If 2023 were a bike ride, I would describe it as one filled with spectacular climbing. Steady long climbs at manageable grades. Vistas on all sides. Tough in patches, especially toward the summits, but not painfully so. Equally scenic pedal-free descents. No hairpin turns. No crosswinds! Few headwinds! Sunshine! Some of the best downhills I’ve had in years, really.
Maybe these climbs gave me a false sense of confidence about my life. No mountain too high for Felkerino and me. We’re an unbreakable team, let’s go! And just as we began planning for 2024, we rounded a turn onto a steep that I wasn’t in the right gear to pedal. I didn’t think I had the gears for it, to be honest.
Since 2013 I’ve been doing year-end wrap-up posts in photos. Who doesn’t love a wrap-up post, right? They’re some of my favorites. December’s gut punch dampened my enthusiasm for looking back on the year, but the throes of the present don’t make the preceding days meaningless, though my mind has altered their significance.
I naively slipped into a mindset that life experiences keep building on each other chronologically and we control how it happens. Our own game of Jenga.
Yes, they literally do happen chronologically. However, it’s not so simple as accomplishing X goal or doing more than you did the year before. It’s a way more complicated stacking and we don’t have the control I deceived myself into believing.
In part, my life has been about chasing goals when I can and appreciating the pursuit because the process is sweet and achievement not a given. Goals and challenges have helped focus my body and mind and encouraged forward momentum.
Now I see they also better position me to handle the inevitable and unplanned body blows of life. If a bike ride hands you inclement weather, flat tires, and mechanicals, you manage those circumstances as they arise and keep going. You may wish they hadn’t happened, but progress requires moving through the ride you’re given, not the one you hoped to be on.
As I wrote some weeks back, I got the call every cyclist and everyone who loves a cyclist dreads. A truck ran through a stop sign and hit Felkerino, leaving him with multiple injuries that mean for now we turn away from goals planned to assemble the pieces of the situation we find ourselves in.
We know Felkerino’s hit and run, while serious, could have been much worse. This experience is a jolt to my consciousness of how lucky my life has been, how much I enjoy navigating it with Felkerino, and the absolute finite nature of our existence. It’s a realization that control over our destinies is fiction. I have always known this in the abstract but damn, what a tough reminder.
My sensitivities are also heightened to the very real challenges others have endured and may still be living. The sun rises both to joy and to suffering. I take inspiration from people’s resilience and abilities to keep going through it all.
2023’s year-end reflection reminds me to keep moving and find positive emotion – be it joy, happiness, or gratitude – wherever it might be. When it comes at you in bunches and even when it appears elusive.
Embrace it even if it feels dumb or trivial to do so. That is one of my primary goals as we close out 2023. Perhaps not as grand or quantifiable as other years, but it’s a challenge all the same.
I’ve cycled through many emotions over the past month and positive ones have not been heavy in the rotation. Yet positive morale is essential to both the interior life and our healing process.
I watch Felkerino’s determination to bounce back and observe how he is mending inch by inch. I’ve experienced the kindness and grace extended to us by others in our circle. I see the collective positive responses to this negative occurrence, and my mindset improves.
I muster my own energy to engage with our current landscape in healthy ways, versus less healthy crutches of the past (including an old go-to of lying on the ground while consuming hard liquor and listening to Siouxsie and the Banshees on repeat). I’m finding the gear I need to get up this steep incline.
Small positive acts are important, especially in difficult times. As one of my friends said, “I can’t stop the world from burning, but I can bring you soup.” I’m forever grateful. I think it’s another reason that, while coffeeneuring may seem trivial to some, it is fundamentally an act of joy.
These actions matter. They have healing powers that lift spirits and elevate us as people.
With that long intro, please enjoy some of my favorite photos from 2023. Unlike previous years, I didn’t organize them by month, but rather as a free flow of highlights from the year.
Thanks for reading this year and thanks to everyone for coffeeneuring (patch and sticker prizes going out in a week)! The Intern and I wish you all a very happy new year and all the best for this coming year. Forward even when it’s hard and ABC!
Chasing Mailboxes 