It’s time again for the annual New Year Blog Post—the sixth one I’ve written so that the four of you who read this can be assured of the creepy degree to which I document and hoard memories (as if you ever had doubts). I wrote the first two in New York City, then one in Tennessee, one in DC, one in Mississippi, and now here in New Orleans. The locations are the only way I can keep the years from blurring together.
2018 started so differently than it ended. A year ago I’d been living in my childhood bedroom at my parents’ house for six months. I was exhausted from incessantly applying to jobs and trying to pay my student loans while not letting myself compromise and give up on waiting for the type of job I knew I wanted. Every day I looked at the websites of a dozen or more universities for new openings, and in January I sent an application to Tulane and promptly forgot about it (I’d long given up on trying to keep track of them all). I started that job at the end of April. Those first 4 months of the year were full of uncertainty and forced patience, and then there were the next 4 months of summer that I spent trying to live between places. I rotated between 6 different houses plant sitting, cat sitting, house sitting, subletting, commuting from Mississippi, and couch surfing (mostly couch surfing), all while looking at over 60 apartments in hopes of finding one that wasn’t disgusting (if you haven’t had the pleasure of apartment hunting on a tight budget in New Orleans, it’s sort of like touring the set of horror films every day. You think I exaggerate.) and that I could afford. I will be forever grateful for the friends who let me sleep in their spare bedrooms and on their couches and air mattresses for way too long. I moved into my new apartment in September, and then there were the 4 months of the fall semester when I finally felt like I was doing my job for the first time and learning what advising and living in this city is all about. This was the first time in a decade that I moved to a city that was already familiar and where not every person is a stranger. I’m still not used to it.
In 2018 I was able to reunite with some of my oldest and best friends. I felt lucky every day for the people I got to work with. I spent a night at my 10 year high school reunion. I published 5 pieces (after three years of publishing nothing). I feasted at Sophie’s dinner parties, toured dead fish collections in swamp bunkers, visited haunted houses, attended Voodoo ceremonies, and watched second line parades from my front porch. Lily turned a year old and also learned how to say my name. I made a pilgrimage to Tennessee and reunited with the first students I ever taught. I interviewed about 35 college applicants and advised over 300 Tulane students and tutored 8 students from 4th grade to PhD programs. I voted in the mid-terms, which felt very different than the last election day. I traveled less than I have in a decade, but I still squeezed in visits to Atlanta, Nashville, and Waco. I stayed for free in a haunted hotel in the French Quarter and pretended to be a tourist. I took my first Spanish class in 12 years and taught my first college class. I ate a lot of tacos and a lot of meatballs and a lot of snowballs and got used to never drinking tap water (which is not an actual rule in New Orleans but maybe should be). I read 81 books and listened to 31 audiobooks. I started taking aerial circus classes and, without really noticing, got stronger than I’ve been since I was 14. I did my first circus performance, and I’m so lucky to have stumbled upon this quirky and delightful circus community that I had no idea existed and feels to me like the real embodiment of this city.
I turned 29, which feels no closer than 30 than 23 did, really. Sometimes my friends say they’ve started feeling old. To them I suggest joining the circus and performing for an audience in a leotard for the first time since 8th grade—it’s a guaranteed way to cure aging.
This will be the first spring in 9 years that I haven’t been job searching (whether for a summer job or a full-time one). This will be the first year I work year-round without a summer break. Mostly I hope 2019 is full of feasts and circus tricks and books and publications and new places. Twelfth Night was over the weekend, which I’ve never once thought about before this year. But this time there were king cakes everywhere and the first Mardi Gras parades and people getting excited already, and I went to my silks class and flew around some and felt more like a true New Orleans resident than I maybe ever have.
