I managed to make it through all of 2023 without updating my blog. As this year draws to a close, I want to reflect on the year but am not quite sure what I expected for 2023; this year certainly took me on a journey. It wasn’t a bad year, but there were definite peaks and valleys (as there always will be) but some of the valleys were pretty low. The year was not a total loss by any means, and it’s definitely ending on a high note.

My goal for 2024 is to actually write about interesting things, so let’s wrap up 2023 in a mega post and MOVE ON.

January

January is always a tough month for me. It’s dark and wintery. The Christmas tree comes down and the twinkly lights are no more. January also just always feels exceptionally long with nothing to look forward to. This January was no different, but there were a few unique lows thrown in just for 2023.

But first, a high!

I finally saw a professional staging of my gateway musical Les Misérables. I fell in love with Les Miz when my 10th-grade English class read the novel and my teacher made us listen to some of the songs. I was hooked. This wasn’t my mother’s Rodgers and Hammerstein! The company! The melodies! The staging I saw at TPAC was AMAZING, and the crowd was pumped–full of other musical theater nerds like me. Unfortunately, I think it was at the showing of Les Miz where I acquired…

COVID. Almost 2 years into this pandemic, it finally got me. It hit me like a bus. The main symptom was just being BONE TIRED, I swear I slept for five days straight. I lost my taste and smell, but since I have asthma I was given Paxlovid and one of the side effects was a nasty aftertaste, literally one of the only things I could taste for the entire time I was on the drug. My bout of covid pretty much dominated half of January.

The month wasn’t a total bust–after recovering from Covid, I had the distinct pleasure of attending my first-ever major league sporting event: a Nashville Predators game! It was SUCH fun and a major high for the month. Even though I was still easily tired after having covid, it was such a thrilling experience. I learned about Fang Fingers, power plays, how we thank Paul, and was very disappointed that no one threw a catfish on the ice. The Predators won and it was a thrilling game. I definitely want to go to more Preds games in the future!

I won’t go into much detail about the final low of January except to say I began the arduous and exhausting task of trying to find another job. This is not something I had been planning on doing in 2023. To make a long story short, I ended 2022 thinking a promotion was possibly on the horizon, and 2023 began with learning that that wasn’t going to happen. Nashville being the growing metropolis it is and the ever-increasing COL meant that I had to figure something else out. I couldn’t NOT try to find something new. Adulting man, it blows.

February

February was a relatively slow month, mostly occupied by commencing the job hunt and all of the decisions involved in that process. Fortunately, I also jumped headfirst into an absolutely engrossing series, Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas. Thank god for this series which GAVE ME LIFE. It–for all intents and purposes–has kind of supplanted Harry Potter as “my series” for me.

In February, I also hit a milestone in my weight loss journey. For the first time I could remember, I weighed less than 200 lbs. This came with some expected, though entirely novel, side effects. I was PERPETUALLY COLD. Working in the office became relatively painful because the climate control was so frightfully cold. As someone who always “ran hot” this was truly a shift.

Six, one of my new favorite musicals, came to TPAC in February of 2023. I had had the privilege of seeing SIX in May of 2022 on Broadway (I never wrote a post about third, fourth, and fifth shows on Broadway! I need to fix this!) and fell in love. A quasi-historical reimaging of the stories of the six wives of Henry VIII, this musical is told as if EuroVision-esque competition between the wives as to “who had it worst.” SO when I had the chance to see SIX in Nashville with some favorite local ladies, I JUMPED. Seriously this one is a crowd pleaser–you don’t have to like musicals to be into this one.

March

Honestly, I remember very little about March–I think I was just trying to keep my head above water. I survived thanks to my continuing journey through Sarah J. Maas’s oeuvre–and I did something I’d never considered before–a tandem read. Two books in the series happen concurrently in different locations and some fans figured out how to progress through both of them chronologically at the same time. It was a great experience and I’m so glad I took the time to tag all of those pages.

One of my absolute favorite humans visited me for a few days and we went to one of my favorite used bookstores in town, where she went on a mini-spree. March was when a new local friend and I started to hang out with more regularity and I’m so grateful for her–a major highlight of 2023! My nephew (and his parents, lol) spent most of the month in sunny and warm Mexico and I missed my little dude. I was so happy to be reunited with him (and I think he was happy to see his auntie as well).

April

April was a great month, besides the ever-pressing job hunt. However, I started to see some preliminary results and got some nibbles, which was encouraging, but still in that uncomfortable liminal stage where it feels like you’re not doing enough. The pressure to find a new job continued to increase, when I found out that my rent was being increased by hundreds of dollars. My lease was also up on my car in May, so I had to get a new one or decide to purchase my current car (both options brought additional costs). It was a lot and nothing stresses me more than financial matters.

However, there were SO many good things to focus on in April though:

I attended a BROADWAY RAVE with some fellow musical theater aficionados. This was essentially a huge dance party to popular Broadway musicals, lots of folks in costumes, and scream singing some of the best hits of the musical theater canon. My friends and I dressed as 3 out of the 6 wives from Six, and it was SO much fun.
One of my besties, Ashley, hosted someone who had never been to Nashville before so I helped her play tour guide in our town. Now, I’ve been on a very similar tour of Nashville over 10 years ago given by Ashley–it was wild to think about how much has changed since that first tour, both for me and for Nashville–I mean, *I* live here now! It was great fun to see the city through different eyes, colored by that patina of nostalgia and how much we’ve both changed since 2009.
I began watching Star Trek Voyager. Immediately I was in love with Captain Kathryn Janeway, a total mother effing badass. She’s my new hero and this year has definitely been defined by that love.
I got a new car! I traded in my Honda HRV for a Honda CRV. I love my new car. I also managed to upgrade with very little additional costs. (They want to sell my used car for a lot more than they’d get from me, so they’re motivated to let me off the lot with a shiny new car.)
My Nashville besties and I took my nephew to Chattanooga for a fun weekend getaway. I hadn’t been to Chattanooga before, and it was fun to stretch my legs outside of Nashville. Aunties took Skyler to the children’s museum to give mom some time to herself, we tried to dip ourselves in an absolutely freezing pool, we walked around the compact downtown area, and we visited the Tennessee Aquarium, which was a lot of fun, but for the most part, seemed to be lost on the youngest member of our party.

May

In May, I celebrated my one-year surgery-anniversary. At that point, I had lost 166 pounds overall and 111 pounds since surgery. I definitely noticed so many differences in how I existed physically in the world around me. I could work out. I could lift. I could walk for miles without my feet hurting.

All of this was put to the test as I made a trip to Chicagoland at the end of the month. Wildly, even after almost a decade of living in the midwest, I had never been to Chicago. (I was a poor grad student after all.) On this trip I stopped very briefly in Bloomington for the first night, and then drove to Chicago. I saw not one but two of my favorite people, including some Nashville folks who were also there at the same time. It was a great week of low-key exploring Chicago, visiting museums, trying out coffee shops, and spending time with some of my favorite humans. I immediately fell in love with Chicago–I love a big city and Chicago has so much to offer. My East-Coaster self was blown away to be near such a large body of water and to not be able to feel and smell the salt in the air. I can’t wait to explore more of Chicago on another visit.

June

Returning to Nashville after the high of Chicago felt rough. I had a few job prospects which gave me hope, but it all felt like a bunch of waiting and twiddling my thumbs and screaming into the void. To make matters more uncomfortable, the upcharge in my rent was due to begin in July. I felt the clock ticking, and that is a hard place for me to be in. Cue anxiety and panic.

Fortunately, there were lots of other great things in the month of June. I had more bestie fun time. I attended my first Pride celebration in Nashville with some of my Nashville framily. It was oh so hot, but it was so nice to be out and about and celebrating love (even though I had my very first eye stye which was SO painful).

I also saw my third musical of the year, a gender-bent staging of 1776 where all of the roles were played by women. While I enjoyed myself, it’s not a musical that really speaks to me and while it was fun to have women play the roles, I honestly don’t know how much it really brought to the table. I think I’d have loved to see a broader reimagining than simply flipping the cast’s genders.

June ended with a rejection that was a true bummer and sent me on a small spiral. Hindsight, of course, lets me see that it wasn’t the right fit, but that was hard to see and deal with at the moment. Thus, I went into July fairly demoralized, but still hoping that some of the other things I was pursuing would work out.

July

July was rough. It was a long month full of job-search and money anxiety. My new rent had officially kicked in. I tried to fill July with fun things: time spent with friends doing fun things, spending time with my nephew, consuming books and Star Trek like it was my job, and crafting.

Throughout my weight loss journey, it feels like there have been moments where I felt like I moved into another ‘phase.’ I feel like I moved into a different phase in July. While the number on the scale shifts less and less (and that’s okay, I really don’t care about the number), I am still losing inches as I keep working on my fitness. July is when I really started to notice how very different I felt AND looked. I began to look forward to putting together outfits–mostly from the clothes generous people around me were kind enough to pass down. (Let me tell you, having to replace your entire wardrobe several times in the space of one year blows, see the earlier notes about how much money matters stress me out).

At the beginning of July, I made it to the final round of yet another job, only to find out by the end of it that I did not get it. Again, hindsight is 20/20, but at the time, it was a gutpunch, and I went into August super-duper demoralized.

August

In August, I began applying for jobs that were not work-from-home and some that were outside of Nashville. I knew I needed to adjust my criteria to make ends meet soon. I was feeling the pressure. I started to get bites pretty immediately and that eased some fears while creating new ones.

I tried to keep up my spirits by doing fun things with my Nashville framily. One of the highlights included a ghost tour of Nashville’s famed Ryman Auditorium. While I’ve seen shows there, I had never been on any kind of tour, and certainly not a ghost tour. I got to stand on the stage of the Ryman–once the home of the Grand Ole Opry (now located a bit farther out of town)–AND explore the under stage area, which was suppppper creepy (and pix were verboten).

I also had an afternoon o’fun with my nephew that will definitely be a new core memory for me. I surprised him by picking him up from school on what had to be the hottest day of the year. When I picked him up, I asked him what he wanted to do and he said, “GET SPRINKLE DONUTS.” Now when I got him, most donut shops were closed so we went to Target to get some snacks for a playground picnic and I intended to get him a sleeve of those mini-donuts. I couldn’t find a sleeve of the donuts at the store, and he totally saw the giant bag of donuts, and of course, I got it for our picnic.

At the playground, it was so maddeningly hot. We hadn’t even been out for like 5 minutes and he already was looking a little red from the heat, not the sun. We sat on a bench and I proceeded to watch in awe as my nephew pounded down at least six donuts in rapid succession. When I told him I would get him a sleeve of donuts, I told him he could eat them all; he thought that applied to the bag as well. Because I didn’t want to police his food, I encouraged him to slow down so he didn’t hurt his belly and suggested that we play. He complained a bit because he wanted more donuts, but eventually he decided to climb the tower to the slide…when he got ALMOST to the top he started yelling that he needed help to get the rest of the way. I got up there and helped him up–uncertain about what it was that he needed help with. As soon as he was freed, he slid down the slide, made a mad break for the bag o’ donuts and ran to one of the picnic shelters and had eaten yet another handful of donuts by the time I got down there.

I was simultaneously mad and impressed. What a complex, multi staged con! I let him have his handful and then suggested a different activity so he didn’t make himself sick–it was also so hot, and for *me* a bunch of mini donuts in the sweltering heat would have hit my stomach like lead.

August was a month.

Opening up my job search to other cities proved to be a good tactic. I immediately had two interviews that went exceedingly well at institutions in other cities, both of which were an incredibly close match to my previous skills and experience. One job I had to eliminate because the compensation would not be adequate, especially as I would have had to move. The other job felt like a good fit from the very beginning: conversations with the team went incredibly well and the individual who would be my boss was so direct and forthright.

However, I stressed about the possibility of moving. That had NOT been on my 2023 scorecard, and the ability to WFH was something that was very important to me. I knew for this job, hybrid was on the table. But leaving Nashville? With all of my surgery adventures, it felt like I just arrived!

I tried to keep the stressing to a minimum. After making it to the final round for two jobs in close succession, I tried not to borrow tomorrow’s troubles.

But then it happened. A job offer. For a FULLY REMOTE job. It was a whirlwind compared to most of my previous job hunting experiences. And it was such a relief.

After eight months of searching, my goal had been accomplished. I had a new job that not only would pay me more more money as I so desperately needed giving rising COLs AND it would be entirely work from home.

Obviously, I took the offer, and my new job would start on October 1. 🙂

September

I began September in a whole new place. I gave notice at my job. I began the long process of saying goodbye to all of my colleagues. When I had started my job in 2021, I believed I was laying a foundation for a long-term career at that institution. While I knew that I needed to do what was best for me now and not what a past version of myself intended, it was still a grieving process of a sort, to have to adjust my plan, and do something off book. I’m proud of myself for doing what I need to do, but I think a (very small) part of me will always be (a little) sad that it didn’t turn out the way I planned. Thus September was a lot of goodbyes, but also a lot of excitement.

I was not sad to say goodbye to the horrible Nashville heat. In September, I committed to taking morning walks and embracing my (upcoming) WFH reality while the weather and daylight allowed. I also wanted to take advantage of my wonderful walkable neighborhood while I can (I will be moving in 2024 because the rent will likely get hiked again, see note about Nashville COL).

My fourth musical of the year was 9 to 5 by Nashville Repertory Theatre. Hands down this is my favorite production that I’ve seen this year. Not that the casts of the other shows weren’t stellar, but Nashville Rep always shows up, and this show was not any different. It felt special to see 9 to 5–a musical written by Dolly Parton inspired by one of her classic films–in Nashville, a city particularly dedicated to the cult of Dolly Parton. The leads of this show, which included some local theater legends, were SUPERB. There was not a missed note, step, or opportunity. They hit all the notes, literally and metaphorically, not a single thing wasn’t excellent. One thing I love about Nashville Rep shows is that they feel way more like seeing a show on Broadway, the theater is smaller and more intimate, everything just hits different and better (literally, the big theater at TPAC just isn’t as good acoustically).

September ended with a FunEmployment week. I was lazy, I met up with friends at coffee shops and vineyards, and I drove to NC to visit one of my favs who was also celebrating a week of FunEmployment before starting a new job on October 1st. It was delightful to literally reset with a gorgeous early-Fall drive to the mountains to clear my mind and prepare myself to start my new job!

October

October is my favorite month and October 2023 will forever be a highlight. It started on a high and ended on a high.

For starters, I began my new job.

Shortly after, I celebrated my birthday and my friends indulged me with a themed party: Queens. We had Freddie Mercury(s), Dairy Queen, queens from Six, Queen Bees, Boudica, a Chess Queen, Prom Queens, QEII at Balmoral, and a (future) Queen (basically I used it as a chance to do Kate Middleton cosplay). I had so much fun and was able to visit with some of my favorite people, many of whom I hadn’t seen together in forever. Also, I wanted to have cake because it’s my birthday dammit, but I wanted to capture what I love about cupcakes is the variety of flavors. So I had a ‘cake-cuterie’ board, a bunch of different flavors of super bougie cakes and cupcakes and I was able to sample a bunch of flavors without overdoing it and making myself sick. This will be how I do my birthday for the rest of my life.

After beginning with starting a new job and a great birthday party with some of my favorite people in attendance, the rest of October continued the hype:

There was a quilt retreat where I got to spend time with some of my favorite Nashville quilty ladies.
I attended the Southern Festival of Books on a gorgeous fall day for the first time not knowing quite what to expect. Held at the same place as Nashville’s Pride festival, it was about ⅓ of the size, and was more vendor/author based with panels and presentations–almost a conference and not quite just a festival. We didn’t get to attend any of the talks though. Next year, I think I’ll do a little more advanced planning and maybe not go with a four year old.
I saw my fifth musical of the year, Wicked. It was my first time seeing the show staged and it was so close to the musical’s twentieth anniversary. It was so wild to see a show that is familiar to me for the first time. There weren’t really any gaps in my mind, but it’s wild experiencing it.
I went to some fun Nashville pop-up bars! I don’t drink, but I love how fun pop-up bars are! I honestly think I’d love coming up with these mini-experiences. Anyway, we went to a Willy Wonka themed bar as well as a Wicked one! We unfortunately missed the Wicked bar’s hours, but one of the employees kindly let us in to see it. Very well done and I am so glad these types of popups are on my radar now.
Pretty much since I fell in love with Janeway, I wanted to be her for Halloween, but a “grey-tank” version of her. When the Captain takes off her outer jacket and is just wearing either her turtleneck or, in even more serious contexts, just her grey tank, it means the Captain is about to kick ass. I think I pulled it off, even if Janeway had to put on her jacket because it was frigid.
Inspired partly by Janeway, I got my hair cut and I don’t think I’ve ever loved a haircut of mine more. I showed the stylist a pic of Dana Scully and Captain Janeway and I told her to split the difference between the two styles and she did a great job. I had a lot of regrowth from surgery recovery and this haircut totally gave me a refresh and solved the issue of making my hair look more healthy.

November

After such a great October, I was afraid November would be hard pressed to live up to the month before. However, it was a great month, where I have been able to take stock of all of the things I can be grateful for. Even though this year has been hard, it’s reminded me of my many blessings. I began to settle into my new routine at work, in spite of the time change and the sun setting at 4:30 PM (ugh).

Here are the highlights:

I met my one of my absolute favorite RPDR queens, the wonderful Ginger Minj (It’s a threeway tie for me between Ginger, Jinkx, and Dela, with Lady Camden doing her best to jété her way in there.) Ginger has written a wonderful memoir/cookbook that’s as hilarious, warm, and wise as she is.
I made an entirely impractical clothing purchase. I saw this shiny sweater at Express when running errands with my friend. I fell in love. I tried it on. I loved it. I dithered. She convinced me to get it (hehe) and I felt slightly better because it was 50% off. I can’t wait to wear it.
I had the privilege of seeing a friend’s kiddo’s theatrical debut in a play called “Puffs, or Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic.” It was such a fun night seeing youths enthusiastically perform excellent source material with some of my favorite ladies. I would love to see a professional production of this show that was truly hilarious in the hands of budding thespians–I can’t imagine how much I’d laugh to see it performed by professionals.
I love books and I had it in my head to do an indie bookshop (and coffeeshop) crawl in Nashville–it wouldn’t take that long because there weren’t many, and I’d spend a little money in each shop. One of my fellow book lovers and I tried this concept and even though it wasn’t a shopping or caffeine spree, it was great fun.
For months my nephew has been asking for a double-auntie night with me and his other Nashville auntie. We finally made it happen in November and we wore him out. I love spending time with this little dude and seeing him grow. It’s such a privilege to be his auntie. When his mom and dad told him that he was having his “Double Auntie Vacation,” he broke out into a huge grin and said, “I’ve been waiting for this for years.”
In November of 2023, I reached the milestone of having lost over 180 pounds. I now weigh less than the amount of weight that I’ve lost, which is wild. I feel great, which is the most important thing, along with improving my relationship with food.

General Takeaways from 2023

Embrace knowing your limits and when to walk away

This has been 2023’s lesson and truly I think is one of the biggest lessons of adulthood. Being firm in what your limits are, what you are willing to accept, and drawing your own boundaries is something that is so difficult to cultivate (especially as people pleaser to the -enth degree), but I know this is a skill that I will continue to nourish in 2024. This also applies to knowing how much to engage with things happening in the world over which I ultimately have little control–I’ve been trying hard to not let world events overpower my emotions (for that isn’t productive) and concentrate on the things I can do. This will take a long time to unlearn and will probably always be imperfect, but in AD 2023, it is necessary.

Learning the new normal with food

A lot of people assume that once you have bariatric surgery that–poof–everything is normal. Problem solved. Bam you’re skinny. This is wrong for so many reasons (especially as it views the surgery as a means to get “skinny” not recalibrate your health. I say this knowing full well that many people who have bariatric surgery see it this way too.) The past year and half has been all about learning how to navigate food when my body has different needs than it once did. When stresses arise, how do I give myself that hit of dopamine that a yummy nummy snack once did? (This was especially hard as I navigated a stressful job hunt while working a full-time job.) It’s been a journey, and I’m sure there have been mistakes, but I feel so much more confident that I can make better food decisions than I did before.

Body & Food Neutrality

Related to the above, as I’ve lost weight, I feel like I’ve become even more supportive of body neutral mentalities. It’s strange when you perceive people treating you differently. It’s strange when you start to receive comments on how “good” you look, especially when the quiet part of that statement is that that is the best outcome I could have been hoping for and the implication that I didn’t look good before. I even have had people in the past year complain that I wasn’t as “cheery” as I used to be, and when I expressed that I was having a hard time post-surgery (for various reasons), they were in DISBELIEF that anything could be wrong or hard since I was losing weight now and the surgical part was over, totally reinforcing the idea that the only thing a fat person needs to be happy is to be skinny.

However, as some things in my life became easier (moving, finding clothes, not being stared at), it became revealing just how many things were hard before that I didn’t realize, and they didn’t need to be. Though things are getting better, diet culture is so deeply ingrained in our culture it’s hard to unravel. I know I have more work in this realm to do both for myself and those around me, especially any kiddos in my orbit.