Happy. New. Year. (The more we say it, the more it's true?)

As challenging times continue for many/all(?) of us, I'm finding it even more important to reflect on wins, losses, missed opportunities and new connections. There are a lot more highlights than I expected from 2021 -- maybe if you look back, you'll find the same? I hope so. Here are some from my end:

Highlights:

• I taught three new-to-me classes at Boise State University, including playwriting
• Two of my poems were published by Magical Women magazine and one by Willow Creek Magazine
• My Climate Change Theatre Action-commissioned short play DreamSong was shown in Austria, Massachusetts, Michigan, China, British Columbia, the United Kingdom and Florida. DreamSong will come home to be shown at Treefort/Storyfort 2022 and published with the other commissioned plays through Applause Books
• My short play lift was published in the Smith & Kraus Best Ten Minute Plays collection of 2021
• lift was produced by Oregon Contemporary Theatre through their Northwest 10 Series. I got to feel fancy in a livestreamed Playwrights Roundtable  discussion before the festival's on-demand streaming began
• I got myself dental insurance thanks to Your Health Idaho
• My sister, our creative team and I held a virtual staged reading of our play Unwind: Hindsight is 2020 through Seattle's West of Lenin theatre
• Spark Creative Works showed virtual productions of my short plays lift and Somewhere on the Pacific
• My one act CloudMelt got a virtual production at Barnard College
• I participated in a national (worldwide?) event writing 10 25-word plays memorializing the life of Elijah McClain, led by Erik Ehn
• The Bechdel Group held an excerpt reading of my play see in the dark
• Moderna Vaccines! Booster shot! Even my under-12-year-old nephew is now fully vaccinated! It may not feel like it, but we are heading (crawling? limping?) in a healthier direction
• Surel's Place gave me a 10-day daytime residency, where I started two new plays for young audiences, Wolf/Girl and Ark, and shared excerpts of each through a livestreamed reading at the end of the residency
• Thanks to motivation from the Dramatists Guild End of Play program, I finished both TYA drafts in under a month
• I got married! A small and perfect ceremony and loving weekend with surprises from close friends and family, followed by a slightly larger picnic at a park. Thomas and I were then swept away to Moloka'i, Hawai'i where we spent two glorious weeks
• Though the virus continued and my sister and I still couldn't take our play Unwind: Hindsight to the RADA festival in London, I was able to instead spend my Alexa Rose Foundation grant money for that project replacing my computer, printer, phone and other supplies, materials and equipment that were sorely outdated  
• My (new) husband(!) and I collaborated on a song that was recorded and anthologized on a CD by the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights  
• I participated in a 30-day virtual silent playwriting retreat led by Erik Ehn and co-facilitated by Liz Duffy Adams. Sarah Ruhl was in our cohort!
• I started seeing plays in person again, starting with The Tempest at Idaho Shakespeare Festival, directed by Sara Bruner
• lift was a finalist in the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition
• see in the dark was a semi-finalist for Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center
• I paid off my student loans!
• I participated in Andrew Simonet's workshop: Sustaining in a Time of Change
• MING Studios produced my audio essay "Dirty Fingernails" as part of their My On Mondays podcast
• I read with Migration Theory at Storyfort
• I saw my sister perform in two plays as part of Cafe Nordo's Curiouser & Curiouser in Seattle, in one as the Queen of Hearts, in the other as the White Knight, where she ran upstairs and downstairs for both performances each night in a stellar feat of physical comedy
• I saw Hamilton for my second time live thanks to the Morrison Center offering $15 tickets to students, employees and staff at BSU on one matinee -- cancelling two of my final classes so my students could attend felt worth it
• I shared Thanksgiving and winter holidays with my out-of-state family, in person, with all of us healthy
  
• Finished a first-draft of a poetry chapbook, Drown to Resurface
  
• Updated my artist statement, both 500 and 250 word versions
  

I did make progress on my 2021/2022 goals, but I notice my goals for the next two years do look similar to last year's (and the year before). As Andrew Simonet encourages, I'm trying to think more in terms of decades now, rather than years or days, so that's okay. Progress is progress. These are big goals for me. These days still aren't usual. I'm grateful to be healthy, have work, have a home to live in, be able to afford groceries, rent, bills and small luxuries, and be *relatively* mentally stable.

3 Big Goals for the Next Two Years:

• Travel to 1-2 overseas countries
• Go to 2-3 in person silent meditation/silent writing retreats
• Get our household completely debt-free

As I've found it challenging to make bold steps in these days of continued uncertainty, finding myself occasionally paralyzed by the unknowns aided by past trauma festering in my ribs, I want to make this a year of more bravery, more stepping forward into what I know I need, letting go of what no longer serves me, more courageous joy, more openhearted rejuvenation, more grounding reflection. May 2022 be my year of claiming space for what I know I need.

As a playwright and writer across disciplines, I study the distance between us, seeking connection across differences.
 
Writing teaches me to trust my brain and get present in my body, two things I once thought impossible. I mine monsters that plagued me through child-and-early-adulthood (and still chase me down), amplifying them to mythic metaphors in locations loaded with personal history, so I can grapple with my mind as a human who lives in an absurd world, just like you. By revealing my most vulnerable secrets, I hope we can see each other more clearly.
 
In my work, tactile language, playful contradictions, kinetic imagery and haunted landscapes bridge spaces between words, between universes, between you and me. I uncover how my disorders, scars, terrors, regrets, curiosities, heartbeats, delights and wonders link with yours, the earth’s and the cosmos’. I cook our rawest parts together in hot lava stew.
 
By physicalizing my most difficult moments and mashing them with yours, along with surprising bursts of dazzling beauty and mystical forces, I hope laughter and meet-cute swoons can bubble alongside the brutality of reality. I want us to take more time to pay attention with intention, to see that the shadows inside us we can’t bear to acknowledge also overwhelm the stranger next to us, those too far away to comprehend, nonhuman persons and unrecognizable entities – and that we share intoxicating joys, dreams, desires, too.
 
Without shame, we can unveil, heal and embrace our weightiest, wildest places for love of interdependence between everything.

As a playwright and writer across disciplines, I examine the gaps dividing genres, people, perspectives and my own disjointed fragments. Studying the distance between us, I seek connection across differences. I write what terrifies me, juxtaposing the rough and the funny, the silken and sharp, the gorgeous and grotesque to catch a glimpse at what it means to exist on this planet.
 
Writing teaches me to trust my brain and get present in my body, two things I once thought impossible for me. Swimming through memories I can't believe happened, I mine monsters that plagued me through child-and-early-adulthood (and still chase me down), amplifying them to mythic metaphors in locations loaded with personal history, so I can grapple with my mind as a human who lives in an absurd world, just like you. By revealing my most vulnerable secrets, I hope we can see each other more clearly.
 
Sensory details spark mirror neurons that unite nervous systems. In my work, tactile language, playful contradictions, kinetic imagery and haunted landscapes bridge spaces between words, between universes, between you and me. As I exorcise my past, my peripheral vision widens. Disparate pathways coalesce. Through searching research, conversations, surveys and letters shared with me, I uncover how my disorders, scars, terrors, regrets, curiosities, heartbeats, delights and wonders link with yours, the earth’s and the cosmos’. I pour together collected stories, observations and devised collaborations in hot lava stew, cooking our rawest parts together. Cathartic release brings breath.
 
My play see in the dark: a new myth churns a recurring nightmare from my adolescence with our fears of the other and climate disaster. In a future Juneau, Alaska when all the glaciers have melted, the ice fields have vanished and nothing is recognizable, an isolated community of mutant outsiders must decide what to do with a newcomer: the young girl with a great power that threatens to destroy their village and everyone in it. This play collides environmental collapse, collectivism, poetry, a genocidal shadow beast, radical love and the value of compassion over suspicion.
 
By physicalizing my most difficult moments and mashing them with yours, along with surprising bursts of dazzling beauty flooding with waterfalls, oceans and mystical forces, I hope laughter and meet-cute swoons can bubble alongside the heartbreaking brutality of reality. It's hard being alive today. I want us to take more time to pay attention with intention, to see that the things inside us we can’t bear to acknowledge also overwhelm the stranger next to us, those too far away to comprehend, nonhuman persons and unrecognizable entities – and that we share intoxicating joys, dreams, desires, too. I want us to take stock of our hidden monstrosities. Without shame, we can unveil, heal and embrace our weightiest, wildest places for love of interdependence between everything. What if we held unconditional friendliness toward all citizens of the multiverse, ourselves included? I want to hold out a hand and sit with you through your struggle.
 
Together we can get through this thing called life.