On 2022, Birthdays, and What I'm Bringing Into 2023

Today is my birthday. When I was a kid, I loved my birthday. I never had school, we always got to do something fun, and my parents did a good job of separating it from Christmas. But as I’ve gotten older, the anxiety around my birthday has taken on a whole new meaning. Not only am I turning a whole year older, but the world is entering a new year as well.

All the feelings of reflection, regret, reminders of what I didn’t do come flooding to the surface. I rarely celebrate my birthday because it’s the day before New Year’s Eve and I don’t like inconveniencing my friends and family.

But this year, I’ve decided I’m not going to be hard on myself. 2022 was not a flashy year in my life. I didn’t do anything “big” on my lifetime bucket list. Yet it was a huge year for me.

In 2022, I finally got to return to the stage after nearly two years of not being a working actor. I met new friends who are so impossibly important to my life. Two of my best friends brought their first babies into the world, I finished two drafts of novels that have been sitting in my head for years. Read & Wright is still small in terms of the grand scheme of things, but the community continued to grow.

I learned how to say, “No,” when I needed to. I met more incredible students and watched them grow in confidence on and off stage. I learned some new recipes, hosted my first large dinner party, saw some spectacular theatre, and stayed out way too late at the bar.

I slept in and woke up too early, I traveled via plane for the first time since February 2020. We finally caught C*vid and made it through with mild cases, and got our 4th dose of the vaccine. We watched some fantastic football, went to my first Bills home game (I always went to the away games growing up in Connecticut…can confirm it’s more fun to be surrounded by other Bills fans instead of Pats/Giants/Jets).

I met some of my favorite authors and had the chance to interview them for Read It Or List It. And I read over 150 books.

We have years of grow and years of achievement. This was a year of growth for me, a quiet year to some because there weren’t any big shiny moments. But to me, the quiet years are the years I notice that I’m more and more comfortable in my own skin. That is a feeling I can never replace and I’m grateful for the trials of this year that brought me closer to my dreams.

I’ll be sharing more about my “word of the year” and 2023 goals and intentions, but here are the things from 2022 I want to bring into 2023 with me:

• The Friends

• The Laughter

• The Rest

• The Creativity

• The Dreams

• The Writing

• The Movement

• The Nourishment

• The Love

• The Possibilities

Thank you for all you’ve done to make my dreams here a reality in 2022. I can’t wait for 2023 and I hope I’ve made you proud.

Happy New Year, my friends.

Alexa, play Auld Lang Syne.