2022 Year in Review

January We started the new year on the south coast of Western Australia, vacationing in the region that has Albany and Denmark. We were almost two years into Australia's border closure for covid-19. We hadn't seen our family in a long time. I had a verbal job offer and plans to go for a visit to campus when Australia planned to open its border on February 5. It was summer, and we were trying to make the most of our time Down Under. The south coast is really beautiful, and though the Southern Ocean is cold and violent (and so makes for bad and dangerous swimming), it offers really stunning views and some good fishing. On New Year's Eve, we spent the day hiking in the Stirling Ranges. We considered driving to town to watch the fireworks on New Year's Eve but ultimately we didn't. We had a steak dinner at our hotel's restaurant and went to bed early so we could do plenty of outdoor adventuring the next day. It's the first time I haven't stayed up until midnight on NYE since probably 2000. 

On New Year's Day, we saw a huge goanna. It's probably a good sign. My PhD adviser always used to say that any day you saw a really big lizard was a great day, and she was right. I'm gonna extend it further: any year you start by seeing a huge lizard is gonna be a good one. 

Things got weird and stressful before they got good. Australia changed its mind at the last minute about opening its borders. We had to decide at the last minute whether to 1) negotiate and maybe accept the job without ever visiting the campus and the city so that I could keep my job through the end of my postdoc funding or 2) sell everything we owned, and break our lease in two weeks so we could go on the originally scheduled interview visit.

February We decided to do the second thing, and the first half of February was pure chaos as we dismantled our life in Australia and I prepared for the visit to Knoxville. We sold basically everything we owned. We gave away what we couldn't sell or ship. The global shipping catastrophe meant we couldn't ship anything -- no one could put our stuff on a shipping container before our departure date. So, we mailed ourselves 15 boxes of items we wanted to hold onto. 

My grandfather Frank died the day after his birthday, while we were trying to get home but unable to be there. It felt awful not to be able to get there in time, or to be with my family then - I still had to go on the work trip. 

Perth is the most isolated city on the planet, and no one was allowed to come or go from Western Australia unless they had a special legal exemption. Like, say, being a citizen of a foreign country and deciding to go home on a one-way trip. That meant there was low demand for airline tickets, and only one flight out of Perth every two days. We had an almost two day layover in Sydney on the way out. The eastern states had opened their borders. We left a zero-covid Western Australia and traveled to a city where the pandemic was raging. We spent the two days eating only outdoors, masking everywhere, and trying hard not to get sick. The only indoor thing we did was visit an art gallery in Sydney. They had a cap on the number of visitors allowed, social distancing in effect, mandatory masking and hand washing, and vaccines required at the door. It was a calculated risk. I'm almost certain it was how I got covid-19. 

With about four hours left in the long flight to Dallas, I was feeling sick. Jacob and I parted ways in the airport - he headed to Omaha and I went on to Tennessee. I dragged myself to the airport hotel, tested positive in the morning, and spent a weird quarantine period in the Hilton at TYS. My new colleagues took it in stride and took good care of me. Spoiler alert: I eventually accepted the job.

March I am not sure I've ever felt more at home than I felt on getting back to Oklahoma after years away on the far side of the world. I don't know if you've ever lived in a foreign country, reader, but it's a strange experience to come back. Everything feels foreign and familiar at once. Just the feeling of seeing the right birds flitting around was vertiginous. I spent a lot of March reconnecting with my family. I had begun studying Cherokee language while abroad, and I especially relished visiting cultural sites in the northeastern part of the Cherokee Nation where I could see the language being used on signs and things. I ate so much Mexican food. I visited my brother's family in Wisconsin and we saw Bright Eyes play in Madison and Chicago. I reconnected with my friend Yvonne on a road trip to them play a bunch of shows in Saint Louis, Louisville, and Nashville. Live music - especially with road-trips - is my favorite thing there is, and I missed it something fierce in Australia. Road-tripping across the midwest and south again felt cathartic.

April In April, we visited Jacob's family in Omaha and reconnected with our cat, who had been staying there while we were abroad. Damn, I missed that cat. We took another trip to Knoxville to go house-hunting. We missed out on the first house we offered on, but we bought the second house. The whole trip was a whirlwind.

May I spent May mostly in Oklahoma, bouncing between Tulsa and Eucha. The creek flooded. The box turtles and butterflies were out of control. I studied Cherokee a lot. It was great to see the Oklahoma summer taking shape.

June Early June took us back to Omaha for some family time, and ultimately to Knoxville to close on the house. We signed all the paperwork on June 9, drove right over to move some stuff in, and then to the airport to fly to Nevada for our friends Nicholas and Ryan's wedding at Lake Tahoe. We had a lovely time reconnecting with dear friends we hadn't seen in literal years and enjoying the natural beauty. Then we went home to Knoxville to move into the house. I woke up in our home for the first time on my 33rd birthday; we slept on the floor of our bedroom in our sleeping bags while waiting for our PODS container to arrive with our furniture.

July In July, Jacob and I went to Oklahoma for the Fourth, and I reconnected with some of my oldest friends. My nephew was in town and we did a lot of fishing and some video gaming. I admired a lot of crawdads and we seined for minnows in the riffles. There were fireworks; for the first time since I can remember, Dad relinquished that responsibility to one of the other families. It was fun to be back home for a family holiday for the first time in years. It was interesting to be back in the USA for an America-specific holiday, too. When we left the cabin, I drove to Knoxville with our cat. We spent the rest of the month getting settled in -- buying furniture and doing some small maintenance tasks.

August At the beginning of August, I started the tenure-track job I've been working toward since I was a sophomore in college. It feels weird to have caught the dream I've been chasing. It feels weird to be embarking on the next goal, which is earning tenure. Classes started in August, and that brought a lot of new experiences related to teaching. We bought and assembled a smoker and made some pretty killer smoked salmon. I worked on making some new friends. I made the first of what is sure to be many, many trips from Knoxville to Nashville to see a concert: The Decemberists at the Ryman Auditorium.

September September was about settling into my teaching routine. I caught the first Vols football game of the year. The Vols would go on to have a terrific season - they just won the Orange Bowl last night against #7 Clemson - and it was fun to take in the SEC atmosphere I've heard so much about. Neyland Stadium, adjacent to the building that houses my office and lab space, holds ~102,000 people. Sometimes, as I'm walking up the hill and past the stadium to work, I think about the number of people that will fit in Neyland versus the number of people who can speak Cherokee and I get kinda sad. 

On Labor Day weekend I drove to Virginia to camp in Shenandoah National Park with my friends Becca and Max, and we hit a Renaissance Faire. It was fun to see them and visit a new area of the country. It also still felt novel to see North American fauna, like the deer that wandered into our campsite.

October October was about hitting my stride at work and cultivating the things that make me happy but that I missed while abroad. One of my most favorite artists of the last bunch of years is Jason Isbell, who lives outside Nashville and plays a Ryman Residency every year. This year I went to seven of the eight nights at the Ryman, which included my first ever Jason show. It was a spectacular week and I'm not sure what else to say about it. Live music makes me happier than anything else. Other shows in October included John Moreland, Tommy Prine, and Ani DiFranco. On the home front, we got our fireplace repaired -- it was only fit to burn gas when we moved in -- and got cozy for the North American autumn. I missed the October wildflowers in Western Australia something fierce, but I relished being home for Halloween.

November The highlight of November was going to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving. I know I keep saying this, but it was great to be back with family after so long away, and to celebrate Thanksgiving in the US. We had been in the habit of inviting friends over for dinner the last few years, but we had both been missing family. We attended a cool Van Gogh exhibit, with neat digital animations of Van Gogh paintings projected on all the walls. We took a trip to the House on the Rock, a weird roadside attraction heavily featured in one of my favorite books, American Gods. It was delightfully weird and a fun way to wrap up the holiday weekend.

December The first part of December was chaotic but rewarding as I wrapped up my first semester of teaching. We received a visit from my friends Lauren and Mel, and spent a happy weekend exploring Knoxville and trading stories by the fire in the backyard. 

I caught two more special Jason Isbell shows in Knoxville and roadtripped to Atlanta for "an evening of conversation and song" with Jason Isbell and Will Welch with my friend Stephanie. We caught France versus Argentina in the World Cup at a soccer bar on Peachtree Street - I was disappointed that France didn't come home with the hardware, but it was the most excellent atmosphere for a soccer game I've seen outside of Europe. We went back to Knoxville to catch Amanda Shires - featuring Jason Isbell! - with Cory Branan opening, and it was a spectacular show. I played a lot of guitar and I studied a lot of Cherokee. We're currently in Omaha, where we spent Christmas with Jacob's family. There was an intense cold snap to start our visit, with windchills down to -45F. I hadn't missed the cold, but I had missed holiday time in Omaha. As usual, I'm soaking up the local music scene.

2022 was a big year. We achieved some longterm goals and embarked on some new adventures. We left a bunch of friends behind in Australia and made a lot of new ones in Knoxville. I hope whatever happened for you this year was mostly positive. If not, here's to a fresh start in 2023. 

Don't let me into this year with an empty heart. - "Empty Hearts" by Josh Ritter