2023: empty pages filled
a year of surprises and coping
2023 - twenty-twenty-three.
I was another version of myself every month of this year.
I’ve encountered twelve different sides of myself in 2023.
This year entered with the same sentiment in the air like right when I started typing on this fresh blank new page. I had no plans for this year. No societal structures were telling me what should happen this year. No school work had to be particularly get done or accomplished. My driver’s license flew around the air, but I had trust that would happen. There was no little voice inside my head telling me what I had to do this year. It was a book with 365 empty pages, all free to write on.
“While planning my year ahead I want to feel surprised in a good way. I wanna have a beautiful collection of 365 pages which are still blank but fulfilled with lovely experiences at the end of 2023.” - January 1st, 2023 while joining
workshopWhat happens when you realize nothing is planned for that upcoming year? Well, people were astonished by that attitude. What you have no plan? What about the things you didn’t do last year that made you sad? Don’t you wanna do them as much as last year? My answer was no. I’m not running after plans and ideas and dreams I had all my eighteen years of life. I wanted to just go with the flow. See what happens and perhaps (writing this on December 30, 2023) I wanted to see how I can cope with that. How do I process when something just happens? Without me having overthought and overplayed it in my mind all the time beforehand?
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On Threads, I’m sharing a piece of writing what touched and made me feel moved every single day of the year of 2024. Give it a follow to be graced by words.
The most important lesson turned out to be that those 365 empty pages were all destined for me, but people sometimes took and made them into their own, some ripped them out, stole them from me, other times I gave them to people with my own free will, wanting them to desperately write something on it, mark my soul in a way that I could not forget.
Well, I forgot one or two if I am being honest.
The year ahead in front of me: I want to look at 2024 with the same saying of having a collection of 366 empty pages. This time I dearly hope and wish I will write most of them.
It was nice to follow people’s plans and ideas and go along with them. It took me to places and made me experience nice moments. It feels like I do need to handle things in my own way this year. I have loads of ideas this time around, I wanna go to places and events and I wanna accomplish this and that. I have direct visions for 2024 - something that lacked when I stood on the streets after midnight, in the first hour of 2023, and stared up at fireworks my neighbors threw in the air.
There were many first things in 2023: my first festival, my first kiss, my first drive in the car on my own, my first time sitting behind the wheel anyway. My first time taking the train to go from England to France. My first time being in Paris without any friend (or lover). My first time staying in a hostel and going up to people, introducing myself with fully knowing I’ll never see them ever again in my life, but why not go to the pub together? I drank alcohol for the first time this year. I published my first poetry collection. I translated a book for the first time. I had a real “muggle” job for the first time this year. I drove to the workplace and showed up for the hours I was supposed to be there and then drove back home, adding the work hours to my paycheck for the end of the month. I lived “on my own” at one place for the first time. A whole month in London, I grew close to the grocery store around the corner, the coffee shop down the street knew my name and my order, I learned the tube stops off by heart. I slept next to someone for a couple of nights in a row. I GOT MY FIRST PAIR OF COWBOY BOOTS THIS YEAR!!!
In a way I can’t be bothered by the year ending. It’s not like I’m not looking forward to another year, but tomorrow morning I’ll wake up, have the same feelings, the same thoughts and I’ll probably have the same dreams. It feels like I would like to have another month in this year, to maybe round things up, get more clear on things and emotions, make peace with a storm inside my heart. Time is time - this storm wants to see 2024 as well. I’ll take it with me. Gently directing somewhere - wherever that might be.
Here are the twelve sides of myself I’ve met in this year:
January: I learned if you really want to accomplish and sit down and do something, you can. It’s all about being aware of the energy inside yourself and also trust in it.
February: shouting out my book “It was her” into the world. Strangers bought it and told me how excited they are to read it later this year.
March: an estrangement started to fire up inside my heart. I was craving the world to feed and present me with friendship, love and good music.
April: Valencia and London were homes to me, exploring cities, living (as I’ve written above) in a flat with mates and making myself feel local in a foreign place.
Friendship and romantic encounters happened and they all made me write poetry on the beautiful things in life. Many trains and tube rides reminding me to take in to processing whatever just happened.
May: I worked and took many driving lessons, I started taking my podcast
serious and developed “Oh! Pretty New Music”, visiting my brother in Barcelona.My saddest day was end of May. Waking up and sobbing to have woken up. Being ripped inside so much that there has no one been yet I am
able to give my love to.
June: Primavera and loads of live music, making me feel deep respect for everyone working behind the scenes of what we all enjoy the most.
Maggie Rogers making me feel translucent and remembering me of what power I am holding inside of myself with all this love.
July: finally achieving my driver’s license. screaming heartbreak songs in my VW with the windows down. realising that muggle jobs are sucking the creativity out of me.
August: sooooooo much!!!!!!!
like throwing my birthday party in London with friends and celebrating the announcement of my poetry collection, crying while reading the words I’ve written on cowboys and drummers.
backpacking through the UK, feeling the breeze of Scotland’s air for the first time, feeling like I might belong somewhere sometime.
going to concerts, feeling glamorous and even adventurous with taking a trip to Birmingham only to see Angel Olsen.
meeting new friends and strangers, flirting and thriving. feeling good.
September: not being able to sleep, getting bored of London and escaping back to home in Germany. becoming obsessed with the x-files and feeling for the first time in quite some years the ecstatic experience of crushing on a fictional character (love you, mulder!! lol)
October: developing my first program as
and getting everything figured out to host my writing retreat during November. feeling the magic of what happens when you only share your ideas and visions with like-minded and supportive people.November: hosting said writing retreat and spontaneously going away again. feeling like it might be the last time to England for some months. the urge of concluding things, circling in a year of being solo-traveling.
finding out what has been my goal from the beginning of 2023: experiencing whatever and then witnessing how i cope with it. feelings and experiences making me questioning the ending, the circle, throwing open windows of glimpses of a different future.
december: i’ve got friends now which makes me really happy and also sobby occasionally haha. friends i can call up in the middle of the night and cry or complain to about life, family or love.
and here i am on new year’s eve in newcastle. encircled with people that love and care about me. i’m feeling the heaviness of this year on my skin, i’m shivering while typing these words. i’ll be excited for this new year ahead one day. right now, i just wish maybe things would’ve been different this year. but then who knows what i would’ve written then.
and here’s something i’ve most definitely learned:
you can travel to places, your feelings are still going with you. so maybe think of that in terms of having a new year in front of you: we are traveling into a new year, our feelings are still going with us as well :)
newly added bonus to the subscription:
Every new subscriber gets sent a copy of the first printed issue of Howdy Bonnie! which contains all loved & favourites from my readers and myself hehe.
Ahhh I love this Bonnie, I love looking back on that reflection too 💕💕💕 happy new year! Here’s to much more poetry and cow boy boots in 2024 🥂