Fly

Last year’s word was Live. This year I picked Fly.

I chose it in January from inside my loft, a year into having a place that was entirely mine, with a pole installed in the bedroom. I started pole last year; by this year it had stopped being an experiment. I was progressing faster than I expected, and somewhere in there I let myself hang off the Cirque du Soleil dream again. Pun intended.

Then the word turned literal. In April I flew to Alaska, chasing the vaccines that were sitting there ready while the Philippines waited in line. I planned a visit and stayed until October. Family, part-time work through an Alaska summer, daylight that didn’t know when to stop. After a year inside the condo, being there was the whole point. I’d missed Alaska more than I’d let myself admit.

Coming home had a toll booth: ten days alone in a quarantine hotel before they’d let me back out. I used the room. My first solo Polecats production video was filmed right there, CD directing virtually, and it went up on October 3, the day they released me. That one was fun.

Fly meant more than the travel and more than pole, though both made it literal. Live gave me permission to do things. Fly was permission to let them take off. My own ideas, my own plans, at full size instead of the polite scale I used to keep them at. I’d closed a business or two before, and for a while that made me careful. This year, careful stopped being the default.

The word was supposed to be a metaphor. I ended up an ocean away, then upside down in a hotel room, taking it literally from both directions.