On balancing the need for self-care with the need to stay engaged, as we enter year two in the gaslight thunderdome.
I'm at that road.
Some of you will know my partner Jiun Kwon, my best friend and the love of my life, passed away suddenly late last year. And I have not made a video since then.
There's a clarity that comes with loss. A narrowed focus that you hold on to like a lifeline. Your awareness of day-to-day life is stripped to the barest essentials, as the whole of your being goes to one impossible mission: Holding on to your love. Holding on, and trying not to drown.
it's been hard, letting go of that clarity. Every step back into my own life feels like a betrayal. Like I'm letting her disappear. Making it real that she is gone. And returning to my creative work has been the hardest of all.
In those first weeks I kept telling myself I have to honor her by working, by creating, more than ever. And I took solace in that sense of purpose. But whenever I sat down to do it, I just couldn't. Even months after she passed, I would turn on the camera and immediately start weeping. Making these videos has been the most rewarding work of my life. It has been the center of my life for the last ten years. And that means returning to it, now, feels like my final step over the threshold. The final irrevocable step into living a life without her.
And then Prince died. My hero. My fucking bedrock. And as we all struggled to make sense of it, my only light in the tunnel was Prince's own muse, Wendy, telling us "being creative is how you can talk to him. If you're being creative, he will talk to you."
So on Prince's birthday, I let his spirit carry me over the line, and I finally made something. It's something humble, I'm far from a professional singer. But I made it, I stepped over that line. And Jiun was here, closer then ever.
I can't make a timetable for when I'll make more videos after this. I'll be taking it slow, trying to make it fun again. The prospect of grappling with this election season doesn't exactly fill me with joy, but I know Jiun would have SO MUCH to say about a world in which both Donald Trump and Zack Snyder have been allowed to prosper, and I have to pick up that slack. Jiun and I met through our shared love of creative expression, and shared belief in using creativity to make this world what it needs to be. And I know she'll be most present with me when I let myself be fully present, dong what we loved. So I'm gonna try to stay on this side of the line, and hopefully I'll see y'all soon.