The inboxes are dead, but everything else seems somewhat lively. We spent the week in Atlanta in a basement apartment with a thunderously stompy family living upstairs. I spent a fair amount of time wandering the Beltline, dropping in on breweries and galleries, drinking my fill until about three, having my siesta, and then rousing to go do it all again. It is refreshing to see a public space so widely used – midday runners, families out with strollers, loads of dogs getting their walks, friends and well-wishers hopping from one spot to the next.

I write to you from my home studio on the first day of Dead Week – that odd time of year between Christmas and New Year’s where most Americans have absolutely no idea what day it is, when they last ate, or what it was they were supposed to be doing just now. Carly has made it to almost 10 in the morning before the TV goes on and her laptop follows her to the couch. It used to be that she was trying to keep boredom at bay by processing all manner of televised reality garbage (with zero shame, as it should be). But this time of year the couch means the warmth of a blanket.

And, this year, the warmth of our new addition, Tybee. She has turned around this year of questionable occurrence and nightmarish outcomes. When we lost Lucky a week before Thanksgiving it was a cold, clear truth that there was no way our home could ever exist without a dog. Since Chloe died, we watched Lucky age faster and dreaded every moment where she seemed drowsy or senile.

You always know when it’s time to let a dog go. It happens slowly and then all at once, usually at 4 in the morning, and your day is ruined by a cascade of grief that you try to ease with a diet of shameless televised reality garbage (herein: STRG).

Tybee was with the rescue, at a foster home, for a few months. People in Savannah are usually on the hunt for a dog that can match their active lifestyle. Pitmixes usually fit the bill. Tybee, though, loves to nap – probably more than I do. The last thing Carly or I needed was a dog that was too young or too active. We are both riding a slower wave of life right now, a conservationist period. A time when every action is considered with a deep meditation or with reckless indulgence – never both, always satisfying.

It almost feels selfish to say that it was a “hard year.” Though it was. And maybe it was compounded by the sheer lack of energy I feel, a void of productivity. Although I know the core of my being isn’t about productivity, my value isn’t determined by a stack of currency per hour/ day/ year. At the risk of poisoning whatever image you have of me with an altruistic platitude: maybe this is enough, maybe just being me is enough for now.

Even if the “me” isn’t readily convertible into interesting, engaging, or even regular content. Ideally, that never happens. However you define the meaning of life, “content” is the exact opposite.
January started with the residue of a slow December – a freezing affair that involved layers and blankets and reading thousands of pages of fiction. The calendar turned, and everything else stayed the same. I told myself I would knock the dust off my business and my goals when we returned from Scotland. Yet, there are two kinds of people who come home from international travel: those who are well rested and ready to clock in and get back to work, and those who are stung by the bug of curiosity and wondering where else they can go next.
Naturally, I fall into the latter.
Also, I went to Scotland in February. I left my laptop in the states, I didn’t even try to keep up with things. If anyone needed me, sorry? I was with camera and notebook and a fistful of tissues as a head cold showed up the morning I set out to taste all of the scotch I had read about for months. Everything, from that moment to today, has felt congested. It is as though life needs a few hours in a steam room with a bucket to blow farmer’s rockets into.

The summer was hot and listless. I brought in 39 with a weekend of festivities underscored by a stomach bug. The fall came in with the horrendous howl of Helene. Most of the county still doesn’t know what “normal” looks like. One block can seem OK, cleaned up, back in order for business. Go a block in any direction and the roads may still be covered in an inch of mud, trees uprooted and left dead in the yard, homes long since crushed and washed out – abandoned forever. And that’s just here, in Asheville proper. Anything along a river is still a smoothed over, silted wasteland.

And then we still go and elect that guy. A cherry on the year.

On the upswing, maybe, the galleries and studios that are still open are opening their doors to displaced artists. Everything is an art fair all of the time, a selection of storm-damaged pieces going for a premium – a dark memento, like a Nagasaki wristwatch, waiting for the half-life.

There’s always something new. I stop into Julieta Fumberg’s studio. It is the kind of studio I aspire to. Large canvases covered in oil, a photo studio set up and ready to go at any hour for an impromptu portrait session, a full workstation with scanners and printers.

At the front of it all she had hundreds of postcards for sale. All of them watercolors, each painted by hand. She was selling her morning pages. She started every day with putting color to cardstock, ideating where her next large canvas might go. Over time, the cards are sold at $20 a pop. I buy three, randomly. There’s no way to tell which one is your favorite when you have the only one of its kind.

It is, of all things, a reminder that I haven’t sent out postcards in a moment.