“It’s been thirty years since I saw my mom and sister for Thanksgiving and Christmas” I slowly, patiently explain, knowing that I fucked it up yet again. My friend’s eyes get wide. “No I mean, I see them every year a few times a year. It’s just that I’ve been working in retail management so long, and they live far away.” My friend visibly relaxes, nods in understanding. Clearly she heard “I haven’t seen my mom or sister in 30 years and this is finally happening”, which is the usual misunderstanding. I do this with words in my personal life as well as my artistic one: I try to boil the explanation down into the most succinct sentence. I want the perfect soundbite to convey this trip. I want the perfect soundbite to convey my big, stupid heart.

This is how I find myself eating German chocolate cake on my mom’s bed at her place in San Antonio the night of my 50th birthday, on November 27th, 2023. It’s a milestone, people kept reminding me, “You should do a blowout!” Eh, I’ve had enough blowouts in my life. I can handle a low-expectation night. Against my wishes, my mom has gotten me gifts, which I dutifully open. With each one I unwrap, I mentally calculate how much I’ll have to repack to fit everything into my bags for the trip home, conclude that I may have to buy more luggage. My mom loves watching either Hacks or what she calls Hallmark Gay Movies every time I visit. I pretend to grumble about the Hallmark Gay Movies but secretly I fucking love them. Is this night Single All The Way? Or maybe The Holiday Sitter? Let’s weep together while watching Good Grief! Happy Fucking Birthday.

I spend a week in Miami shortly after that for Art Week! It’s a whirlwind and I am in my happy place, doing installations and meeting lovely people. December of 2023 marks two months since I’ve quit my day job and my retail management career to be a full time artist, and I’m making epic memories. I have a secret though, which is that I am a machine made to produce grief. Earlier in that year I lost my dad and my beloved cat Ned, and their loss is a faint buzz in the background of everything I do. Yes, it’s lessened, it has dulled over time, but only barely. I go on out of habit. I go on because there is no alternative.

The holidays come, and for the first time in decades, I don’t put up a tree. “If I’m going back to Texas for Christmas anyway…” I mentally shrug, to justify it, but the truth is I just am not feeling it that year. I get back to Portland from visiting my mom and sister and her family, spend a quiet New Year’s Eve at home.

2024 starts with a bang, with my freelancer health care plan finally kicking in, and on January 4th I test positive for COVID for the very first time. It comes on strong, but the timing is lucky with my health plan and I gulp down some Paxlovid prescribed after my telehealth doc appointment. I feel better fast, and get back to making art. The lingering grief however, combined with the sinister feeling of having a virus that my body doesn’t quite know yet how to battle, makes me look inward. It’s a strangely selfish feeling, with the grief informing my fears about my own mortality. It is strange that we just…end. No wonder so many belief and faith structures include the concept of an afterlife. Life is miraculous, but it’s only here on death’s terms.

It makes me think of my legacy, too. What is left after I’m gone? So much of my art exists only online…so what do I leave behind? I have a cheerful tendency to put everything in “apocalypse” context: what place does this have if society is stripped to its bare essentials? What skills would I even have at the end of the world, if there was a meteor strike, or another, even more deadly global pandemic, or (god forbid) nuclear war? I’m not sure if this is just the doomer Gen-X in me talking, but thinking about my own talents and artistic voice in the context of global catastrophe and societal breakdown is both humbling and motivating. So I get to work on making a permanent legacy. You’ll remember this part later as foreshadowing.

In the meantime, I go on two very important trips that shape my year and my art, and I’m overjoyed to bring along my friend Michal with me. She and I have know each other since my early days in LA, and the first adventure is to Mexico City, my second time there. We make bilingual art there together (no that’s not a euphemism), we both keep running into Beck for some reason, and we check out Zona Maco. The next month we head to Texas, where we attend South By Southwest as wide-eyed first-time attendees, and make art in and around downtown Austin (and, as a bonus, I get to visit my mom and sister just down the road). A couple kind strangers give me advice that I should speak at SXSW the next year. That feels…unrealistic, but I smile and nod, thank them for the advice.

Spring hits Portland like a load of bricks, the city erupts in blossoms and blooms as I honor the anniversary of my dad and cat passing the year before. I’m grateful they passed at the time of year they did, and I know this sounds strange to hear, but it’s true: celebrating the legacy of their lives and the love they gave while the city shakes itself awake to a beautiful, colorful Spring, will forever be the time of year that I’m reminded that life still exists and goes on. We become dirt and earth and then are reborn in an endless cycle of nature persevering. Maybe we’re reincarnated? Maybe there’s an afterlife? Maybe we’re worm poop after they nosh on us? Whatever it is, it’s none of my business. If it’s any of these options, it’s highly unlikely I’ll care. I don’t think The Universe is exactly waiting for my five star Google Review of how it treats those who have passed on.

My first book launches, and I have a mini whirlwind of press, an incredible launch party with my team (what?! I have a team now???), and the surreal feeling of seeing it out and about in different places. It’s a small, cash-register-worthy pocket book of my favorite installations (that, sadly, don’t contain profanity, since it’s marketed to young adults). Book two is on the way too, in August of 2025!

I can comfortably say that I then experience the Best Summer Of My Life. It’s for a number of reasons, but the fog of grief from the year before lifts a little more every day, it’s as if the one year anniversary gently nudged me, quietly whispering “Hey kid, it’s safe to smile and enjoy life again. That’s what they would want.” I spend almost the entire month of June and into July in New York City, and although the trip is frustrating artistically (full of half-committed plans and guest models ghosting shortly after initial enthusiasm), it’s personally so fulfilling to spend a huge chunk of my summer in one of my favorite cities on the planet.

I cross a milestone: I get my very first colonoscopy! It is a necessary, humbling reminder that we are all just one long tube. It involves drinking the strangest liquid I’ve ever had in my body, and the best, propofyl-induced nap of my life. I’m cleared for three more years. This does nothing to take my mind off my mortality, off my legacy.

The whole year though, I’ve been working on a couple secrets, which I’ll tell you now: I’ve been finally heeding the prompts of many friends to make my own print shop, and had slowly been communicating with a collaborator in another country to make a prototype of a permanent letter. Shortly before this year’s birthday, Andy the manufacturer sent me photos of the prototype of the letter. It’s beautiful, sturdy but delicate looking; a magenta “B” made out of gleaming stainless steel. My eyes well up when I see the pic for the first time, as I hear my dad’s voice in my head saying he’s proud of me.

The next week, I get word: our application was successful, and the effervescent Sarah Jones and I are scheduled to speak at SXSW in March of 2025. This baffles me. She is gregarious and engaging (and has done multiple TED talks), but…me? This gave my constant imposter syndrome an awkward meal to chew on. Maybe it’s not all bad. Maybe this is what your future looks like, your hard work finally paying off, I think to myself.

My favorite moments this year are the times that my heart surprises even itself. Scrolling across a friend’s post, I see a creature in need. He looks a lot like Ned, but I can see the differences in . I visit him, then eventually bring him home. He is a teenager, he is a little brat, and luckily he is nothing like his ghostly big brother Ned. I never expected to be open to having another cat in my house only a year and a half after Ned passed, and there is a kind of relief when the pang of missing Ned doesn’t go away. The grief I have doesn’t fade, I just underestimated how my heart could hold that much love, twice. The new one tells me his name: Steven. Hmm. Kind of heteronormative, but okay. Time to get your balls removed, Steve.

The year ends on a sour note with the election going deeply wrong, and half the nation mourns. I wake up the morning after the election, pad around my apartment unsettled around 3am. What just happened? What parallel universe did we just slip into? What does this mean for the weakest and least protected of us? What role does my art play in this?

This world will break your heart while it’s saving your life. This life will ruin you, will drag you for filth and give you the best, most healing hug you’ve ever had in all your days. This is me walking up to my mom’s place in San Antonio, this is me walking up to my sister’s door with my luggage. I walk along Cannon Beach on the Oregon coast with two dear friends, Haystack Rock looming in the distance. I walk, a small smile on my face, along Bleecker Street in the 4th of July New York heat. I grin over drinks with friends as we check out a Lucha Libre match in Mexico City. I walk still, along familiar Central Avenue in my hometown Albuquerque, hot air balloons dotting the endless sky.

I walk, I don’t stop walking. My last secret? I finally know where I am going. I know this path well, and I’m glad you’re here with me. I walk into my future and it is beautiful, for all of us. I promise. I’ll show you.