I don't know what to say about the new year. This year I decided against resolutions, just a few short goals.

• Pay off everything by my birthday (in July).
• Plan and pay off EUROWIN2016 (London/Paris/Berlin/Amsterdam).
• Get more recipes, especially more traditional ones, memorized.
• Get to the gym regularly.
• Keep working independently on my language learning.
• Stack stack stack stack stack.

I’m hoping for 2016, God willing I get there, to be travelling to Europe and then moving to Barbados at the beginning of November. 2015 will be for getting ready for lift off, because I barely had my feet on the ground for 2014. 2014 was a year of turbulence to say the least.

In 2014 I did probably the most international travelling I’ve ever done. With a flagged passport, I made it to Bridgetown, Cheongju, Seoul, Tokyo, and New York City. It’s definitely left me in the poor house, but it was worth it. I went back to my parents’ home country, a place I’ve longed for deeply like every other child of the Caribbean diaspora, for the first time in almost ten years. Unfortunately, it was last minute and for a funeral, but I learned more about my family and what that even means in one short week than I ever have. I took the 23 hour leap of travelling by myself to South Korea to meet up with Marta and head over to Japan. As if experiencing Tokyo wasn’t enough, we also climbed Mt. Fuji (but we won’t talk about coming back down). To close my passport for the year, I ran back to New York City to congregate with fellow young West Indian artists for Labour Day weekend. I regret nothing.

I’ve dropped out of school for the last time. IF, and that’s a major one, I go back, it will only be to university. None of this community college/CEGEP/prep school/waste of my bloody time. However that leaves me looking at the rest of my planner extremely stuck. What do I do with all this free time, besides work and catch up on sleep?

Be creative.

I’ve got great friends who are extremely supportive and the space to work. I’ve got an all access pass to 98% of the museums/galleries/centres (planetarium and botanical gardens included!), and I plan to make great use of it. Everything that used to interest me artistically was always blocked by what class I had to go to or do work for, so not being in school anymore allows me so much more time.

I can’t wait for the fun this year brings.

Labels: blog