as you can plainly tell, was not the right time. And that’s because, after a pretty benign February and March, my house got a little bigger. Not spatially, unfortunately, but by occupancy. My 69-year old uncle, whom I had met twice in my conscious life, moved in with me for three months. Mind you, this was a studio apartment, so I’m sure you can imagine how dire the straits were in which his life raft found my bow.
I don’t really think it’s my place to divulge all of the circumstances of what brought him to Dallas, and ultimately to my home, but rest assured, it was necessary, and despite the upheaval to my life, I would do it again in a heartbeat. I got to finally provide for someone, albeit not in the way I would have thought I’d be providing, and that felt so incredibly gratifying that it was worth (most of) the turmoil. Not only was I able to provide for a family member, I was able to provide for a queer elder, someone whose life looked so much like my own and danced to so many of the same beats. That got me through those tough times.
That also made me decide to move in June. As living with family is wont to do.
Thus came the greatest change of all, the three-day marathon up from Dallas to Philadelphia, featuring a very grumpy Kepler as a co-pilot to me and my U-Haul. Saying goodbye proved to be bittersweet; not as painful as I would have imagined, but also not as final. The implicit understanding that I wouldn’t just evaporate from the city and life that was home for nine years wasn’t something I ever anticipated for myself. But, considering the fact I have a literal tattoo of my oft-maligned hometown now, I guess I should have seen that discrepancy coming.
The road trip was amazing, if banal. I’m not sure how exciting a Comfort Inn on the periphery of the Memphis Airport can be, but that first night of the trip, it could have been a cabin on the Orient Express with how much ebullient anticipation I had. Of course, that was tempered by being absolutely fucking exhausted. I don’t think I stopped being exhausted until August, as a matter of fact. Every bead of sweat, muttered swear, spent dollar, and pang of homesickness has been worth it.
Philly has become home in the way that El Paso always was, only now I’m mature enough to see it and value it. These two cities are so similar that it feels like there was never another option for where I would end up at this stage of my life. We’ll see how long this stage lasts, but I predict it’ll last a while. Even today, I managed to run an errand (or at least try to) without any map guides and gave someone directions for the bus in a different part of town. Sure, navigation might be one of my strong suits, but that’s still a big win, in my book. I hope that I get to know this place even better than I know El Paso, and that both places can loom large in my heart.
And so, we’re up into September. The job I had for two years was chugging along at its own little pace, and ended up representing the last little bits of friction that I was experiencing. I’d been passed over twice for promotions after putting in a huge amount of extra work – work that I was happy to have done and very much so proud of, by the way – and my pay had barely changed from when I started in 2022. Well, I thought the third time was the charm, and when I heard that there was a position opening in the next month, I decided to put my new job search on hold. Into October, I interviewed, both there and at some other companies at which my applications had borne fruit, and was looking forward to whatever my next step would ultimately be.
For about a week, I thought that the third time really was the charm, because I aced my interviews for the internal opening and received my offer letter in the second to last week of October. Then, within another week, it was gone. Rescinded after the head of HR of my company told me that I had “eroded the trust” that they needed to have in their employee. All because I asked if I could negotiate my salary offer. (Yes, I already called the NLRB. No, I had no recourse because my bargaining was individual and not collective. Unionize if you aren’t already!)
I quit two days after that. In hindsight, I wish I had quit the same day without any notice, but I did give them a two week notice. Which was the perfect way to spend the last miserable stretch of time before the election. Yeah, October into November wasn’t a great time. Thankfully, a job opened up for me, one for which I was eminently qualified, on account of having worked there in the past. I rejoined the family business and returned onto the team at my mom’s dental clinic, working remotely and functioning as essentially a business manager.
The freedom that comes from leaving a terrible job is only matched in breadth and satisfaction by the joy that comes from feeling fulfilled in a new job. I love my new job, as anodyne as it can be sometimes. I love the projects, the sense of purpose, the fact that I get to finally feel like I’m achieving something through my work, and the fact that I feel as if my future is once again in my own hands. Maybe 2025 will finally be the year that I go to grad school. At least it feels like a real goal once again. It hasn’t since 2020.
Thus arrived December. And as I adjusted to the new paces of life, I found the resolve to return to the old ones. I signed up for classes to continue my conversion to Judaism that start in a couple of weeks. I got to see my family for the holidays, twice over. Even my uncle, who I hope has a gentler year next year. I sat with some of my lingering sadness, my frustrations, and my fears, and I held court with them. They’re always going to be a part of my story, I think. Probably the most natural part of my story, really. To be attuned to what causes strife without being at its whims might be the most incredible development of 2024 for me. I don’t think I’ve ever quite felt that way.
So, that’s been that.
There are two things that I find myself thinking about as I write this. Well, three; the main thing is that I’m not publishing this on time because I’m still writing it, but I digress.
One of the things I’m thinking about is that I reconstructed an iPod this year. That was one of my little projects that I’d been thinking about taking on for a few years, and I finally took the plunge back in September, and it was such a blast. I got a used iPod Classic and swapped out the hard drive, battery, face and back plates, and click wheel. For the new shell, I picked out a black back plate with a bright translucent green faceplate, and a dark red translucent click wheel. It’s garish, impossible to miss, and absolutely perfect in every way. I love it so much.
Red and green, I used to say, were my favorite color. I found it impossible to choose between the two, and so whenever someone asked me what my favorite color was, I said that it was both of them together. That was the answer that felt right for a few years, but for a while, that’s been superseded by another color. Yellow.
It’s hard to pin down a specific Pantone swatch (tsk tsk, the designer inside says), but the yellow I have in mind when I say that it’s my favorite color is equal parts rich with depth and full of spry energy. It’s at once muted and a statement, the color of the feeling of slipping under a warm blanket and feeling the sun shine through a window for a nap.
Since realizing that yellow is my favorite color, I’ve slowly begun accumulating yellow things, often without even trying. Notebooks, water bottles, wallets, pillows, t-shirts, and more. My life is full of yellow now. And in its presence, I realized that it was no longer full of red and green. I only ever saw those colors in the past, which is why it felt so natural to create that homage with the iPod; that’s a blast from the past if there ever was one.
What I’m getting at with this description is that it took some time without any color to find what resonated with me now. And I think it’s noteworthy that yellow can be formed from both red and green, but not with that specific combination. It took time to separate the duo, to add in the oranges and the blues, all the hues that generally fade into the background for me, to finally end up with the kind of yellow that screams into focus. I’ve taken the parts of me that felt like they couldn’t be separated or collapsed and found a way to honor them in one fell swoop. The parts of me that love red and green are still here, they’re just changed. For the better. They’re in harmony now, and they’re vibrating in goldenrods and dandelions. I think that 2024 was all yellow.
The other thing I’m thinking about is, unsurprisingly, a piece of music. Oddly enough, it’s a song from 2023, off of Jeff Rosenstock’s most recent record HELLMODE. Stop reading this nonsense and go listen to it if you haven’t already, and once you finish, you’ll have heard the song that I’m about to talk about. It’s closer of the album and it’s called “3 SUMMERS,” and when I heard it the first time, it actually scared me. Specifically, the final verse:
See, I heard it while I was speeding down a lonely pitch black highway driving home to El Paso for Thanksgiving in 2023. At the time, I was the most stable I’d ever been, my life seemed to be so perfect, and yet, here was this piece of music that absolutely scared me shitless, because it made me think that the people I loved were beyond fixing, and that they wouldn’t ever be moved by me and my efforts. My immediate thought was “I’m absolutely screwed because nothing will ever get better for the people I love.”
It took a whole fucking year of listening to the entire album on repeat to realize that Jeff wasn’t singing from the point of view of everyone else, he was singing about me. Because just go back and read what I had to say in 2023; you really think that guy could be helped anymore by anyone else? I’d spent three long summers in Dallas after college and was completely disillusioned. Sure, I loved my friends to death and I was making good on all the promise that I had bestowed unto me by fate, but I felt like ass. Even overcoming difficulties was hollow and unrewarding. And writing that I felt like a discarded playground toy cracked and aged by the sun was the only way I could verbalize those feelings after having held them in for so long.
But now I realize that those people were never mine to fix, nor was I theirs to fix. The world moves us as much as we move it, and often times, there’s nothing more that can be done, aside from watching the wind blow and sitting with yourself. Taking stock of the things you love and the things you hate, and realizing that they all move with you. That you can move with the wind, too, but only you can sail on that breeze. No one can fix you like you can. Other people can pull a Chris Martin and certainly try to varying degrees of success, but ultimately, no one can be wholly fixed by another. And what a bittersweet miracle that is to really accept. My ego was the ultimate barrier to that acceptance, and having freed myself of it, I can say that it’s certainly more sweet than bitter at this moment.
I guess what I’m getting at is that in 2024, I saved myself. I hit the button to fire the nukes, and in the fallout of that, all the ennui I once harbored has fallen out. I pray that the aftermath of this year doesn’t poison the ones I love, and I also trust that they will be able to save themselves. I couldn’t have ever done anything else with this, the gift of a whole new year. And, despite all that, I know I haven’t overcome but a fraction of what there is left out there. The only reason I could ever have felt what I felt last year was ego, and now I’ve shut that bastard up. So, if nothing else, let’s celebrate that. Let’s celebrate the little pockets of happiness we create for ourselves, that bubble up out of nothing and that give us a taste of the lives we deserve. And let’s celebrate the drive that comes from that to keep us around. If you’re reading this, I hope you know that I love you. That I’m proud of you. And that I cannot wait to see what’s in store for us, despite whatever shit the world may throw our way. I’ll help me, you’ll help you, and if we do that, then we’ll help the world and help each other. Of that, I’ve never been more certain.
Here’s to another go around the sun.
Comments are closed.