Well, 2023 didn’t turn out like I had hoped. And that’s the understatement of the year!

Some of the highlights:

• I attended Pokémon Go Tour at Sunset Park in February.
• I went to Podcast Movement Evolutions in March here in Vegas.
• We lost Jack at the beginning of April and buried his ashes at sea at the end of that month.
• I earned my Media Writing Essentials from the New School in April.
• We adopted a chipoodle who named herself Luna in April.
• We also observed my dad’s 1-year passing in April.
• I went to my first Dodgers game in April.
• We took Luna to her first farmer’s market in July.
• We went to the Phoenix Art Museum and an Arizona Diamondbacks game in August, one of the hottest months on record.
• I started building on Daddy’s record collection.
• I went to Hearst Castle the weekend of Hurricane Hilary in August.
• We stayed in Redondo Beach and we got to be tourists in L.A. in September, including the Pokémon x Kogei exhibit at Japan House.
• I got to go to my first ever Oogie Boogie Bash with my best friend A in October.
• I participated in Grub Street’s “Our Planet, Our Stories: Writing Climate Essays and Op-Eds” to round out the end of the year.

Some of the challenges:

• I wasn’t able to stick to my marathon training, so alas, I spent money I’m not going to use since they don’t offer refunds.
• I was struck down in September and after a round of tests, I have lactose intolerance, gallstones and a fatty liver, on top of my high blood pressure.
• As such, I’ve had to heavily modify my approach to food. It’s a struggle because eating is one of my favorite things to do.
• My mental health took a nosedive right around the time of Jack’s passing and Daddy’s anniversary, and manifested into genuine depression. I’m now taking sertraline HCL (generic Zoloft) to assist me moving forward, with plans to pursue talk therapy.

So, in light of all this, I’ve renamed the blog/portfolio to “Athena in Progress.” I’ve always had an affinity for her as far as the Greek goddesses go. I don’t see myself as Athena, but someone in pursuit of her ideals of warfare and wisdom as well as handicraft, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, strategic warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, and skill.

Maybe not so much math, but I don’t have to embody all of what she is. Hence, the “in progress” part.

Thanks for all of your support of me this year, even though I’ve had such limited bandwidth to handle much beyond what I imposed on myself as urgent. Which wasn’t a lot. I did the bare minimum while I got my head around things.

While 2023 is a bust, I’m looking forward to what I bring to 2024 with gusto.

My word of the year is “generous.” I’m not sure how to manifest more generosity in myself but also I’m hoping to pull it out of the world too. I’m willing to put in the work.