Things I Learned in 2022

1. Double check your Chipotle order
2. If you’re locked outside the place at which you’re house sitting, you can always scale the fence and flag down some strangers to call a locksmith
3. Going home gets harder and harder to do
4. Maybe friendship is learning how to meet people where they're at, not where you want them to be
5. Don’t compliment your waitress’ eyebrows
6. Maybe it’s not what you can do for your job but what a job can do for you
7. It’s O.K. to be impulsive
8. The better beach is not South Beach
9. Exercise is hard work
10. Being outdoorsy is an expensive hobby
11. Cotton won’t keep you insulated
12. Weed dispensaries in Colorado are super sketch on the outside and super high tech on the inside
13. Blue Sour Patch kids will get you through the Rocky Mountains
14. Fourth time’s the charm when trying to rebook your flight
15. Tallahassee is just O.K.
16. If you become friends with enough law students you can become a 3L
17. Some candle making stores choose to have an oddly sexual ambiance?
18. Don’t get high by yourself at a concert
19. Don't talk to people you know when you're high by yourself at a concert
20. Normalize drinking bottled water at concerts
21. Parents have IMPECCABLE timing
22. Changing out your blinker light is super easy actually
23. Tightening your motor mounts? Not so much
24. The best way to meet your neighbors is when one of the units in your building gets SWAT raided
25. Don’t make any major physical changes to yourself for a Bumble date that will just end in a hug
26. Bangs are just low stakes mistakes 
27. Don’t climb trees around people you just met
28. Don’t willingly share your guilty pleasure song to people you just met
29. Don’t show up to a Heat watch party wearing the other team’s colors
30. It’s an incredibly small world when you’re on Discord
31. Your teenage cousins will FaceTime you about other people’s problems when they’re bored
32. If you break your shoes going out, expect a flood of pata sucia comments on social media
33. Flipping a coin can help you come to any resolution 
34. Group chats make for good therapy sessions — until they don't
35. When your friend takes the bar, you will also be taking the bar 
36. Camping is basically playing the real-life version of Don’t Starve Together
37. Don’t get sick on a Wednesday
38. COVID is literally the worst
39. July to August is prime resignation season
40. Chisme, sobre la mesa, papís and pobrecito
41. Men do not know how to read a room
42. When in doubt, don't trespass on private property lest you get ceremoniously kicked out by residents of a condo
43. Mid-Beach lacks public access points (See No. 42)
44. Condo restaurants apparently make good settings for reality TV shows 
45. Throttle bodies control the amount of air that goes into a car engine
46. Hand mixers and scales are a game changer
47. Check the goddamn mic 
48. I need to stop bringing first-time dishes to pot lucks
49. Every four years I’m a football fan
50. Sometimes it's a matter of choosing to have a relationship or having none at all
51. It takes three people and one viewing of the "Parent Trap," "Rush Hour 1" and "Rush Hour 2" to make a batch of lumpia
52. I guess oysters are the go-to dish for holiday parties
53. Raw oysters are fighting for their lives in the split second that we consume them for our hedonistic, gastronomical pleasure 
54. Don't be fooled by celebrity-owned restaurants
55. Don’t get a tattoo before a wet hike
56. Whipping cream can bring you to tears (the sad kind unfortunately)
57. Don’t make promises you can’t keep
58. An effort to spare one person's feelings can result in incidentally trampling over another's
59. Rationalizing your feelings in tandem with radical empathy is mutually assured destruction
60. Processing my feelings way too long after the fact is my coping mechanism
61. I need to learn how to say what’s on my mind as it happens
62. Resiliency may not necessarily be a good thing
63. Maybe you don't necessarily need a clear goal post. Maybe the next step is just a matter of doing things you want to do

On a mild Miami evening in January, I ordered what I believe was already my second or third Chipotle order that week. Thinking that DoorDash had saved my preferred toppings from a previous order, I unknowingly paid for a meager bowl of chicken — and absolutely nothing else. No rice. No beans. No salsa. The minute I peeled back the tinfoil of my burrito bowl to reveal that pathetic pile of poultry, I should have known this year would devolve into chaos. 

The so-called Great Chicken Chipotle Disaster of 2022 was just the start of an absurd year. 

It's funny, I had decided 2022 would be the year of sitting atop a mountain and emptying my mind, but I did quite the opposite. In the wake of heartbreak and change, I feared I had become emotionally numb, so I filled the void with spontaneous trips, unexplored vices and just random stuff to do —   subconsciously placing myself in the “splash zone" in hopes of washing over this ennui I had been feeling.

That said, I don't think I am closing out this year with any definitive or profound takeaways. If nothing else, it's time to set aside notions of fate and passivity, and call my mid-20s antics what it is: impulsive. 

This blurb is just a long-winded way of saying, I did a lot of stupid things this year without much thought behind them. (Re: The Great Chicken Disaster of 2022)

Defining this year according to how good or bad it was seems reductive. Frankly, I'm left grateful and humbled. Next year, I hope to put (some of) the chaos to rest and siphon that energy into fulfilling experiences that add shape to my life — not fill a hole.