new year, old laundry.
Uncertainty and fireworks as 2023 slips away into a moment in time.
My sister only ever had one rule for New Year’s—don’t start the new year with laundry from the old year. Every year since, for well over a decade, laundry on has been an important component of my New Year’s eve ritual. Like many repeated rituals, this activity became, for me, a routine, something I had done over and over, like a thoroughly rehearsed speech or a dance, paying little attention to it—mindless.
The thing with rehearsed speeches, dances, and most mindless activities is that you never really give much thought to it until you break a sequence, and then, you do. And for the first time in a very long time, I crossed over to a new year with a basket full of dirty laundry.
As I stood out on my balcony, watching the fireworks go off, I remembered telling my best friend just a few hours before, and with utmost certainty, that this year was not going to be any different and that I would spend the evening down in the basement with my laundry. As I watched the sky fill up with colourful sparks of light, I felt warm inside, even though the temperature stood at a bone-chilling 2-degrees. I thought about how the year, 2023, had really played out. Much like the fireworks display—which starts out as a rocket shot into the sky trailed by a line of dust, or is it smoke?! First a crack, then unpredictability, is it going to be a bang or a crackle? Sometimes the fireworks line up in perfect symphony, and other times, it is a cacophony of ear-splitting bangs and cracks, filtering in from several directions creating chaos.
In my last newsletter for 2022, I recounted the ways in which I had failed that year and made a show of predicting how I would fail in the following year. But over and over, I am reminded, as with the events of the last two or three years (depends on how you count), that assumptions can be dispelled. 2023 was a year of uncertainties; even the world’s best analysts and experts were unable to correctly predict the turn of events.
Chaos and unpredictability. To perfectly capture the year, I refer to a quote from French writer and philosopher, Voltaire:
Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.
In 2022, I took an indefinite career break. I decided to move away from home and pursue a postgraduate degree. Between being away from most of the people that I loved, being in full time education, unemployed and burning through my savings faster than dried leaves in the harmattan, and uncertain of what I would do when my break was finally over. I had nothing to keep me grounded.
Sailing the Storm marked an important milestone in my life. At the time when everything was falling apart and my health was failing, my closest friends supported and pushed this crazy idea that I had, even though, deep down, I love to think that a part of them probably knew that I was going to abandon it on the way—because this is what I do, abandon. So, even though it was not a part of my predictions for the year, I put the website offline.
At least one time throughout the course of our lives, we are forced to make a difficult decision, and a lot of times, the choices that we make are forced towards self-preservation. For me, I abandon. I like to think that being forced to make a difficult decision is akin to being backed into a corner, literally, with no obvious way out except having to fight your way through an obstacle. And no matter how hard you try sometimes, your feet are clamped to the floor, hands tied by magical ropes out of which you can’t wringle, face covered by masks that stop your breathing—just enough to keep us alive but never enough to hold you down in a fight.
Most of the year was marked with moments like this one, where I not only felt out-of-place in the world, but had also completely lost faith in myself and my capabilities. I wrote quite a bit last year, including the article I published for The Republic, but a lot of the other stuff remained in my draft, and the longer they stayed there, the less confident I was to put them out. Thankfully, however, life is unpredictable, so much so that a lot of times, hope springs out from our most dimming moments, like the first crack of dawn piercing through the darkness. My day broke just as the year was winding down.
So, while I am sad that I had to put Sailing the Storm offline, and wish that things could have gone a little differently, I am reminded once again, through faith, hope, and the love that has kept me through the years, that failure is not always the end. Failure could mean going back to the drawing board, re-imagining, re-strategising, and trying again. This is what I am doing. I might attempt this again in the future, but for now, I will only be writing on Substack. All previous posts from the website and early newsletters will be archived here in no time. We can only move forward from hereon.
Just as I’m about to turn the keys and make my way back into my studio, hands frozen stiff, the sounds from the fireworks crescendos. I look down at my phone and it’s one minute till midnight. Then I look up one last time and say out loud, “It’s going to be a good year.”
