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Year in Review: 2020 (main entry)
2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 (limited-access appendix), 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007
1. What did you do in 2020 that you'd never done before?
- see pandemic timeline appendix
- twerked
- sewed facemasks, including for a conceptual project called "Masked Futures"
- appeared on facebook live
- did a readthrough of act one of the musical I'm writing with Chris Blacker, which is currently titled The Lady Takes the Mic
- started shot-logging Romie and James Take A Walk in the Woods, my second feature, which wrapped principal photography in 2018
- inadvertently formed an electronica band, Stopwalk, by handing off my vocals and keyboard track for a song I want to use in the movie, and then liking the stuff Paul Starr added to it so much that well I guess we're a band now and I need to put off the movie this song is for to give this song its own space to shine.
- released a song through a distributor (CD Baby), such that it exists on streaming services like Pandora and Spotify and Apple Music
- joined Instagram (as Stopwalk) and created facebook and google business pages for the band, which give me radically different analytical tools than my personal page does. Relatedly had to set up accounts with a lot of other social media platforms and streaming services
- the "Homosexual Art Attack" music video is the first music video I've made for my own music. I've written lots of songs and made lots of music videos - and other people have made music videos based on my songs - but weirdly enough this is the first one that's by me on both sides.
- emailed a bunch of radio stations
- did not bother with pencil underdrawings for inktober and just freehanded everything with a fine-nib felt-tip pen, because I didn't have time otherwise. It looked great. It did push me in a more journaling direction where I was drawing from what I saw instead of planning out imaginary locations.
- made cabbage rolls
- early in the year but after the pandemic had already started, an Indian production company wanted to produce one of my feature scripts, a horror film originally set in Iceland which they wanted to relocate to Belarus to take advantage of co-production money, and which I actually agree is a better setting for the story. They asked whether I'd consider changing the main characters' lesbianism and I said absolutely not because their being lesbian is a key reason they are vulnerable, especially in Belarus where it's illegal and everybody got very excited because of how serious an artist I am, but then armed conflict broke out (ongoing) and it became obvious to them, as was already obvious to me when we started the conversation, that none of us was going to be making a movie in Belarus this year.
- was interviewed by Five Thirty Eight as part of an early series on people whose financial position was improved by the pandemic (mainly interviews with essential workers, of which I am one)
- "A Robot Walks Into A Bar" was anthologized in We, Robots as one of the 100 definitive robot stories in the English language, was mentioned in the English newspaper The Independent
- had an experimental essay published in Australia about ways gaming culture changed or didn't change in quarantine, "Rules Variation For a Tabletop RPG Over Webcam With Social Dysfunction And No Snacks"
- wrote a Petrarchan sonnet as a challenge to myself during National Poetry Month. It's not a form that comes naturally to me.
- did a frog stand for an appreciable length of time without landing on my face
- was part of a directors' roundtable on Backlot, a streaming website that's like an online film festival
- won (collectively with the Strange Horizons staff) the first ever Ignyte Award at the first ever Fiyahcon, in the category Outstanding Efforts in Service of Inclusion and Equitable Practice in Genre.
- was interviewed (again collectively) by Nerds of a Feather, not for the Fiyahcon award but for the Hugo nomination (we once again did not win)
- had some Postorbital microfiction reprinted in the new webzine Microverses
- wrote the Christmas carol "Do They Have Christmas in Canada"
- wrote a science fiction short story about time travel and the evolution of policing, "Evidence of Six Hundred Years." It was my sister REL's Christmas present, and I only finished it on Christmas eve, so I haven't done an edit pass or sent it around yet, but I'm very confident it will get published, although as usual I can't tell whether that means quickly or "in eight years."
- had a sonogram of my neck (to check a lump which was ultimately diagnosed as a non-cancerous swollen lymph node)
- edited someone else's book-length poetry manuscript, in a months long process that involved a lot of research because the poems were very referential - so I would solve each poem like a puzzle, piecing back together what it was collaged from, and then we'd talk about what each line was doing, and then he'd write several new versions of the line, and we'd look together at how that would or wouldn't change the piece. It's somebody whose writing I like a lot and enjoy spending that kind of time with. This is the only poet I've ever done this for.
- painted a psychedelic mural inside the kids' bedroom closet, so they can open it when they transform their room into a disco (which they do a lot, because their bedroom has blackout curtains and they have access to LEDs and strobe lights and lava lamps and things)
- was sent a message from the International Space Station, because one of Ilario's schoolmates is the nephew of an astronaut and she sent a video to the school but the school was remote so it got emailed to us.
- started making cocktails that use raw eggs; I finally get how they work
The pandemic and lockdown have not thus far changed my creative output noticeably, because I was already exploring themes of isolation and of maintaining a sense of self and purpose in times of uncertainty and absurdity. That's been my oeuvre this whole time. I've always been operating with mainly self-imposed deadlines. I've perpetually had a large percentage of my friends and collaborators geographically dispersed where it's normal not to be able to meet in person.
2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
The work cutback plan didn't happen. The opposite, both because we were shortstaffed with Coronavirus coverage, and because I wanted to build up a big PTO bank in case I did get sick or needed to care for someone who was sick, for potentially a month or two. The work cutback plan is now in operation for 2021 instead.
I also planned to get music off Ciro's hard drive or re-recorded, which I'd say mixed bag on. "Homosexual Art Attack" was part of that plan, and the recording of "Everything Reminds Me of You."
On the other hand, writing on the musical went a lot faster than expected because Chris wasn't able to play gigs and was instead at home writing music.
My goals for this year are to finish the musical, submit the new short story, get back to editing Romie and James Take a Walk in the Woods, and replace or re-clear the music on my 2010 feature film Hayseeds and Scalawags so it can be distrubuted. (I made the movie before direct-to-streaming was a thing, so the contracts weren't written for it.) Related to that, I need to re-record and rework the song "Dandelion," the only current recording of which is essentially a 2013 voice memo when I first wrote it in case I forgot the tune, so it can slot into a pivotal scene and also be a Stopwalk release.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth or get married?
Molly and Cedric planned to get married in October but have postponed the wedding until it's safe to have an event, so fingers crossed for October 2021.
Several people I'm friendly with did get married but I'm defining "close to you" as "I would have been invited and they would have been mad/sad if I couldn't come" and I don't think any of the events would have crossed that line even if they weren't socially distanced courthouse affairs. I have probably a thousand people I correspond with on a monthly basis.
Similarly, there have been babies, but not babies whose birthday parties I'd be expected to attend (although people would probably be happy for me to show up), which is how I'm drawing that line.
Trick, my ex spouse and current friend, came out as a woman (after being raised male and struggling with it a lot), and I feel huge relief for her. She seems much happier, and it looks like her family has been supportive, which wasn't in any way guaranteed.
I adopted two stray kittens, a brother and sister. I think they weren't born this year; we got them in July and the vet guessed they were 8 or 9 months old. Ilario named the black and white cat Dyson after the theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson. I named the small brown tabby Quinn, after the theoretical physicist Helen Quinn.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
Val's mom, Nancy Dodge, died of cancer in early February. I spent a lot of time eating in, sleeping in, and playing video games in her house. I also own some of the marionettes she made and used one in my 2012 comedy short "Ten."
Betty Bowie died in December, at age 96, as far as I can tell peacefully in her sleep at home with no noticeable decline beforehand, like the ideal death. My aunt Betsy was on the phone with her two days beforehand planning a visit from out of town and she was still completely sharp and vivacious. Betty was Nana's cousin (my dad's mom's cousin) and was like an aunt to my Dad, plus lived in Dallas so we were regular dinner guests. She was elegant and gracious and funny and shaped my understanding of how wealth should be used to make sure everyone around you is comfortable and feels included, instead of the other way around.
5. Where did you travel?
NYC and Albuquerque very early in the year, and then I stayed at home. We took a pretend trip to Japan as part of Ilario's classwork - we virtually (through video) climbed Mount Fiji and visited some shrines, and made some Japanese foods, and read about Japanese history and read Japanese poetry. It was about a week's Japanese vacation.
6. What would you like to have in 2021 that you lacked in 2020?
Herd immunity. Socialized healthcare in the US. For the right wing to be crushed. (We made some strides. We're not done.) It would also be nice if Uncle Rex could come visit. I saw him when I was in NYC in February, but he hasn't been able to come up here since even before the pandemic because he's currently homeless and would lose his place in the shelter system. (He was illegally evicted about a year and a half ago and has been waiting to get back into an apartment, which it looks like may finally be about to happen.)
7. What date from 2020 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
I don't really remember dates. I have to put my own anniversary on a calendar that sends me reminders. The flight back from New Mexico in February, I had a pretty good sense that something big was going to happen - although I didn't necessarily think pandemic was going to be it. That was one of the possibilities. Others were that Trump had just been impeached but not removed and I was pretty sure that he was going to get even more horrifying, which he did; and that things with me and Ciro were at a breaking point where there was going to be some kind of radical shift but I wasn't sure what it was going to be or whether it would be good or bad. But I knew life was about to change in a big way very suddenly one way or many ways.
I kind of don't like to say premonition so much as risk assessment and a good understanding of when to be alert. I had similarly wrangled everyone into taking a family photo in January when REL was visiting, even though nobody felt like it and the light was bad, because I was like "something's coming and this is going to be our last chance for a long time." I also similarly managed to guess REL was arrested in the BLM protests in Atlanta before she managed to call anybody, on the basis of who knows, I just knew pretty much the minute it happened without knowing why.
I've been kind of witchy this year even though I don't believe in that. I think it's more like I'm always preparing "just in case" for things that in fact that did happen so I looked really precient.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
We're still alive and in good health.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Realistically, I do a great job. My big failures are stuff like "I wrote an email clumsily and it caused unnecessary friction which ultimately ended with warm feelings." Or "I didn't get enough sleep and I was short with somebody, and then we told some jokes." There's a lot of stuff I'd like to do better, but that stuff is pretty adequate.
As part of my "take time off" plan, I started work on a dollhouse (as a way to make sure all my planned time off didn't all go to other kinds of work like editing and house cleaning), but that was abandoned after February, when it was clear that rather than taking time off I was going to be working even more. The tray of partly assembled tiny furniture is still waiting for me, getting increasingly dusty.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
No. At one point my right shoulder wasn't sitting in its cuff right (a common and extremely minor sports injury) and it was making my upper back stiff, so I had to do some stretches and some foam roller work to rehab it. Ciro and I were able to diagnose what was going on at home with the anatomy and sports medicine books we just have around. In the process of dealing with that, I discovered an odd lump in my neck, so I went in to the doctor to have some scans done and rule out lymphoma. Nope, just an unusual lymph node, but not in a worrying way, just in a normal human variation way.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
Ciro is the "buying stuff" arm of the family, and the best things he got were a bunch of sketchbooks (and other art supplies but the sketchbooks were the best part); the foam roller which has made my muscles so happy and means I can give myself a massage anytime, which I do; and an AI video processor that lets us remove video compression artifacts and color banding and generally lets him restore a lot of my and his old films (and photographs) that were shot at a lower resolution than we might have wanted (we are always constrained by equipment). It's really powerful. It hugely improves what we can put out.
Work sent me a gift card as a thank you and I got myself an A-line pleated skirt with cars and busses on it. I downloaded the game Genshin Impact (which is free, but I would have paid for it) and have now sunk very many hours into it. It's a nice escape.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
The Winchester public schools superintendent has been incredible about keeping people safe and sharing information and balancing a lot of competing demands. Ciro has been like my Vera Nabokov. Paul did an incredible job with "Homosexual Art Attack." Chris has continued to write incredible stuff for the musical and his notes have remained on point. Brandon has been doing a very cool dance project while all the dancers are stuck in their apartments.
Everybody who showed up to the Black Lives Matter protests. Everybody who got out the vote in Georgia (some of whom are personal friends and relatives so I have a very specific idea in my head about what that looked like and how many years it's taken).
Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
The Trump/MAGA crowd and anybody who went along with it. The dirty cops and the people who tried to cover up for them. The fascists.
To a much lesser extent, the people who try to use social justice language for clout without actually trying to lift up anyone but themselves. And dear god the people who still try to "both sides" when it's beyond absurd. I have less patience than ever for intellectual games that don't connect to reality but ask to be taken seriously. (I still like actual science fiction, and games that are non-deceptive about being games.)
14. Where did most of your money go?
We pushed out any extra money from my tons of overtime and the federal stimulus check to friends who were out of work but unable to collect unemployment, and to food banks and mutual aid funds.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
I think the best I can manage this year is "grimly satisfied" (the presidential election) or "pleasantly surprised" (enjoying a movie more than expected to, for instance). I was pretty emotionally even. I was pleased about a good deal of what's listed in section 1. And I have harrassed pretty much everyone about how good the books are that I'll mention in section 25.
16. What song will always remind you of 2020?
Out this year:
"Watermelon Sugar" by Harry Styles
"Midnight Sky" by Miley Cyrus
"Blinding Lights" by The Weeknd
"Caution" by The Killers
Older:
I got curious about what secular music was popular during Medieval plagues and through the course of my research found "Je Muir" by the troubador Adam de la Halle, which I keep playing around with.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
Happier. That's partly a reflection of me being lucky this year with regards to employment and contagion, but also 2019 was rough. In 2019 I had a lot of friends have catastrophic medical problems, some of which have been permanently debilitating for them. And Ciro's mental health has been better in 2020. There has not been an incident since April, the longest gap ever. So my stress level and threat proximity have been lower this year.
Also, the politics/fascist/racist/economic stuff that exploded into the US consciousness this year was already on my radar, already happening, so it was a relief to have more people on the same page fighting it. It's been weird for a few years being like "this is happening" and having the prevailing wisdom be like "oh probably not." It was, though. So I wouldn't say I'm happy that it's happening, but I'm happier that more people are standing up and resisting.
It does also seem very likely that I'll experience pandemic grief in 2021 or 2022. At the moment, I'm reacting to what is still happening or to preventing what could happen. My mind will probably shift to past losses once they're past. It would not be safe to divert my attention that way now.
ii. thinner or fatter?
I don't know without doing a body composition scan I'm not going to pay for. I'm about 3 or 4 pounds heavier, but it seems like it's muscle. It seems like my fat is pretty much the same. That whole idea that you can gain muscle while cutting fat, for me is a no. I am a 40-year-old woman who is already slender. I do not build muscle on a calorie deficit.
Over the summer, I tried to do a cut phase (where you try to lose fat while mainting muscle) and I did lose a couple of pounds which let me see my muscle definition better, but I also got very weak and that's when I messed up my shoulder. My pushup one-set max went from around 6 to around 3 and pretty much stayed there until I gained the weight back in November. Then I went back to being able to do 7 pushups and now 9. I have still not gotten my frog stand back; it was at about 20 seconds and now is at like 5 seconds.
My clothes still fit the same. (I wear very tailored, very close-fitting and non-stretchy clothes, so I can say this with certainty.) I look the same compared to reference photos, but with more built up arms. When I watch the WNBA, I see bodies that look like my body. (I don't have their basketball skills or cardiovascular fitness, though. With that said, I can dance and sing at the same time, so.) I also continue to have the translucent blue-veined skin of the Borg Queen.
iii. richer or poorer?
Richer. We were spending/donating all our income, but I made a lot of smart stock trades in our retirement account. I made $20,000 on my investments, about a 19% return, which beats the Dow's 7.3% and the S&P 500's 16.3%. For further context, retirement planners tell you to assume a 7% average yearly return but all my actual retirement calculations assume 3% to 5% because I don't think 7% growth is sustainable. Meanwhile I did 19%, mainly by being a science fiction writer who watches a lot of news.
I can't imagine I'll be able to beat the market every year, but I did good. Which is what I'm trying to focus on instead of automatically being like "oh no how am I going to match this success in 2021." I did not beat the Nasdaq Composite, but that index is nuts and I don't believe that Tesla Motors or any of the bubbly tech and cryptocurrency stocks are anything but speculative bubbles.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
I stand by all the decisions I made with my time. I would have enjoyed playing more nerdy grown up board games but I don't really have a crew around to do that with, and it doesn't for the most part work remotely. I like going to the cinema and the symphony and my favorite restaurant, and all the usual things like fourth of july and renfair, but I can handle taking a break for a year or two. I have before (for reasons of poverty or grad school for instance).
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Telling children to finish eating their vegetables and/or stop attacking each other.
20. How did you spend the holidays?
I worked my usual shift on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years Eve, and New Years. Captioners don't have any less work on holidays; there is still live television and people watching it. A handful of people get the holiday off, chosen by a combination of random lottery and who hasn't had a holiday off in the longest time. Plus I picked up an extra shift to cover for somebody.
Thanksgiving was fairly similar to a normal day, because the people who live in this house have big elaborate meals together a lot of the time. We did have a big zoom hangout with a bunch of mostly Texas-based close friends a couple of days after and did an early sneak peek of the music video (which released December 1).
Christmas Eve, Ciro made midnight pasta although the only people who stayed up for it were me and Ciro and one of the cats. Christmas Day, in the evening, we met up online to game with Bork and Chad like we usually do on Fridays, and Bork gave us all copies of the game "Raft" as a Christmas present. So we have spent a lot of time since then hanging out with each other on a raft. Ciro's main job is fighting the shark. My main job is painting things bright colors.
In the non-virtual world, I made a "gingerbread" train out of a variety of cookies and candies and royal icing, with black licorice whips for the train track. I already like black licorice and it turns out it's even better with royal icing. We watched Rare Exports and the Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas special. I was not able to find an advent calendar anywhere, so I made one (with much higher quality chocolates, naturally).
New Years Eve, we had fondue and played board games. Ciro cooked lentils and cotechino (which I cooked more of in the following days). We roasted chestnuts. As usual, we threw around confetti at midnight, toasted with Franciacorta, and danced to "All My Friends" by LCD Soundsystem.
23. What was your favorite TV program?
I didn't like much of anything on TV this year. I enjoyed season 3 of Babylon Berlin, although it was a strange one. Ciro and I finally watched the finale of Adventure Time, which we had been saving for an emergency and which did not disappoint.
Pretty much anything else we tried, we abandoned after an episode or two. The ones that most disappointed me (because I was rooting for them but then couldn't get past some of their blind spots) were Lovecraft Country and the Parks and Rec special. I don't really know that I can ever watch that show again.
We did watch a lot of standup specials. Good standup environment right now. We made it through Picard and The Queen's Gambit because we were able to enjoy them even while acknowledging they were pretty stupid.
We're a few episodes into The Wilds but I can't remember whether we started that in 2020 or in early 2021. It's good. Very very very good casting.
In general, I think a reason I tend to be uninterested in contemporary television, where it's all one endless serialized arc, is that I'm essentially watching a first draft of something, and there's not any reason to trust its ending is going to line up with its beginning. I've seen people pull it off. I've seen more people not pull it off.
I did finally try out Crunchyroll, the anime streaming service, and have been slowly working my way through Food Wars.
A friend noted that one of the flaws of television in 2020 was that there weren't any miniseries starting Jared Harris, and I agree. That is indeed my favorite genre of television.
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
I mean, yeah.
25. What was the best book you read?
I absolutely loved Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and its sequel Children of Ruin. They're the best SF I've read in ages. About every month or so I remind everybody I talk to that they need to read these books. They are wonderful.
Other standouts from my reading this year: the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandemeer, and The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe.
I read Ilario the first 4 books of the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy, which is where I stop. We then read the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. We're now into the third book of Diane Duane's Young Wizards series.
26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
One of the neat things about having a song of mine on Pandora (and one of the main reasons I did a proper release of the song was to get it into the Pandora algorithm) is that it's analyzed for the music genome project, which meant I was able to get recommendations of of music I might like based on what is similar to my own song.
The standout from those recommendations, which I'd heard of but hadn't really pursued before, is the 90s darkwave German electonica duo Woflsheim.
Also, this isn't music, but I've been very into the podcast "You're Wrong About." Bought some of their merch, even.
27. What did you want and get?
I finally bought myself a field audio recorder, although I can't really go out in the field to record right now.
28. What did you want and not get?
Trump was allowed to do so much damage. There were so many times people could and should have stopped him and didn't.
Chris and I applied for some fellowships/residency programs related to the musical that we didn't get partly because a number of them were postponed. That was kind of a relief because I wouldn't have felt safe going, and to some extent we were applying to get attention and network (successful) and to have deadlines (successful).
29. What was your favorite film this year?
I think the only 2020 releases I saw (which I watched from home) were Wonder Woman 1984 and Bill and Ted Face the Music, both of which I enjoyed, partly because I went in with the assumption they were going to be much worse than they were.
I caught up on the 2019 movies Midsommar, Parasite, and Ford v. Ferrari. Midsommar is retroactively my favorite film of 2019. Just oustanding.
Non-current movies I watched for the first time and enjoyed were John Carpenter's The Thing, Safety Last (the Harold Lloyd silent film), Miranda July's The Future, True Stories which I recognized some Dallas friends in, Treasure Planet, and Blow Out.
30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I don't remember my birthday at all. Knowing myself, I'm guessing I asked Ciro to make pasta and it was good.
I'd planned to do a big thing, and had even come up with a slogan and poster "2020 is 40" which I felt pretty excited about, but with the events of the year it didn't make any sense to make a big deal out of it. In theory, as someone born in 1980, I can always have my age be the two halves of year added together, but this particular time felt more catchy. Maybe 2030 is 50. Maybe I do something Douglas Adamsy for 42.
31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
The public health response in the US has been incredibly depressing, although Massachusetts has done better than the country at large (and I have to give props to Governor Charlie Baker, who I didn't vote for, and who has done a good job). A lot of individuals have done a wonderful job, but it hasn't been coordinated. It's hard to work up a proper counterfactual, but I believe a large number of the deaths we've experienced have been avoidable, and there wasn't a good reason not to avoid them.
It would have been good if the Senate had removed Trump from office after his first impeachment, back in the early part of the year. They had the opportunity. I don't think a President Mike Pence would have handled the pandemic well either, given how he did with an AIDS crisis when he was governor. "Government is useless" folks are not great to put in charge of public health departments. Still, it would have been immeasurably satisfying.
On a more personal note, it would have been kind of awesome if the song had become an immediate huge smash and brought me untold wealth. But that also would have freaked me out. It's doing fine.
32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2020?
Early 1980s rocker witchy. I've also been playing around with Christian Dior 1950s silhouettes and proportions, which means I've been playing around with Japanese samurai dress filtered through a Belle Epoque french childhood. Combined I'd say it puts me somewhere in the vicinity of Florence Welch.
And then just to get my hair out of the way I've been doing a lot of braids and a lot of braided pigtails, and various elaborate updos. It's long enough at this point it falls about mid-back. A lot of people this year have told me that they like it and see superlong hair as a sign that a woman is feeling confident, which is wild because I always associated it with going mad and rejecting society and/or wanting to hide behind a curtain, plus everybody's not getting their hair cut right now due to quarantine.
For me, who cuts my own hair when my cousin Scarlett isn't in town, it's a coincidence, because I tend to change hairstyles and hair colors when I'm shifting between creative projects, so the times my hair gets long it just means I've been working on the same long thing for a while, like grad school or in this case the musical.
33. What kept you sane?
To each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities. I'm able to do, so I do.
34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I've decided to jump on the bandwagon and have a crush on Harry Styles like the rest of the world. He's handsome, I liked him in Dunkirk, he can rock a dress. I have also renewed my vows with my forever crush Shakira following her Super Bowl performance.
35. What political issue stirred you the most?
Antifascism. Environmentalism. Inequality. Health care access.
36. Who did you miss?
REL. Ed and Stan.
37. Who was the best new person you met?
I did a lot of networking via teleconference with entertainment industry folks in New York and London. I interviewed and brought on two new Strange Horizons poetry editors, Stephen and Syd, who are both very cool, although our theoretical objective is to not hang out very much because we all know what we're supposed to be doing and can just go do it. I always wind up meeting new poets and writers and translators over the course of the year.
38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2020.
I don't know that this has been a year in which I've revised my understanding of life; it's been more about praxis.
I did learn, and this was obvious in retrospect, that if you need to unclog a toilet that isn't responding to plunging, and you don't have any toilet unclogging specialty chemicals, you can use some dish soap because it's basically the same (sinks in water, dissolves fats and proteins).
39. Quote a song that sums up your year:
"it's all right, it's all right, all right
you can't be forever blessed
still, tomorrow's gonna be another working day and I'm trying to get some rest
that's all
I'm trying to get some rest"
- "American Tune," Paul Simon
1. What did you do in 2020 that you'd never done before?
- see pandemic timeline appendix
- twerked
- sewed facemasks, including for a conceptual project called "Masked Futures"
- appeared on facebook live
- did a readthrough of act one of the musical I'm writing with Chris Blacker, which is currently titled The Lady Takes the Mic
- started shot-logging Romie and James Take A Walk in the Woods, my second feature, which wrapped principal photography in 2018
- inadvertently formed an electronica band, Stopwalk, by handing off my vocals and keyboard track for a song I want to use in the movie, and then liking the stuff Paul Starr added to it so much that well I guess we're a band now and I need to put off the movie this song is for to give this song its own space to shine.
- released a song through a distributor (CD Baby), such that it exists on streaming services like Pandora and Spotify and Apple Music
- joined Instagram (as Stopwalk) and created facebook and google business pages for the band, which give me radically different analytical tools than my personal page does. Relatedly had to set up accounts with a lot of other social media platforms and streaming services
- the "Homosexual Art Attack" music video is the first music video I've made for my own music. I've written lots of songs and made lots of music videos - and other people have made music videos based on my songs - but weirdly enough this is the first one that's by me on both sides.
- emailed a bunch of radio stations
- did not bother with pencil underdrawings for inktober and just freehanded everything with a fine-nib felt-tip pen, because I didn't have time otherwise. It looked great. It did push me in a more journaling direction where I was drawing from what I saw instead of planning out imaginary locations.
- made cabbage rolls
- early in the year but after the pandemic had already started, an Indian production company wanted to produce one of my feature scripts, a horror film originally set in Iceland which they wanted to relocate to Belarus to take advantage of co-production money, and which I actually agree is a better setting for the story. They asked whether I'd consider changing the main characters' lesbianism and I said absolutely not because their being lesbian is a key reason they are vulnerable, especially in Belarus where it's illegal and everybody got very excited because of how serious an artist I am, but then armed conflict broke out (ongoing) and it became obvious to them, as was already obvious to me when we started the conversation, that none of us was going to be making a movie in Belarus this year.
- was interviewed by Five Thirty Eight as part of an early series on people whose financial position was improved by the pandemic (mainly interviews with essential workers, of which I am one)
- "A Robot Walks Into A Bar" was anthologized in We, Robots as one of the 100 definitive robot stories in the English language, was mentioned in the English newspaper The Independent
- had an experimental essay published in Australia about ways gaming culture changed or didn't change in quarantine, "Rules Variation For a Tabletop RPG Over Webcam With Social Dysfunction And No Snacks"
- wrote a Petrarchan sonnet as a challenge to myself during National Poetry Month. It's not a form that comes naturally to me.
- did a frog stand for an appreciable length of time without landing on my face
- was part of a directors' roundtable on Backlot, a streaming website that's like an online film festival
- won (collectively with the Strange Horizons staff) the first ever Ignyte Award at the first ever Fiyahcon, in the category Outstanding Efforts in Service of Inclusion and Equitable Practice in Genre.
- was interviewed (again collectively) by Nerds of a Feather, not for the Fiyahcon award but for the Hugo nomination (we once again did not win)
- had some Postorbital microfiction reprinted in the new webzine Microverses
- wrote the Christmas carol "Do They Have Christmas in Canada"
- wrote a science fiction short story about time travel and the evolution of policing, "Evidence of Six Hundred Years." It was my sister REL's Christmas present, and I only finished it on Christmas eve, so I haven't done an edit pass or sent it around yet, but I'm very confident it will get published, although as usual I can't tell whether that means quickly or "in eight years."
- had a sonogram of my neck (to check a lump which was ultimately diagnosed as a non-cancerous swollen lymph node)
- edited someone else's book-length poetry manuscript, in a months long process that involved a lot of research because the poems were very referential - so I would solve each poem like a puzzle, piecing back together what it was collaged from, and then we'd talk about what each line was doing, and then he'd write several new versions of the line, and we'd look together at how that would or wouldn't change the piece. It's somebody whose writing I like a lot and enjoy spending that kind of time with. This is the only poet I've ever done this for.
- painted a psychedelic mural inside the kids' bedroom closet, so they can open it when they transform their room into a disco (which they do a lot, because their bedroom has blackout curtains and they have access to LEDs and strobe lights and lava lamps and things)
- was sent a message from the International Space Station, because one of Ilario's schoolmates is the nephew of an astronaut and she sent a video to the school but the school was remote so it got emailed to us.
- started making cocktails that use raw eggs; I finally get how they work
The pandemic and lockdown have not thus far changed my creative output noticeably, because I was already exploring themes of isolation and of maintaining a sense of self and purpose in times of uncertainty and absurdity. That's been my oeuvre this whole time. I've always been operating with mainly self-imposed deadlines. I've perpetually had a large percentage of my friends and collaborators geographically dispersed where it's normal not to be able to meet in person.
2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
The work cutback plan didn't happen. The opposite, both because we were shortstaffed with Coronavirus coverage, and because I wanted to build up a big PTO bank in case I did get sick or needed to care for someone who was sick, for potentially a month or two. The work cutback plan is now in operation for 2021 instead.
I also planned to get music off Ciro's hard drive or re-recorded, which I'd say mixed bag on. "Homosexual Art Attack" was part of that plan, and the recording of "Everything Reminds Me of You."
On the other hand, writing on the musical went a lot faster than expected because Chris wasn't able to play gigs and was instead at home writing music.
My goals for this year are to finish the musical, submit the new short story, get back to editing Romie and James Take a Walk in the Woods, and replace or re-clear the music on my 2010 feature film Hayseeds and Scalawags so it can be distrubuted. (I made the movie before direct-to-streaming was a thing, so the contracts weren't written for it.) Related to that, I need to re-record and rework the song "Dandelion," the only current recording of which is essentially a 2013 voice memo when I first wrote it in case I forgot the tune, so it can slot into a pivotal scene and also be a Stopwalk release.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth or get married?
Molly and Cedric planned to get married in October but have postponed the wedding until it's safe to have an event, so fingers crossed for October 2021.
Several people I'm friendly with did get married but I'm defining "close to you" as "I would have been invited and they would have been mad/sad if I couldn't come" and I don't think any of the events would have crossed that line even if they weren't socially distanced courthouse affairs. I have probably a thousand people I correspond with on a monthly basis.
Similarly, there have been babies, but not babies whose birthday parties I'd be expected to attend (although people would probably be happy for me to show up), which is how I'm drawing that line.
Trick, my ex spouse and current friend, came out as a woman (after being raised male and struggling with it a lot), and I feel huge relief for her. She seems much happier, and it looks like her family has been supportive, which wasn't in any way guaranteed.
I adopted two stray kittens, a brother and sister. I think they weren't born this year; we got them in July and the vet guessed they were 8 or 9 months old. Ilario named the black and white cat Dyson after the theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson. I named the small brown tabby Quinn, after the theoretical physicist Helen Quinn.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
Val's mom, Nancy Dodge, died of cancer in early February. I spent a lot of time eating in, sleeping in, and playing video games in her house. I also own some of the marionettes she made and used one in my 2012 comedy short "Ten."
Betty Bowie died in December, at age 96, as far as I can tell peacefully in her sleep at home with no noticeable decline beforehand, like the ideal death. My aunt Betsy was on the phone with her two days beforehand planning a visit from out of town and she was still completely sharp and vivacious. Betty was Nana's cousin (my dad's mom's cousin) and was like an aunt to my Dad, plus lived in Dallas so we were regular dinner guests. She was elegant and gracious and funny and shaped my understanding of how wealth should be used to make sure everyone around you is comfortable and feels included, instead of the other way around.
5. Where did you travel?
NYC and Albuquerque very early in the year, and then I stayed at home. We took a pretend trip to Japan as part of Ilario's classwork - we virtually (through video) climbed Mount Fiji and visited some shrines, and made some Japanese foods, and read about Japanese history and read Japanese poetry. It was about a week's Japanese vacation.
6. What would you like to have in 2021 that you lacked in 2020?
Herd immunity. Socialized healthcare in the US. For the right wing to be crushed. (We made some strides. We're not done.) It would also be nice if Uncle Rex could come visit. I saw him when I was in NYC in February, but he hasn't been able to come up here since even before the pandemic because he's currently homeless and would lose his place in the shelter system. (He was illegally evicted about a year and a half ago and has been waiting to get back into an apartment, which it looks like may finally be about to happen.)
7. What date from 2020 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
I don't really remember dates. I have to put my own anniversary on a calendar that sends me reminders. The flight back from New Mexico in February, I had a pretty good sense that something big was going to happen - although I didn't necessarily think pandemic was going to be it. That was one of the possibilities. Others were that Trump had just been impeached but not removed and I was pretty sure that he was going to get even more horrifying, which he did; and that things with me and Ciro were at a breaking point where there was going to be some kind of radical shift but I wasn't sure what it was going to be or whether it would be good or bad. But I knew life was about to change in a big way very suddenly one way or many ways.
I kind of don't like to say premonition so much as risk assessment and a good understanding of when to be alert. I had similarly wrangled everyone into taking a family photo in January when REL was visiting, even though nobody felt like it and the light was bad, because I was like "something's coming and this is going to be our last chance for a long time." I also similarly managed to guess REL was arrested in the BLM protests in Atlanta before she managed to call anybody, on the basis of who knows, I just knew pretty much the minute it happened without knowing why.
I've been kind of witchy this year even though I don't believe in that. I think it's more like I'm always preparing "just in case" for things that in fact that did happen so I looked really precient.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
We're still alive and in good health.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Realistically, I do a great job. My big failures are stuff like "I wrote an email clumsily and it caused unnecessary friction which ultimately ended with warm feelings." Or "I didn't get enough sleep and I was short with somebody, and then we told some jokes." There's a lot of stuff I'd like to do better, but that stuff is pretty adequate.
As part of my "take time off" plan, I started work on a dollhouse (as a way to make sure all my planned time off didn't all go to other kinds of work like editing and house cleaning), but that was abandoned after February, when it was clear that rather than taking time off I was going to be working even more. The tray of partly assembled tiny furniture is still waiting for me, getting increasingly dusty.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
No. At one point my right shoulder wasn't sitting in its cuff right (a common and extremely minor sports injury) and it was making my upper back stiff, so I had to do some stretches and some foam roller work to rehab it. Ciro and I were able to diagnose what was going on at home with the anatomy and sports medicine books we just have around. In the process of dealing with that, I discovered an odd lump in my neck, so I went in to the doctor to have some scans done and rule out lymphoma. Nope, just an unusual lymph node, but not in a worrying way, just in a normal human variation way.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
Ciro is the "buying stuff" arm of the family, and the best things he got were a bunch of sketchbooks (and other art supplies but the sketchbooks were the best part); the foam roller which has made my muscles so happy and means I can give myself a massage anytime, which I do; and an AI video processor that lets us remove video compression artifacts and color banding and generally lets him restore a lot of my and his old films (and photographs) that were shot at a lower resolution than we might have wanted (we are always constrained by equipment). It's really powerful. It hugely improves what we can put out.
Work sent me a gift card as a thank you and I got myself an A-line pleated skirt with cars and busses on it. I downloaded the game Genshin Impact (which is free, but I would have paid for it) and have now sunk very many hours into it. It's a nice escape.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
The Winchester public schools superintendent has been incredible about keeping people safe and sharing information and balancing a lot of competing demands. Ciro has been like my Vera Nabokov. Paul did an incredible job with "Homosexual Art Attack." Chris has continued to write incredible stuff for the musical and his notes have remained on point. Brandon has been doing a very cool dance project while all the dancers are stuck in their apartments.
Everybody who showed up to the Black Lives Matter protests. Everybody who got out the vote in Georgia (some of whom are personal friends and relatives so I have a very specific idea in my head about what that looked like and how many years it's taken).
Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
The Trump/MAGA crowd and anybody who went along with it. The dirty cops and the people who tried to cover up for them. The fascists.
To a much lesser extent, the people who try to use social justice language for clout without actually trying to lift up anyone but themselves. And dear god the people who still try to "both sides" when it's beyond absurd. I have less patience than ever for intellectual games that don't connect to reality but ask to be taken seriously. (I still like actual science fiction, and games that are non-deceptive about being games.)
14. Where did most of your money go?
We pushed out any extra money from my tons of overtime and the federal stimulus check to friends who were out of work but unable to collect unemployment, and to food banks and mutual aid funds.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
I think the best I can manage this year is "grimly satisfied" (the presidential election) or "pleasantly surprised" (enjoying a movie more than expected to, for instance). I was pretty emotionally even. I was pleased about a good deal of what's listed in section 1. And I have harrassed pretty much everyone about how good the books are that I'll mention in section 25.
16. What song will always remind you of 2020?
Out this year:
"Watermelon Sugar" by Harry Styles
"Midnight Sky" by Miley Cyrus
"Blinding Lights" by The Weeknd
"Caution" by The Killers
Older:
I got curious about what secular music was popular during Medieval plagues and through the course of my research found "Je Muir" by the troubador Adam de la Halle, which I keep playing around with.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
Happier. That's partly a reflection of me being lucky this year with regards to employment and contagion, but also 2019 was rough. In 2019 I had a lot of friends have catastrophic medical problems, some of which have been permanently debilitating for them. And Ciro's mental health has been better in 2020. There has not been an incident since April, the longest gap ever. So my stress level and threat proximity have been lower this year.
Also, the politics/fascist/racist/economic stuff that exploded into the US consciousness this year was already on my radar, already happening, so it was a relief to have more people on the same page fighting it. It's been weird for a few years being like "this is happening" and having the prevailing wisdom be like "oh probably not." It was, though. So I wouldn't say I'm happy that it's happening, but I'm happier that more people are standing up and resisting.
It does also seem very likely that I'll experience pandemic grief in 2021 or 2022. At the moment, I'm reacting to what is still happening or to preventing what could happen. My mind will probably shift to past losses once they're past. It would not be safe to divert my attention that way now.
ii. thinner or fatter?
I don't know without doing a body composition scan I'm not going to pay for. I'm about 3 or 4 pounds heavier, but it seems like it's muscle. It seems like my fat is pretty much the same. That whole idea that you can gain muscle while cutting fat, for me is a no. I am a 40-year-old woman who is already slender. I do not build muscle on a calorie deficit.
Over the summer, I tried to do a cut phase (where you try to lose fat while mainting muscle) and I did lose a couple of pounds which let me see my muscle definition better, but I also got very weak and that's when I messed up my shoulder. My pushup one-set max went from around 6 to around 3 and pretty much stayed there until I gained the weight back in November. Then I went back to being able to do 7 pushups and now 9. I have still not gotten my frog stand back; it was at about 20 seconds and now is at like 5 seconds.
My clothes still fit the same. (I wear very tailored, very close-fitting and non-stretchy clothes, so I can say this with certainty.) I look the same compared to reference photos, but with more built up arms. When I watch the WNBA, I see bodies that look like my body. (I don't have their basketball skills or cardiovascular fitness, though. With that said, I can dance and sing at the same time, so.) I also continue to have the translucent blue-veined skin of the Borg Queen.
iii. richer or poorer?
Richer. We were spending/donating all our income, but I made a lot of smart stock trades in our retirement account. I made $20,000 on my investments, about a 19% return, which beats the Dow's 7.3% and the S&P 500's 16.3%. For further context, retirement planners tell you to assume a 7% average yearly return but all my actual retirement calculations assume 3% to 5% because I don't think 7% growth is sustainable. Meanwhile I did 19%, mainly by being a science fiction writer who watches a lot of news.
I can't imagine I'll be able to beat the market every year, but I did good. Which is what I'm trying to focus on instead of automatically being like "oh no how am I going to match this success in 2021." I did not beat the Nasdaq Composite, but that index is nuts and I don't believe that Tesla Motors or any of the bubbly tech and cryptocurrency stocks are anything but speculative bubbles.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
I stand by all the decisions I made with my time. I would have enjoyed playing more nerdy grown up board games but I don't really have a crew around to do that with, and it doesn't for the most part work remotely. I like going to the cinema and the symphony and my favorite restaurant, and all the usual things like fourth of july and renfair, but I can handle taking a break for a year or two. I have before (for reasons of poverty or grad school for instance).
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Telling children to finish eating their vegetables and/or stop attacking each other.
20. How did you spend the holidays?
I worked my usual shift on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years Eve, and New Years. Captioners don't have any less work on holidays; there is still live television and people watching it. A handful of people get the holiday off, chosen by a combination of random lottery and who hasn't had a holiday off in the longest time. Plus I picked up an extra shift to cover for somebody.
Thanksgiving was fairly similar to a normal day, because the people who live in this house have big elaborate meals together a lot of the time. We did have a big zoom hangout with a bunch of mostly Texas-based close friends a couple of days after and did an early sneak peek of the music video (which released December 1).
Christmas Eve, Ciro made midnight pasta although the only people who stayed up for it were me and Ciro and one of the cats. Christmas Day, in the evening, we met up online to game with Bork and Chad like we usually do on Fridays, and Bork gave us all copies of the game "Raft" as a Christmas present. So we have spent a lot of time since then hanging out with each other on a raft. Ciro's main job is fighting the shark. My main job is painting things bright colors.
In the non-virtual world, I made a "gingerbread" train out of a variety of cookies and candies and royal icing, with black licorice whips for the train track. I already like black licorice and it turns out it's even better with royal icing. We watched Rare Exports and the Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas special. I was not able to find an advent calendar anywhere, so I made one (with much higher quality chocolates, naturally).
New Years Eve, we had fondue and played board games. Ciro cooked lentils and cotechino (which I cooked more of in the following days). We roasted chestnuts. As usual, we threw around confetti at midnight, toasted with Franciacorta, and danced to "All My Friends" by LCD Soundsystem.
23. What was your favorite TV program?
I didn't like much of anything on TV this year. I enjoyed season 3 of Babylon Berlin, although it was a strange one. Ciro and I finally watched the finale of Adventure Time, which we had been saving for an emergency and which did not disappoint.
Pretty much anything else we tried, we abandoned after an episode or two. The ones that most disappointed me (because I was rooting for them but then couldn't get past some of their blind spots) were Lovecraft Country and the Parks and Rec special. I don't really know that I can ever watch that show again.
We did watch a lot of standup specials. Good standup environment right now. We made it through Picard and The Queen's Gambit because we were able to enjoy them even while acknowledging they were pretty stupid.
We're a few episodes into The Wilds but I can't remember whether we started that in 2020 or in early 2021. It's good. Very very very good casting.
In general, I think a reason I tend to be uninterested in contemporary television, where it's all one endless serialized arc, is that I'm essentially watching a first draft of something, and there's not any reason to trust its ending is going to line up with its beginning. I've seen people pull it off. I've seen more people not pull it off.
I did finally try out Crunchyroll, the anime streaming service, and have been slowly working my way through Food Wars.
A friend noted that one of the flaws of television in 2020 was that there weren't any miniseries starting Jared Harris, and I agree. That is indeed my favorite genre of television.
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
I mean, yeah.
25. What was the best book you read?
I absolutely loved Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and its sequel Children of Ruin. They're the best SF I've read in ages. About every month or so I remind everybody I talk to that they need to read these books. They are wonderful.
Other standouts from my reading this year: the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandemeer, and The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe.
I read Ilario the first 4 books of the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy, which is where I stop. We then read the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. We're now into the third book of Diane Duane's Young Wizards series.
26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
One of the neat things about having a song of mine on Pandora (and one of the main reasons I did a proper release of the song was to get it into the Pandora algorithm) is that it's analyzed for the music genome project, which meant I was able to get recommendations of of music I might like based on what is similar to my own song.
The standout from those recommendations, which I'd heard of but hadn't really pursued before, is the 90s darkwave German electonica duo Woflsheim.
Also, this isn't music, but I've been very into the podcast "You're Wrong About." Bought some of their merch, even.
27. What did you want and get?
I finally bought myself a field audio recorder, although I can't really go out in the field to record right now.
28. What did you want and not get?
Trump was allowed to do so much damage. There were so many times people could and should have stopped him and didn't.
Chris and I applied for some fellowships/residency programs related to the musical that we didn't get partly because a number of them were postponed. That was kind of a relief because I wouldn't have felt safe going, and to some extent we were applying to get attention and network (successful) and to have deadlines (successful).
29. What was your favorite film this year?
I think the only 2020 releases I saw (which I watched from home) were Wonder Woman 1984 and Bill and Ted Face the Music, both of which I enjoyed, partly because I went in with the assumption they were going to be much worse than they were.
I caught up on the 2019 movies Midsommar, Parasite, and Ford v. Ferrari. Midsommar is retroactively my favorite film of 2019. Just oustanding.
Non-current movies I watched for the first time and enjoyed were John Carpenter's The Thing, Safety Last (the Harold Lloyd silent film), Miranda July's The Future, True Stories which I recognized some Dallas friends in, Treasure Planet, and Blow Out.
30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I don't remember my birthday at all. Knowing myself, I'm guessing I asked Ciro to make pasta and it was good.
I'd planned to do a big thing, and had even come up with a slogan and poster "2020 is 40" which I felt pretty excited about, but with the events of the year it didn't make any sense to make a big deal out of it. In theory, as someone born in 1980, I can always have my age be the two halves of year added together, but this particular time felt more catchy. Maybe 2030 is 50. Maybe I do something Douglas Adamsy for 42.
31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
The public health response in the US has been incredibly depressing, although Massachusetts has done better than the country at large (and I have to give props to Governor Charlie Baker, who I didn't vote for, and who has done a good job). A lot of individuals have done a wonderful job, but it hasn't been coordinated. It's hard to work up a proper counterfactual, but I believe a large number of the deaths we've experienced have been avoidable, and there wasn't a good reason not to avoid them.
It would have been good if the Senate had removed Trump from office after his first impeachment, back in the early part of the year. They had the opportunity. I don't think a President Mike Pence would have handled the pandemic well either, given how he did with an AIDS crisis when he was governor. "Government is useless" folks are not great to put in charge of public health departments. Still, it would have been immeasurably satisfying.
On a more personal note, it would have been kind of awesome if the song had become an immediate huge smash and brought me untold wealth. But that also would have freaked me out. It's doing fine.
32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2020?
Early 1980s rocker witchy. I've also been playing around with Christian Dior 1950s silhouettes and proportions, which means I've been playing around with Japanese samurai dress filtered through a Belle Epoque french childhood. Combined I'd say it puts me somewhere in the vicinity of Florence Welch.
And then just to get my hair out of the way I've been doing a lot of braids and a lot of braided pigtails, and various elaborate updos. It's long enough at this point it falls about mid-back. A lot of people this year have told me that they like it and see superlong hair as a sign that a woman is feeling confident, which is wild because I always associated it with going mad and rejecting society and/or wanting to hide behind a curtain, plus everybody's not getting their hair cut right now due to quarantine.
For me, who cuts my own hair when my cousin Scarlett isn't in town, it's a coincidence, because I tend to change hairstyles and hair colors when I'm shifting between creative projects, so the times my hair gets long it just means I've been working on the same long thing for a while, like grad school or in this case the musical.
33. What kept you sane?
To each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities. I'm able to do, so I do.
34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I've decided to jump on the bandwagon and have a crush on Harry Styles like the rest of the world. He's handsome, I liked him in Dunkirk, he can rock a dress. I have also renewed my vows with my forever crush Shakira following her Super Bowl performance.
35. What political issue stirred you the most?
Antifascism. Environmentalism. Inequality. Health care access.
36. Who did you miss?
REL. Ed and Stan.
37. Who was the best new person you met?
I did a lot of networking via teleconference with entertainment industry folks in New York and London. I interviewed and brought on two new Strange Horizons poetry editors, Stephen and Syd, who are both very cool, although our theoretical objective is to not hang out very much because we all know what we're supposed to be doing and can just go do it. I always wind up meeting new poets and writers and translators over the course of the year.
38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2020.
I don't know that this has been a year in which I've revised my understanding of life; it's been more about praxis.
I did learn, and this was obvious in retrospect, that if you need to unclog a toilet that isn't responding to plunging, and you don't have any toilet unclogging specialty chemicals, you can use some dish soap because it's basically the same (sinks in water, dissolves fats and proteins).
39. Quote a song that sums up your year:
"it's all right, it's all right, all right
you can't be forever blessed
still, tomorrow's gonna be another working day and I'm trying to get some rest
that's all
I'm trying to get some rest"
- "American Tune," Paul Simon
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