(2024 aggressive friendliness - 2025 seeds from scorched earth)
After clawing my way out of the grave and crossing the phantom finish line of the EdD, I expected the world to catch me. Instead, I stumbled into a hollow silence. 2024 had been a year of effortful outreach—so many coffees, meetups, conversations, names, and half-smiles—but so little stuck. My energy was high, my body recovering, my will to connect reanimated… and yet most connections fell like dust through my fingers.
i made myself available.
i made myself soft.
i made myself visible.
2024 swallowed me whole.
viv left quietly.
not with malice, just music.
flute lessons. guitar club. a different rhythm.
Lauren managed her life like a spreadsheet.
maria carried righteousness like a torch.
she wanted to burn me clean.
june laughed at me. and loved me. i think.
or at least tolerated me with sugar and sting.
some people were just gone.
others hung by threads, fraying.
still—i kept planting.
kept writing.
kept hoping.
and then 2025.
i let the field lie fallow.
i did not water.
i did not reach.
and yet—
Colleen invited me to dinner.
mac brought stories, then vanished again.
lisa met me with chickpeas and kindness.
ryan emailed. vincent reconnected.
jacques called it collaboration.
melissa waved from incheon.
2024 had felt like planting seeds in scorched earth. But maybe those seeds needed the burning. Maybe 2025 was the moment something cracked open, and just enough light got in. Maybe the work wasn’t wasted—it just needed time.
not a flood.
not a miracle.
just a slow, kind unfolding.
nothing grew in the year i labored.
everything bloomed when i was fallow.
maybe grace comes not when you strive
but when you surrender.
friendship:
not a meritocracy.
not a loyalty points program.
apparently, it’s a cosmic joke.
the moment you stop needing it, people appear with cake.
Maybe I was never alone, only early.
2025 taught me this: put your best self forward and people will flee. Show up tired, weird, and unavailable? They’ll line up for dinner.
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