The irony is not lost on me that this is the year that I decided to emulate Austin Kleon’s annual “100 Things to Love about _____.”

First, comes COVID, a righteous clusterfuck if ever there was one. So much suffering.

And in the midst of this, the final straw of George Floyd and (add more names here). It’s not like police killing Black people is new. But combine this with a pandemic and horrible politicians and it hits harder. Different. And hopefully this time will be different (but I believe change will only occur when the revolution is violent. Viva la Revolucion.  I am here for it.).

Finally, sometime in September, I accidentally deleted every. Single. File. On my computer.

All of them. My writing. My photography. My mercenary writing.

A week at the computer doc recovered nothing, but some things magically reappeared, and, by some stroke of luck/genius, I was able to recover 100% of my writing because I had either printed out or submitted all of my work in the past year, so there was a record of everything, cobbled together.

Now I have everything precious saved on two thumb drives, and I save to another once a week (my working drive).

One of the things that was deleted and not recovered was the original version of this list, up to about 70 things. There were links, and longer entries.

I am going to do my level best to remember what I wrote, but with caveats: they will no longer be in the order in which I experienced them (which is a nice little way to remember a year), and they won’t have the sensory immediacy that I had when I wrote them.

But that’s ok. We will manage.

50/100 Things To Love About 2020

1. The Grand Hotel and Spa in Ocean City, MD (room 1001, with a view of the sunrise over the ocean and the sunset over the Bay), just before COVID became reality, so it was nothing to go to a hotel in the off-season and then site cheek-by-jowl at the bar to dine at an incredible restaurant the last night I was there.

2. Biking the Everglades with Vismaya. The Shark Valley area that leads to the lookout tower, with crows who can open the bag with your lunch and a snake that eats a bird.

3. The chance to start over, and the feeling of gratitude that comes when you realize that the slate is wiped clean, whether by choice or by chance. To recalibrate and live the life you envisioned as a child.

4. Susquehanna State Park. The black trail that parallels the water and features blue herons. A gift of a day when 30 blue herons perched in the river, fishing, while juvenile bald eagles hovered on the air current above the river, diving for fish.

5. Finishing three paintings with a theme: The Poetics Series. The first inspired by a poem (”Dropping Keys” by Hafiz) and the second two inspiring poems (“Precarious Thoughts” and “Collecting Tin” – all three are available for purchase and can be viewed at Cobalt Workspace in Hampden, Baltimore!)

6. Getting waitlisted at Brush Creek (and then Brush Creek closing – not good, but part of the life cycle of COVID, I suppose)

7. The late summer/early fall breeze coming through the window.

8. Fresh blackberry lavender jam from Martha’s blackberries and lavender. Incorporated into what might be the very most perfect cake in all of the land: Blackberry (Lavender) Naked Cake With White Chocolate Buttercream.

9. Canning peaches, also from Martha.

10. Hiking the Appalachian Trail for the first time. Annapolis Rocks, on a perfect summer day, early, with very few hikers.

11. Lewis Orchards, about a mile away from Greenbrier State Park, with the best peaches in Maryland (and a better price, at $5/peck for seconds, which mostly consisted of peaches that needed more ripening but were sweet and delicious).

12. Dinner at The Shark on the Harbor in in Ocean City. Being inexplicably social that evening and meeting a lovely retired man and his wife as we ate a delicious meal at the bar together (a short week before the specter of COVID shut everything down). Feeling unexpectedly grown up and settled in myself for having that experience.

13. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, and her second brilliant novel, Transcendent Kingdom, read in one go in front of the fireplace at New Germany State Park.

14. Making tea blends from things I have grown and/or foraged. Lemon balm plants that don’t quit on the balcony.

15. Cabin ____ at New Germany State Park, and the unexpected internet signal that allowed me to get a text from KWeeks on the front porch as I ate lunch while watching a storm roll in. I don’t want to tell you which cabin – it’s hard enough to get a reservation.

16. Sausage with mustard and caramelized onions.

17. Crispy quinoa granola – maybe better than my perfect granola recipe.

18. Hiking trails all to myself in New Germany State Park. Adventuring meanders for five days as part of a hiking/writing retreat.

19. The satisfaction of putting up silver corrugated metal as a porch roof to keep the rain off for less than $100, after getting two quotes to do it, one for $600 and another for $4200.

20. Writing someone else’s life story – being hired to write a memoir after speaking aloud my intention to look for larger pieces of work. Seeing more of that work on the horizon. Struggling with the task as something much different than the smaller pieces I have become accustomed to. Leaning into that.

21. Levis 314 jeans. FUCKING FINALLY jeans that fit and don’t cost $100. Plus, 3/14 is my birthday, and I will be motherfucking 50 in 2021, so feel free to send along an appropriate tribute. #pleaseandthankyou

22. Raising $450 doing Bakers Against Racism and matching that to donate $450 each to City Ranch and Wide Angle Youth media.

23. The fall Renewal with Martha Rogers of Full Moon Acupuncture. Space to develop a morning ritual of coffee, yoga, breakfast, and morning pages.

24. The return of The Great British Baking Show in October 2020.

25. Getting published in 50Haikus and Scarlet Leaf Review.

26. Approaching my goal of 100 rejections by the end of 2020.

27. Making my goal of saving two years’ worth of basic living expenses by the end of 2020. Not even a humble brag. But a huge relief in a job that has zero guarantees and now more than ever is precarious at best. But see #43 on how that turned out for me.

28. Learning more about wildcrafting and herbalism through She is of the Woods. Making fire cider for the first time, as well as dandelion oxymel, goldenrod tincture, lemon balm tincture, and blue spruce cough syrup, all from foraged plants.

29. A weekend at John Cage Park with Khristian, trying to figure out how we might collaborate. Coming home unfortunately with a mysterious series of bites.

30. Crabcake egg rolls with spicy pineapple dipping sauce, made from crab harvested from the Chesapeake Bay and picked on the eastern shore.

31. Stuff You Should Know. Especially their two-part podcast on the Tylenol Murders.

32. Ruth Asawa and her remarkable sculpture and drawing. Also, KWeeks for getting me her amazing biography, Everything She Touched, also read during my idyll at New Germany State Park.

33. Fruits & Vegetable stamps from the USPS.

34. The possibility of seeing Gerhard Richter’s show in Los Angeles, most likely his last and one of his largest, a retrospective worth driving across the country for (since I missed in when it was in New York, a scant four hours away, because I wasn’t paying attention).

35. Blue Quail 2017 pinot noir.

36. Getting the green light on a foraging book with a focus on wildcrafting herbal medicines for the urban dweller. Scheduled to be published late fall of 2021 by Akinoga Press.

37. Taking horseback riding lessons at Graham Equestrian Center. If I had known that such bliss and contentment and focus and awareness was available to me, I would not have waited so long.

38. The first snow of the year, beautiful, fat flakes that were magical while they lasted and then gave way to sleety, icy bullshit (but this list is not about that).

39. Doing yoga every day starting in September. Following Arianna Elizabeth, Nancy Nelson, and Yoga with Adrienne. The first time I have ever had a stable home practice.

40. Hand-poured candles from KSM Candle Company. They have been sold out for most of the pandemic, good news for them, but super challenging because their candles are delicious, local, and handcrafted by a Black woman. Win, win, win.

41. CBD oil from Seed2System. So, so good. Ticks all the boxes: organic plants, no chemical processing, and great customer service. I wrote for them for a bit, but I am a convert to treat anxiety without benzos. Full-spectrum CBD oil. Look for sales (they have great ones).

42. Bitter orange marmalade made from bitter orange harvested in the alley behind KWeeks’s house. It’s bitter, not gonna lie, and the sticky goo in the pith was challenging, but it’s delicious.

43. A new-to-me car, even though I had to spend most of my savings for it, and I wasn’t quite done with the old car, which died unceremoniously and abruptly on 95 north.

44. Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman. An astonishment of a book, along the same lines for me as David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.

45. And while we are on the subject of incredible books, Anxious People by Frederik Backman, a quiet little novel about everyone doing the best they can and how chance encounters can shape an entire life, although not written in such a schlocky way as that summary. This same author wrote A Man Called Ove. Read that book, then watch the movie. I promise you it will be lovely.

46. Foraging for spicebush along the Susquehanna, and then turning it into spicebush dram, which smells delicious but I have yet to try.

47. Helping KWeeks with the final shot of his piece The Realest in Leakin Park.

48. A visit to the beach, mid-July. Not a populated beach – a tiny stretch of sand at the end of a dead-end road in Delaware where we parked the tiny house for two years. A brief, relaxed interlude when COVID walls felt like they were closing in.

49. The ritual of the last day of the year – cleaning the house, doing laundry, provisioning to promote a feeling of abundance.

50. Early morning walks on the last day of the year. The sliver of a sunrise peeking blood-red gold through the clouds – red skies in the morning promising a rainy first day of 2021. An opportunity, even as things remain the same, to feel washed clean and renewed.

Looking forward to starting this list again in 2021, starting with a rainy first-day hike and a 30-day commitment to a breath practice with Adriene.

Rising from the mud, what were the highlights of your year?