🗣️ You can now listen to the audio version of this newsletter.
In this newsletter:
🦭 A year in review
2022 has felt like one long wait to exhale.
If I look back on the year, it’s been quite eventful, but not exactly productive. It feels strange to say, considering the fact that I got my author career restarted after 4 years struggling to finish the first book in the Guardians of Dawn series. And a lot of things have happened this year.
I turned in the final draft of Zhara.
I visited NYC with Bear and saw some old college friends for a wedding.
Bear and I adopted Castor and Pollux.
I got diagnosed with ADHD and started medication.
I went back to Korea with my mother and little brother for the first time since the pandemic.
I shared an entire previously unpublished novel.
But eventful does not necessarily mean accomplished. I didn’t accomplish much in 2022, although I did lay the groundwork for a lot of things that I hope to complete in 2023. And I’m honestly okay with that. I spent a lot of time in 2022 trying to untangle capitalism from my sense of self as an artist, and part of that process entailed me coming to terms with the concept of productivity in general. I realized in 2022 that the capitalist notion of productivity was a false god to which I had been sacrificing my time, health (mental and physical), and money. There are other, better gods. Like creativity. And fulfillment.
In that regard, 2022 has been an incredibly successful year. For the first time in a very long time, I have been creative. I have been creative for myself and myself alone, and that has been incredibly fulfilling.
I no longer feel burnt out.
I have been many things in 2022 — exhausted, stressed, manic, distracted, chaotic — but I have not felt so drained of that which is me that I could not do anything but exist.
Now I feel ready to focus in 2023.
And that feels good.
🧩 lexical gap: tabanca
It fascinates me that there appears to be a words for wistfulness in almost every language. The flavor of that wistfulness changes from culture to culture, but the core meaning stays the same. In that way, these various words both fill and create lexical gaps all at once, which is my favorite contradiction of all. Translation is a funny thing. My mother is a Korean-English interpreter, and sometimes we code-switch between languages because one or the other is insufficient. It’s easy to find direct correlations for objects, for the tangible things, but sometimes, there is simply no translation for emotion. And in the end, isn’t that what we, as writers, constantly strive to do? To translate the emotions we feel into words on a page, and somehow coming up short and exceeding expectations all at once?
🌞 the morning realms dispatch
Last month I received an enormous stack of bookplates from my publisher to sign, which I finished while watching all of the TV show Dark. I used my new 도장 (dojang), or stamp, from this last trip to Korea in addition to my signature. It reads 제현 (Je Hyun), which is my Korean name.1
There is a lot of exciting stuff happening with Zhara that I can’t reveal yet but once the old year dies and the new year begins I’ll definitely share!
📖 reading
Saint by Adrienne Young and Belladonna by Adalyn Grace. I went to see both of these ladies when they were in town for the release of Saint, which gave me the perfect excuse to pick up their books and read.
🖥️ other reading/watching
John Seabrook, “So You Want To Be A TikTok Star.” The New Yorker.
struthless, “the problem with the internet that no one is talking about.” YouTube.
📺 watching
1899. I started watching 1899 solely because I saw someone bring up the subbed vs. dubbed debate online, and I’ll admit that while I am Team Sub, there are accessibility reasons for both, so I’m never going to knock someone for being Team Dub. That being said, my feelings on 1899 are rather mixed. The premise is interesting, but the pacing very uneven; I thought the first 6.5 episodes dragged, but the last 1.5 episodes were riveting.
Dark. Listen. LISTEN. While I have mixed feelings about 1899, I was intrigued enough to start the other project produced by the same writing duo, Dark, and OH MY GOD. OH. MY. GOD. This might be the best thing I’ve watched in years. I just...it’s hard to talk about Dark without spoiling it and so much of the experience of Dark is actually EXPERIENCING the story as it unfolds. Let’s just say the story starts out with the disappearance of a young boy in a small German town and...that’s all I’ll say. PLEASE WATCH IT. It’s only three seasons and it’s complete!
백일의 낭군님 (100 Days My Prince). This was a rewatch while I signed and stamped book plates and it was just as enjoyable this time as it was the first time. But one thing I did notice this time around was the BTS reference! I wasn’t ARMY in 2018, so those references went straight over my head then.
The Most Hated Man on the Internet. This is a documentary about Hunter Moore, the man behind the revenge porn website isanyoneup.com. It was a pretty decent documentary, but the part that hooked me was the connection I made between the charismatic leader of a cult or cult-like entities and our innate human need to be part of a greater movement.
🎧 listening
I read a comment somewhere (but for the life of me I can’t remember where) that RM makes music for burnt out eldest daughters and I felt that. Each of the members of BTS are stunning artists in their own unique ways (which is probably why they’re such a successful music group), but there is something about Namjoon’s lyricism that gets to me on an incredibly personal level. The entire album is stunning and he got the most amazing artists to feature with him. My personal favorites are 건망증 (Forg_tful) and Change pt. 2 (which he apparently recorded drunk!).
I thought about doing a Best of 2022 list for my last Lexical Gap of the year, but honestly, I don’t like doing superlatives, not to mention my ADHD gives me such time blindness to the point I can’t remember when I saw, read, or consumed something. However, I will say that there is exactly one (1) piece of media that moved me more than anything else this year, and that would be Everything Everywhere All At Once. I know that this film isn’t for everybody, but as the queer, neurodivergent, chaotic eldest daughter of an East Asian immigrant, it was definitely for me.
The turning of the calendar year is really an arbitrary declaration of time, but I can’t help but like the idea of starting afresh. 2023 is the year Guardians of Dawn: Zhara will come out, and I’m finally letting go of that breath I’ve been holding.
See you next year,
Tbh I don’t actually have a Korean name. Hyun is my middle name and Je is the “Jae” in my last name. My Korean relatives just call me Sarah.