2022 in Travel and Friendship

A belated Bunch of Feelings about last year!

I love when the calendar rolls over into a new year. I’m totally into new year’s resolutions, reviewing all the things I accomplished in the last year, trying to learn from (and somehow optimize) the passage of time. And yet despite all of that I’ve been procrastinating on writing this newsletter. (As you can tell! Seeing as how it’s almost February.) 2022 was such a big transitional year for me that it feels really hard - or maybe, more accurately, it feels too soon - to try and sum it up into a tidy essay. Last January I was living in a different city and country than I am now. It was a heavy travel year, but most of that was travel back and forth between cities I’d already visited or lived in. It was a year of uprooting and moving things around and so, so much life admin. But it was also a year of quality time with friends and family, and of settling down into a new place that is starting to feel like home. 

Peter and I rang in January 2022 in New York. We ate a whole feast at Kopitiam and then went to the immersive Van Gogh exhibit and then, a few days later, I took him to the opera to see The Magic Flute. We wandered through the light show at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens while drinking spiked hot chocolates, and then it snowed one morning, a whole thick blanket of it, Peter’s first time seeing a proper East Coast snow. We woke up early and took Rigby to Prospect Park and let him run paths through the powder while it was still fresh and white and beautiful. A few days later, Peter went back to Dublin and I was by myself again. 

This is absolutely a bathroom selfie taken at the Met Opera.

But no: I was never by myself in New York, not really, even though it felt that way sometimes. I had Ellen and Mandy, of course, but I also had the neighborhood I lived in, long walks in the park with Rigby, a million restaurants to try, a beloved neighborhood coffee shop where I’d go to work for hours at a time. I felt entrenched in my community in a way that I’m still working on here in Dublin. Then, in February, Rigby and I flew to Ireland together. Rigby would stay there ahead of my permanent move - we felt like it was easier, with all the admin involved, to move him first, then my belongings later.  On my birthday Peter cooked me breakfast and brought it up on a tray to eat in bed, which is, to me, the height of luxury. We took Rigby to our favorite park and then in the evening we went to a concert of Nordic choral music and then a very fancy dinner. I stayed in Ireland through March, when we went on vacation to Istanbul, and then, only a week later, took a quick weekend trip to Belfast. Those would be the only two new cities I’d visit that year. One thing I’m really looking forward to in 2023 is traveling for pleasure again, getting to explore new-to-me places.

It never stopped snowing during our weekend in Istanbul.

In April I visited Giulia in The Hague. I hadn’t seen her in person for years and the whole long weekend was magical: espresso and fresh stroopwafels from a street vendor, early-season tulips, dustings of snow on gabled roofs each morning. Giulia’s sunny balcony, a table set with gorgeous breakfasts to share. Shortly after that visit I headed back to Brooklyn. This was the hardest flight yet: I had to leave Peter and Rigby behind in Dublin, returning to a totally empty studio. I think this is when I really started to feel like I was saying goodbye to New York. Rigby was one of the anchors keeping me there, and once he left, I felt solitary, transient in a way I hadn’t before. I still took long walks in the park but it was harder to self-motivate. 

Luckily, in May I had a weekend trip to D.C. planned to see Alan, where I got to cuddle with Chai the puppy and drink a bunch of orange wine. (A highlight of that very fun weekend was honestly just sitting on the couch with Alan, watching M. Night Shyamalan’s Old and eating Indian takeout.) 

My last photo with Rigby before leaving him in Dublin.

I took the train back to New York, then got ready to take a very long walk around the perimeter of Central Park with Mandy. It was a gorgeous early-summer day, and we drank little beverages and stopped for ice cream and it was perfect.

Then I settled in for a long June where I’d go to the park almost every day and lay on a blanket under my favorite stand of birch trees, reading an endless string of books. I didn’t have much else to do. I was saying goodbye to the city I’d lived in for seven years, and that made me feel lethargic. Peter and I were supposed to travel to Oklahoma in June so that he could finally meet my family, but then, tragically, he came down with COVID the day he was supposed to fly out. Then my own flight got cancelled, cutting my already fast visit in half. I flew to Oklahoma alone two days later, exhausted, sad, unsure of when Peter and I would be able to re-plan the trip. I got to spend a few steaming-hot days with my family - Oklahoma in June is really something else - and squeeze my siblings and grandparents and my mom’s new puppy. Then it was over, and I flew back, and my world started to feel like it was holding its breath until the move.

Peter recovered from COVID and flew to New York in early July, to help me in my final week ahead of the move. We spent Fourth of July at Fort Tilden with Ellen and Will and their friends, feasting on giant Italian heroes and rosé. We packed the entire studio, starting in a leisurely manner and then getting more and more frantic as the week went on. We took a glorious day trip to Storm King and ate bodega sandwiches in the shade of a giant brass sculpture of a foot. We had goodbye drinks with all of my friends, we sold a bunch of my remaining possessions on Facebook Marketplace, my sister flew in for my final evening - spent at Queens Night Market! - and then we were gone. 

Storm King looking glorious as always.

The months since then have felt like a blur: if you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you’ve heard about them in previous essays. I got COVID almost immediately upon arrival in Ireland. My apartment’s worth of possessions would take months to arrive, so there wasn’t much settling in to do, at least not right away. I knew, logically, how emotional the move would feel, but I wasn’t prepared to be so bowled over by it, wasn’t prepared for the way my innate sense of independence seemed to slip away for a few months. (I’m starting to recover it now, in part because I’m working my way through The Artist’s Way, which - whew! Can’t recommend it enough if you, like me, need to prioritize Doing Your Own Thing.) 

The rest of the summer flew by, with me remaining sort of frustratingly out of commission from the lingering effects of COVID. Still, we did stuff: hikes, movies, museum visits and trips down to Tipperary to visit Peter’s family. In October we were finally able to make it to Oklahoma, so that my family could - chaotically! - meet Peter for the first time, even though I’d already moved countries. (Luckily they all loved him.) We drove Route 66 and went to a Thunder game and ate so, so much fast food and it was glorious. In November we flew back to New York for a week for Ellen and Will’s wedding, and it was a total whirlwind in the best way. Then back to Dublin, and my first holiday season in Ireland, which was filled with so much more drinking than I could have anticipated. (Between the holidays and catching the flu over New Year’s, January has felt like a true recovery month.)

What am I looking forward to in 2023? A less punishing travel pace, for one thing. Falling back into habits that I let slide during the giant Transition Year that was 2022, like my running and yoga routines. Finally hanging up the rest of the wall art that I literally paid to ship across the Atlantic. (I will never not wish I had hire-an-interior-designer kind of money.) Focusing on maintaining my existing friendships, traveling to see people as I can, and continuing to make new friends here in Dublin. I’m currently feeling 2023 as less of a year for hard-and-fast goals, and more of a year of vibes.

A late-summer concert in Dublin.

How are you feeling? How was your 2022? If you’ve made it to the end of this rambling piece - thank you, as always, for being here and for reading. Here’s to another year together.