Tag: new year (page 1 of 1)

January 2, 2025 / 0 Comments

No More Hiding

As the clock ticked to midnight, we were in Disney Concert Hall with the rest of “grown & sexy” Los Angeles losing our minds to Mike Phillips doing saxophone solos over Bone Crusher’s “Never Scared.” Nothing says you’re of a certain age like stomping the yard in one of the world’s premiere orchestral venues as a jazz saxophonist gets you hyped to a song that started fights in clubs 20 years ago.

We old, y’all. But much like Big Daddy Kane—who closed the D-Nice & Friends New Year’s Eve Club Quarantine Show and is well into his fifties—these knees still work, and we’re still out here getting the job done.

We are dancing in the aisles. We sing along loudly and off-key with Johnny Gill and Jon B. We canoodle to NEXT and Case’s hip-hop ballads. We get hyped to Greg Nice, En-Eye-Cee-Eee. We praise 90s icons in the building like Arsenio Hall, Yo-Yo, and the dearly departed DJ Clark Kent, whose turntables, kicks, and signature fitted cap were in a place of honor on stage. 

I did not want to enter 2025 on my couch watching other people’s lives on our TV. Leaving 2024 behind required something tactile. I needed catharsis.

I am not so dramatic as to need to burn off the sadness, loss, and illness that were frequent in the previous year, but I longed to feel of and in the world. I wanted to feel the electricity of being alive.

I wanted to feel all the days of my big Gen X age and, instead of standing on the sidelines shaking my head, be in the thick of it shaking my ass.

We took public transportation to experience the holiday with our fellow Angelenos. We ran into Cadence of the LA Sparks Crew on the train there. I took that as a good omen. Was our favorite tumbler from our favorite team going in the same direction as we were? Yes.

As we returned home, downtown LA was filled with shiny, happy people. We got to pet dogs and laugh at kids up way past their bedtime while dodging our intoxicated neighbors as they navigated to their next destination.

Like us, I hope they all made it safely to their beds and opened their eyes this morning to a day of perfect winter weather in our fair city. 

As I opened my eyes for the first time in 2025, I was immediately reminded that getting home safe and waking up is not guaranteed.

If we are so lucky as to wake up in this life, let’s face it directly. 

I ain’t never scared.

January 2, 2022 / 0 Comments

A Digital Reset and other links for the new year

Anil does a personal digital reset each year. I took this as a motivator to improve my relationship with Twitter. However, I didn’t do a complete unfollow as he does. Instead, I used Tokimeki’s unfollow tool. I dropped about 200 accounts. I also got rid of some lists. I found myself particularly interested in decreasing the news & politics accounts I follow (unless they were about Los Angeles), removing weak or no longer relevant work ties and people I might personally enjoy but not in tweet form.

What’s left?

  • people I know and like

  • good tweeters

  • basketball

  • Los Angeles

  • General Company Town and Streaming work follows

I really want to spend 30 minutes or less on Twitter most days (basketball and televised live events excluded), and I don’t want to be depressed after I’ve done so. Let’s see how it goes.

“The world is not generous with downtime. There’s always more to be done or things that could be done a little better. So to harvest the benefits of rest, you need to nurture it and protect it.” – Alex Soojung-Kim Pang in How to Rest Well

I’m in the middle of a two-week break from work but spent the first two business days of it working (even though everyone in our division was, in theory, also on holiday). Taking rest seriously seems like a worthy resolution.

“No 8 a.m. Meetings in 2022 ”

— Roxane Gay

‘Nuff said.

Do you spend your best hours checking emails, catching up on work, or doing tasks for your family? Try giving that time to yourself instead. Use it to focus on your priorities rather than someone else’s. You can use that hour or two for anything you want — it might be for a hobby, a project that you feel passionate about, time with your children, or even to volunteer and help others. Setting aside your best hours to focus on personal goals and values is the ultimate form of self-care. – Tara Parker-Pope in NYT’s Well Newsletter

Too many NYT links in this list, but let’s do one more.

Let’s leave the last word to Dawn Staley:

“I’ve never felt more Black than right now.”

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January 6, 2019 / 0 Comments

This is Where My Life is

“Things are just as they are.”

— Love and Equanimity Meditation

Today is the first day of 2019 that I remembered to write the correct year when dating my journal. Shall we call that progress? I don’t mean to suggest that it has been a rough re-entry into normal life. It hasn’t.

I’ve been reading Zadie Smith’s Feel Free, a book whose name I get wrong every time I write it down or speak about it. It’s sometimes Find Free and most often Live Free but always not the correct title. I haven’t decided if there is symbolism in this. Am I seeking to live more free in some way or to find out what it means to find freedom?

I do find constraint in this body. These hips don’t move the way I would like. My blood pressure is elevated. My upper back likes to stiffen when I sleep. This belly should be smaller if only so I might not fear to suffocate in child’s pose. During the first day of Yoga with Adriene‘s 2019 30-day program—Dedicate—she asked us to discern what brought us to the mat. To my surprise, what came to mind:

“I want the best version of my body whatever form that takes.”

I’m as committed to the idea of improving my flesh as I am to not defining what “the best version” means for me. What it has been in practice is over thirty days straight of some form of exercise, eating more of the right things, and believing that doing that which nourishes me is better than doing what’s convenient.

The actions may be difficult but the choice to do them every day hasn’t.

It hasn’t only been the physical. I’ve found discipline in limiting my screen time. I’m scheduling daily practice for improving my Spanish and treating it like class. I’m idling less in front of the television.

I’m reading Zadie Smith and feeling free.

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