9 years of Splash, 29 years of age

reflecting on an anniversary

I started this newsletter a week before my 20th birthday — now 9 years ago. The story of Splash is the story of my twenties, and each July I can’t reflect on a year of life without reflecting on my year of writing. Every birthday leads to some introspection: thoughts on the passage of time and how one’s identity has morphed between milestones. But it’s odd when your identity is linked to a craft that charts your shifting thought process over time. I look back at my year through my memories, my photos, and the many essays I wrote, concentrated forms of hours of thought.

If there was any one main theme of this year, it was that life is maddeningly non-linear. Becoming one thing doesn’t mean that you’ll stay that way. Growing as a writer or as a person doesn’t mean that you’ll continue to grow, or even maintain the level of skill that you had before. I became more emotionally available in the past, but I find myself more closed off than I used to be. I once strongly identified as a writer, imagined a clear career of publishing newsletters, pitching magazines, submitting poetry, but now I wonder if any of that makes sense for me anymore. I felt like I understood what my life would look like for years to come, but now, at 29, the future seems murkier than ever before.

In this way, I spent the last year re-learning what it was like to feel like a beginner, opening myself up to a larger range of possibilities of what my life and my creative life could look like. I tried different structures to my essays, I re-connected with my photography practice, and tried to create like I did when I was younger, with fun and openness.

There are many ways to try and reflect on an entire year of living and writing, but I already have the words to describe what has happened over the last fifty-two weeks. So here are 16 of my favorite lines from this past year, ordered in a way that summarizes this year of life and writing:

1. I didn’t figure it all out this year. Things were harder than expected. I am more confused than I was a year ago, and I appreciate it.

2. I try my best. I go to the American Museum of Natural History. I stand in front of a diorama of a massive taxidermied bison. I gaze into its blank, shiny eye.

3. I look at my old photos, I find blurry portraits of people I used to spend time with and they are beautiful.

4. In these moments, amid all the joy, I feel loss. I no longer live in the same city as these friends.

5. I try to dream of becoming a great writer, stacks of books emblazoned with my name. But the images are blurry. They don’t piece together into anything.

6. There’s more for me in this life, this I know.

7. Sitting in my parent’s living room, overstimulated with “content” and unable to focus on the beautiful birds outside of the window, I wondered if my will was being bent, or simply eroded.

8. I want to be able to see beyond the narratives that surround me.

9. And I want to feel like a child again.

10. I think of the winter mornings as a kid when I would climb down from my bunk bed and run to the window, hoping for snow.

11. I love the snow.

12. I am not a serious person, I whispered to myself with a stupid grin on my face.

13. I bob my head to the “boom-ch-boom-chick” beat from a speaker on the corner, everyone feels like a friend — you know what I’m talking about.

14. This much is obvious: taking art seriously unlocks an entirely new world, filled with joy, sorrow, and other people who have spent some of their limited time on the planet to understand it.

15. In the face of the widening gyre of cultural stagnation, I gladly look forward to what that rough beast may hold and imagine a world of art far beyond what I currently know.

16. I will always just be a man, seeking the same things as another man.

I haven’t thought much about what this coming year will hold, but I aim to maintain the beginner’s mind I began to cultivate and continue to try new forms of writing and art. I hope you’ll join me on this journey.

To all of my readers — those who have been subscribed for years and those who have no idea who I am — thank you. I hope you’ve enjoyed some of my work and that we’ll continue to see each other for more years to come.

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💧 Drops of the Week 💧

• ALBUM - Prima Donna by Vince Staples - old record by Vince Staples that I’ve been revisiting

• POEM - “Telemachus’ Detachment” by Louise Glück - I did just see The Odyssey…