New Year, New Steeq
So happy 2024!! New Year, new look, new Steeq (ok well not a new look, I’m too lazy for that)!! I hope everyone had a good New Year’s Eve. I did, however, also manage to lose my wallet somehow so that wasn’t the best start to the year. As any true Steeqhenator knows, last year held a lot of illness for me. I spent Christmas 2022 and the start of 2023 with a blend of mono and tonsillitis, and that tonsillitis continued up until April, when I had them removed… only for the sutures to haemorrhage and lead to my return to hospital so my clotty, damaged throat could be closed up. Meanwhile, in the lead-up to surgery, the constant and chronic tonsillitis kinda made me a bit loopy. I’m prone to a bit of insanity sometimes, especially when I’m physically ill; I need a lot of energy to keep my small amygdala in check, and when every week you are dealing with a new infection or virus, it’s hard to manage all that. I was very incapable of functioning normally, and certainly a bit delusional/deranged. It was not my best year, I must admit.
I do have to give myself a bit of credit though. I did a lot this past year that I’m proud of. Travelling by myself across mainland Europe so quickly after surgery. Living in the city. I missed most deadlines due to my surgeries, and I found a way to continue with my studies when I lacked any motivation. I joined the newly established Pop Culture Society this academic year, with my good friend Ailbhe. I’ve organized some events and felt a sense of responsibility and passion for extracurriculars that I lost in secondary school.
Preceding the turning of the year, I made a plan that I wanted to be more organized. I easily fall into slumps of lethargy and ennui. I created vision boards with my friends, and I’ve been using a bullet journal to track my habits and mood. I spent the majority of my post-tonsillitis days trying to look within myself, see what I needed, who I would like to be and how to get to that point. I read a lot, and tried to be aware of my psyche and how I viewed myself along with those around me. Basically, I dated myself. And it was nice, it was great to have a sense of self that is so rigid now. I think that for 2024, however, I want to be social once again. I got a taste of it on New Year’s Eve. I got to see and be around so many people: people I loved, people I didn’t realize I wanted to see, people I hadn’t seen for months, people I was happy to just be acquainted with. I realized that I missed that carefree fun of bar-hopping and staying out til 6am. Cork is so small and so inter-connected, and as someone who can struggle with the notion of not caring, it can drive me insane. But at the same time, I do love knowing that that random person you have seen around the city for the past few years is only one sporadic and crazy afters away from being a part of your life.
I have to have a little section here dedicated to Laoise, she was the highlight of my year. We’ve known each other since we were young children, young enough that I remember her showing me her sweet stash when we were about 4 or 5. She’s always been in my life, whether as the sibling of my brother’s friend, or the friend I’d hang out with at 12 to talk about Fall Out Boy. This year though, we lived together, and while we joke sometimes that we’re cousins (we even share the same last name), I would honestly consider her family. In the summer, she would come home from work, and I’d ramble to her about how I was losing my mind over something stupid, and she would just tell me I was crazy, and then we’d watch something frivolous like Vanderpump Rules or Riverdale. I honestly could not have asked for a better person to keep me grounded and reined in enough, whilst also helping to push me to do more and be better. Our little room with the drum kit stacked up as a stand for my CD player, my computer monitor as a TV, with our plants and CDs arranged on the table. Normally Hejira by Joni would be playing, as we ate chips and drank wine we bought in the Brog because every off-licence was closed. I have to thank Laoise for just being family to me.
Anyway, enough sappy shit. Time to talk about my favourite things of the year!!!
I watched a lot of random movies last year. Some of my favourite first watches were:
Dial M for Murder (1954)
Tenebre (1982)
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Shiva (2020)
Sugar & Spice (2001)
Poltergeist (1982)
Memories of Murder (2003)
Clue (1985)
I didn’t however, watch many new releases (or at least as many as previous years). My favourites were:
Skinamarink
Scream VI
Saw X
Oppenheimer
Barbie
and Poor Things
My favourite albums of 2023 were:
Ocean Boulevard - Lana Del Rey
Javelin - Sufjan Stevens
Desire, I Want to Turn Into You - Caroline Polachek
This is Why - Paramore
Guts - Olivia Rodrigo
Like the films, I didn’t listen to many new releases, or at least enough for them to be in my rotation. My year consisted mainly of Lana, Taylor, Joni, Sufjan, Bjork, Madonna, and artists who are similar or connected to the aforementioned. A lot of Leonard Cohen and Carole King and Lou Reed and Bob Dylan too. This year, I intend to try and broaden my taste, try and add some new albums and artists to my rotation. It’s kinda been shown that after 30 you start to stop discovering new music, or mainly stick to what you know. I want to have consumed and enjoyed as many different genres and sounds as I can before then.
I read about 7 full books last year, though I started many that I have yet to complete. Those 7 were:
Building a Life Worth Living - Marsha M. Linehan
Just Kids - Patti Smith
Closer - Dennis Cooper
Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
Narrative - Frederick Douglass
What Remains - Carole Radziwill
The Sluts - Dennis Cooper
As you can see, I’m mainly into non-fiction, biographies, memoirs.
I want to read more this year. I have a few books from last year I need to finish reading:
Dracula - Bram Stoker
Girls Like Us - Sheila Weller
My Heart is a Chainsaw - Stephen Graham Jones
Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice
Buddha and the Borderline - Kiera Van Gelder
Plus I have about 60 books I still haven’t touched.
For 2024, I have a lot of goals and plans. I intend to organize a few more events for PopSoc this semester, visit Malmo, maybe go back to Paris and Amsterdam. I’ve been practising French again, as I intend to try and become fluent in it. Maybe get back into speaking Gaeilge too. Ailbhe and I have been in talks too about setting up a podcast, although we will have to wait and see. We already have a couple of good ideas planned, and if the podcast does come to fruition, expect posts advertising those episodes. I want to be simultaneously more open to others, and also very rigid in my boundaries and my values. I’ve already let go of a lot of things that have happened, but I’ve not forgotten other things. For example, I’ve moved on from petty things that have happened and can accept and blame myself for my part in situations that have arisen. Other people, however, who would try and report an event I ran, because they seem to have an issue with everyone and everything, well I will gladly burn that already barely existent bridge.
It is a New Year though, who knows what 2024 has in store? I could be a new man. I could once again develop a chronic illness that debilitates me for half the year. Hopefully not that bit, though. Here’s to 2024, and 12 new months, full of possibility, and hope. :)