The Good, The Bad, and the Shrooms
Reflecting On a Year Filled with Everything and Everything In Between
By Valkyrie Holmes
Today is my 19th birthday.
I thought about writing this article yesterday but to be quite honest with you, yesterday sucked. It was one of those days that made you feel like you didn’t deserve a birthday. It was a day when you woke up feeling shitty and went to bed feeling somehow shittier. It was a day full of stress and anxiety, heart pumping, blood boiling, one that was run on no sleep with a highly lackluster workout. And when I began writing, I realized how mad I was and stopped.
Without sounding too “60s yogi peace and love”, I didn’t want to hate on my birthday.
Last year, I wrote an article entitled “Moving Across the Country at 18 — A Shift to Independence and Clarity.” I sound pretty profound from the title, don’t I? It was a collection of the things I wrote down on the plane ride to Boston where I would eventually travel to New York and start a new life on my own. It was the day I moved out, the day I felt like an adult and the day after my birthday. It was my first birthday article and I want to continue this trend. It’s close enough to the start of the year where I feel like I can still reminisce on 2022 but also halfway through the month so I don’t feel like jumping on the bandwagon of New Year's Resolutions.
This year was filled with a lot of things, love and hate alike. There was such a contradiction that I want that to be the theme of this article. The yin and yang of the year, the good the bad, and the ugly, lions and tigers and bears, oh my! It truly has been the most exciting, terrifying, remarkable, and unforgettable year of my life. I’ve been looking forward to writing this article for a very long time.
So keeping with the “peace and love” mantra, I say we treat 2022 like Woodstock 99. Let’s burn it to the fucking ground.
LOVE
This year was, indeed, good vibes.
Okay, we can drop the 60s theme now.
Seriously, there are a million things I could talk about in this article that make me so happy to have experienced them. I wanted to start off this section by showing you two pictures.
This is a picture of a vision board I made back in the last half of 2021. For those of you who don’t know what a vision board is, it’s a board you make with a certain theme that mimics what you want the next year to be like. As you can see, I wanted it to be a blend of a bunch of different things that mean different things to me, and of course, I had to make it aesthetically pleasing.
And I’ve been doing these for the last three years now, full of things that mean something to me in the moment and that I hope continue or breathe “good vibes” into the new year. But this year, I decided to take my 2022 vision board and do something different.
I decided to write everything that happened this year on the back.
Not only was this an incredibly therapeutic experience for me, but it was also just a fun time refreshing my memory with acai bowls in New York and late nights playing Mafia in Switzerland and all of the wacky things. There are a few things I did this year that just top my experiences of last year by 1000 and while some of them are on this list, some are more implicit.
I went to five different countries this year and 18 different cities. I’ve never really traveled that much in the past and I could count the states I went to on one hand before this year. Not only was I traveling on my own money and my own time, but I was also getting flown out to places and giving talks, and leaving the country for the first time. I got to experience not only what it was like living on my own places but also living on my own in more places than I could have ever imagined. It was truly an incredible experience.
With that, I gained some things I didn’t even really think I’d gain and the biggest one is commitment. I committed hard this year and that’s not just talking about my relationship (which we’ll get to later). That’s on work, friends, challenges, and more. I was blessed with the idea of 30-day challenges, which originally started in November of 2021 but became one of the focuses this year. When I was out of the house, I made a commitment to myself and to my family that I would be on my own for good, and that didn’t just mean financially. I had to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my free time. And this year, I learned CAD modeling, chess, calisthenics, a bit of portrait drawing, beat making, and I can name all 197 countries and all 50 states in less than five minutes. And yes, that was a flex.
Of course, I can’t forget all of the incredible work opportunities I’ve had this year. I started off the year working with Michael of Collective Impact doing some basic design work. From there, I interned at Inflo Health (formerly Radilens) for data analytics. This summer I worked as a Falcon Engineering Intern at SpaceX. And throughout that time, I’ve been working both part-time and now full-time on Project Firefly and now, Ember Bazaar with the help of the 776 Fellowship. I honestly can’t believe it’s only been a year since I started all of these things and it’s been insane to think about where it’s gotten me. I’ve definitely caught the gap year bug; once you start working and making money and learning without teachers and a lecture hall, you never want to go back.
Definitely go to college if you think that’s right for you and I’ve absolutely found that mentors, advisors, and partners are super helpful in deciding next steps and learning new things. All I’m saying is that I’m definitely not leaning toward college at this point in time and I’m pretty sure a lot of people knew that already.
Now I want to get real.
I met the love of my life this year. You can read this and have your assumptions about my maturity level and how much life experience I have and how that all factors into the belief that I can’t know what love is yet but I ask you to just pause and live or relive the experience of being young and in love.
I’ve found myself quoting things like “it really does happen when you least expect it” and “when you know, you know” and every time I say it, I have to laugh. You can apply these to literally anything in life. I was toasting a bagel and it popped out of the toaster way before it was done. Happens when you least expect it. I’m on the toilet and I realize it’s going to be longer than a two-minute session. When you know, you know.
I know that the cliches my boyfriend and I experience will be experienced by every other couple that will ever be in love ever. That’s why cliches exist; they connect people to each other because we aren’t special (come on, you knew it’d pop up at some point). And it’s true. I really didn’t expect to meet my boyfriend in a co-living house in New York in February 2022. I was actually committed to staying fully single until I moved out on my own and had a stable job and all those things. I have had many “when you know, you know” moments with him and will continue to have those moments. While I always peddle the “you’re not special” mantra, our relationship is special to me. He is special to me and we will continue to mock the “you hang up, no you hang up” cliche until the day we die. And yes, this isn’t a new experience but it is my experience and you are reading my article after all.
It’s important to mention the things that shift your perspective. I want to be challenged and he challenges me. I want to support people and I support him. We want to better ourselves and we help each other. Since the day we met, we’ve had extremely clear communication and there’s no one I trust more. I don’t think I would have been nearly as happy as I have been this year if it wasn’t for him. Actually, I know I wouldn’t have been as happy. That’s how much of a difference he’s made in my life. I introduce Som by saying, “I’m 100% sure I’m marrying him” no matter who I’m talking to.
Okay, last year’s article wasn’t sappy at all, I had to make it a little heartwarming and not just “build company, learn a lot, make money” like last time. But let’s transition into something else I loved this year.
People. God, I love people. This year, I’ve realized that not only do I love talking to people, I love living with people, I love coworking with people, I love cooking and watching shows and coffee chats and zooms and conventions with people. I’ve actually realized that I don’t want to be as independent as I initially thought. My idea of independence was always “yes girl boss slay, get an apartment in new york, run your own company, drink a glass of wine every night and never stain your white sheets (impossible).” And now I realize that I actually want people around me all the time. I want to be able to talk to someone and make comments and joke around and the thought of living on my own actually scares me now.
I’ve reflected on this a lot and got into a bit of a controlling zone where I felt like I was just becoming too comfortable and content with my life to move out on my own. But that’s not the case. I go places by myself all the time, I travel by myself, I buy my own stuff, I run my own company; I do nearly everything by myself (haven’t done my taxes yet, oh boy don’t remind me). I just prefer having someone around while I do those things. Someone to keep me company, someone to ask questions and crack jokes. Even if it’s just one person, I feel so much better than when I’m by myself. And that’s an incredibly important realization to have.
Instead of isolating myself and feeling like I had to be by myself to be successful or the version of successful in my head, I’ve transitioned into being a bit more social and community-driven, which honestly has translated into caring for people more, check-ins with people I haven’t seen in a while when before I wouldn’t have made that leap, and being more comfortable expressing insecurities and issues with people. All that to say, I’ve become more open.
I want to continue to do the vision boards every year and now continue with the tradition of reflecting on the back and I encourage you to do something similar! It can be whatever you want it to be and you could share it with everyone or no one, but I do think it’s important to reflect every once and a while. With the New Year goblins still hounding you to start those resolutions, it may be that time to figure out why you actually want to do those things in the first place.
HATE
My mom got cancer this year. When I left back in January, I mentioned in the article that my mom and I had had an argument about me forgetting my camera back at the house and having to run back and get it. I also mentioned that her stomach hurt as a minor detail. Well, her stomach continued to hurt for months after. It pained her to eat more than a fistful of food, she threw up constantly, she was doubled over most days, and the day before I came back to visit my family in Vegas, she was sent to the ER after passing out in our bathroom.
I was picked up from the airport and later that day, we went to the hospital and while I was waiting there in a local brewery across the hospital, we got a call saying that they did a biopsy and that the cells in her lymph nodes surrounding the stomach were cancerous. My dad didn’t do anything then but when my sisters and I were back at the house and he came in from visiting our mom, I saw my dad cry for the first time.
My mom has stage 3 gastric cancer. We don’t know how long she’s had it, we don’t even really know where it is at this point. It’s a nasty fucker and she’s been on almost three rounds of chemo by the time I’m writing this. The first one she was on was pretty rough on her body but the last two have her tired the first day, woozy on the next because of a shot she gets during her rehydration, and then she’s up! She does literally everything she did before her stomach started bothering her and while she has to eat small portions every couple of hours, she’s doing well.
I spent the first few months of this process hating the world. I was really doubting whether or not this was something fixable. I remember crying to my friend Ben on a call and describing my grieving process and every time I mention it to him now, I just feel like a broken record. But I’ve been wanting to write this down for people for a long time and I finally get the chance: no one tells you that death is multiple cycles of grief, not just seven stages that we get to wrap up in a tight little bow labeled “acceptance”.
I have cried and stayed up at night about a thousand times at this point wondering what will happen to my mom. I know everyone in my house has done the same. And none of it ever gets easier. Maybe I’ll eventually reach that point of acceptance of my mom having cancer or god-forbid something worse, but it’s a continuous loop of stress and depression that I couldn’t have been able to describe to you until this year. No one tells you that you don’t just go through the shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, reconstruction, acceptance phases one after another and just deal. I’ve probably gone through the first five or six hundreds of times by now and I’m still not done. Maybe it would be different if a loved one was dead and I just had to deal with the fact that they were gone but with cancer, it’s different. I have to think about the fact that my mom could be gone when I hug her or the fact that the text she just sent me could be the last text she ever sends. It doesn’t stop and it won’t stop until something happens.
Let me make this clear: I’m not pessimistic. In fact, I’m extremely optimistic about her situation. She’s doing well, there’s nothing moving with the cancer. It’s not getting better but it’s also not getting worse. I once heard someone talk about cancer and say “You can’t pay attention to statistics. Every body is different, every person will take it a different way. You just have to wait and see.” That’s the approach I’m taking. My family is full of pessimists and it’s not easy to be positive when there are people constantly telling you that there’s no hope and that we should get our affairs in order. Maybe that’s just how they cope, maybe that’s just them being what they would call “realistic”. But cancer is as much of a mental battle as it is a physical one and I made a deal with my mom: I said that the minute I stop being optimistic, you can stop being optimistic. And I’m showing no signs of stopping.
I want to be the rock. I’m the big sister, the oldest child, the one teaching my little sister how to squat and learning how to do nails from my middle sister. I want to be there to be that optimistic light. It’s extremely hard but it’s worth it. I’d love to know if anyone has any experiences they’d like to share. I want to hear more about how cancer and other diseases of the sort have shaken families and loved ones and please feel free to reach out.
I was going to write more about hate in this article. I wanted to write about self-discovery and how I hated work and had to focus on creative things to combat the stress. I wanted to write about feeling lost in a house full of insanely smart people. I wanted to talk about body image and how I came to the realization this year that I will probably never be happy with my body, no matter how hard I try. I wanted to discuss failure, disappointing myself, feeling unheard, feeling unloved but none of those are really things I hate.
Yes, I didn’t like work at the time so I put effort into starting a youtube channel and it actually became something I’m extremely passionate about now. Yes, I felt lost on multiple occasions and unloved and disappointed but I remedied the situation and found myself in a better place. The one thing that I’m not entirely sure how to feel about is my body image but I’m going to save that for another article. It’s something that won’t be solved in this article and needs a hell of a lot more reflection than the time I want to devote to this article. Just know that I’m doing well right now, that there’s a lot more work to be put in, and that I’m talking to people about it. That’s a big step up from last year.
THE WEIRD IN-BETWEEN
There are parts of this year I don’t remember much of. Whether that’s good or bad, I’m not entirely sure. There are also parts of this year that left me with a weird taste in my mouth. I’d like to recall a couple of those moments.
I took shrooms for the first time. Actually, it was the first drug I had ever tried and gotten a high from. I don’t know if I’d call it a good trip or a bad trip. It was definitely pretty bad at some points. I won’t bore you with the details but a few interesting things came out of it.
The first was the realization that I wasn’t being silent enough. I awoke the next day feeling pretty raw and ate breakfast for the first time without any sort of stimulation. I just made eggs, sat on the couch, and looked out the window. Up until that point, I always needed something to occupy my brain whether it be a book or a podcast or a youtube video or Netflix show. I always had to have something playing, no matter what time of day, no matter what activity I was taking part in. After tripping, I started to realize how nice it was to be silent. I still try to remain silent for at least part of my day now. While I enjoy the constant stimulation, there comes a point where random youtube videos on “turning plastic gloves into hot sauce” only work for so long (yes that’s a thing. Yes it’s as awesome as it sounds).
The other realization was one about reflection and how sometimes, too much reflection can be a bad thing. I talk to myself a lot and usually, it’s for the purpose of reflecting. I’ll pull out my phone and record myself talking out an issue or just kind of talk to myself on the way home from something stressful. But during the trip, I somehow talked myself into a hole and convinced myself that my mom didn’t loved me and that she’d just been faking it the whole time.
Of course, I never told her this and if she’s reading, hey mom I don’t think that at all. It was definitely a “dumb teenager thinks she’s being inciteful and knows everything” kind of moment and I was completely proven wrong very shortly after. But I thought about it and realized that I had to talk to myself for hours to come to that conclusion. I just sat there and talked to myself and cried and tripped and completely missed the point of having fun. And it started to damage the way I thought about my mom. I had to take a step back and realize that yes, you should be reflecting often. Does it mean that everything will always have a purpose? No. Sometimes the world is just a weird, fucked up, imperfect place that you’ll have to deal with sometimes. It’s okay to reflect on those aspects too. Of course, my mom loves me and I love her. It’s a shame that I had even come to a conclusion that was any less.
There was a point this year when I didn’t feel like I was an adult. No, it wasn’t because I hadn’t paid bills yet or declined to go out because I was too tired. It was because I hadn’t been physically intimate with someone yet. I felt as if everyone else had this experience that I didn’t and that I was somehow wrong for not having it. I remember crying and telling my friend Jesse that I felt so out of place because I knew everyone around me had experienced it and I hadn’t. I felt like I was missing some part of being an adult. And that’s crazy to me. Yes, I understand that being in a room of people who have done something when you haven’t could be isolating. But to weigh that much importance on the fact that I hadn’t been comfortable enough with someone in that way yet and reach some conclusion of not being an adult seems wrong. Another weird moment of the year that I had to work through and stop being all in my head.
Another thing about this year that I think is interesting is that ever since I moved out, I don’t really remember a lot of aspects about being at home this year. I’ve probably been home for about three months collectively in 2022 and I don’t remember most of that time. I remember when I went back, I remember approximately how much time I spent there, but other than that, the only thing I remember is becoming a 776 fellow and my mom’s cancer diagnosis. Everything in between that is just a blur. I don’t know if it’s because my mom’s cancer blocked it out or if it was just a symptom of being other places and looking forward to being other places. I can’t remember a single time I came home without another place I planned to be after the duration of my stay. I don’t really know how to feel about that but I also don’t think I’m going to look too deep into it.
A PIECE OF ADVICE
I wanted to include something I learned this year that I think more people need to hear.
I’m someone who loves very deeply. I’m like my mom; I want people to be happy when they’re around me and happy to do things for me. But life doesn’t work like that all the time. People aren’t going to want to do things for you all the time. The ones you love aren’t going to want to make sacrifices for you all the time. And that’s okay. But you can’t get upset about the fact that someone you love isn’t happy about doing something for you even when they agree to do it. My dad taught me that this year.
For example, let’s say I ask my boyfriend to take out the trash. He explicitly says he doesn’t really want to right now and I explain that I want him to because of x, y, and z. He begrudgingly grabs the trash and recycling and comes in slightly annoyed. He loves me and I love him and he took out the trash because he listened to me and wanted me to be happy. That doesn’t necessarily leave him happy because he’s doing something he doesn’t want to do. But he does it anyways. You should be able to count on someone you love to do things for you but you shouldn’t have to force them to be happy about it.
And the same goes for me. I’m okay with doing things for people because I think it will make them happy. When I don’t want to do something and my family or friend asks me to do it, I’m usually pretty agreeable or find a happy medium. I can’t expect everyone to be like that all the time. I can’t expect people to be the best version of themselves all the time.
I also learned that I can’t take advantage of peoples’ kindness and good fortune anymore. I operate under the idea that “people are good” and that most people genuinely want you to succeed and be happy. This year, I took advantage of that. I talk about that more in a future youtube video but the point is that I shifted this year in the way that I schedule things, the way that I take on work, the way that I reply to people, all because of the fact that I don’t want people to think I’m taking advantage of their kindness. I want to treat people the way I truly feel; I want people to be happy and care for them and their time. I wasn’t doing that before and to anyone that feels like I’ve done that, I’m truly sorry. I’m constantly working on it and will continue to improve.
TWO GUIDING WORDS
Last year, I set two guiding words for the year. Those words were Mindfulness and Connection. I wanted to report back on how that went. TLDR: I will now be doing this for the rest of my life.
Not only does it help because they’re broad enough to apply to many things, but it helped me recenter my life in ways no New Year’s resolutions could! I was traveling, I was doing different things, I was everywhere and nowhere and in between and I still found ways to tie things to mindfulness and connection. I prioritized speaking with people, I prioritized reflection, and when I felt lost, I thought about these words and planned my next steps in accordance with those. It helped me start a youtube channel, it helped me start writing my book, and it’s continued to help me become the best version of myself.
This year, my two guiding words are TIMELESS and INTREPID. These two words are important to me. Being intrepid means taking the risk and asking the dumb question. It means going out of your comfort zone, even if its something small like saying hi to someone or asking for a favor. I’m not great with going out of my way to greet someone or do the small things and I want to get better at that, among other things. Intrepid is my way of saying “I’m committing to being more adventurous and spontaneous while also prioritizing the little things”.
Timeless is definitely a lot of things to me but it’s split between feeling timeless and looking timeless. I’ve been unhappy with the way I look and feel for a long time and this year, I finally started getting my shit together. This next year, I want to prioritize it. I want to look and feel my best, I want to eat healthy and challenge my body physically, and I want to smell good and prioritize hygiene. I’ve never had a smell or a signature scent and I want that. I want to walk into a room and have everyone recognize whose scent it is. I want to get compliments on the way I hold myself or the way I dress and I think one of the coolest compliments I could receive about my appearance would be “I like your style.” I’ve never gotten one of those before and I want to just feel my best this year.
SAYONARA
I’ve probably written every cliche in the book. To the adults reading, I’ve probably written things that you’ve experienced or learned or heard about a million times by this point. If there’s one thing that hasn’t changed this year, it’s my view on being special. I’m not special in my experience of being a teenager or being a fresh-faced 19-year-old. I’m not special because I got a job at SpaceX or traveled this year. I’m not special in the grand scheme of things and I like that. Nothing about this year has changed that view and in fact, it’s reassured me that it’s not going to change. You’d think that through all of the good, the bad, and the ugly, I’d have reworked some things in my brain. But I honestly don’t see that happening anytime soon. Optimistic nihilism suits me well.
This has been a beautiful piece to write. I’ve loved every second of it, even the seconds that caused me grief and left me sniffling. And I hope it’s been as much of a pleasure to write as it was to read. Thank you for sticking with me until the end of the article. I wanted to extend a long thank you list to everyone from this year to both thank you for your kindness but also for how much you’ve bared with me and truly seen me over this year.
To the rest of you who don’t know me or aren’t expecting your name (I’m sorry for those I missed, so much happened this year and it would be impossible for me to name everyone), this is the end of the article. Again, thank you for sticking around and I’ll see you next year. Peace and love, my friends. Peace and love.
- The Family (Dad, Mom, Vandalayn, Valentine, Jason (aka Brother))
- My Boyfriend Som
- The Edyfi House (Mehran, Som, Tigi, Tasha, Luke Button, Luke Piette, Josh, Saleh, Nikhil, Danielle, Emily, Cole, Mayank, Jasmine, Michelle, Riley, Andrew, Matt, Adam)
- The TKS Family (Sarah, Michael, Noel, and Brandon (my fave directors), Sriya, Joao, Satvik, Ahmed, Alisha, Aliya, Dan, Kim, Preston, Aneka, Aryan, Ashley, Mikael, Allison, Amy, Anunya, this list goes on and on and on so thank you thank you thank you!)
- The Canadians (Jesse, Jun, Tristan, Wei, Sylvie, Brenna, Michael)
- The SpaceX Crew (Alli, Marie, Sreenidhi, Sriya, Dan, Juan, Cameron, Victoria, Rohan, Rithvik)
- The Originals (Marisol, Daryl, Amanda, Liz, Angela, Julia, Sydney, Savannah, Kevin, Haylie, Aliya, Amadi)
- Bible Study (Sophia, Bruno, Christian, Juliette, Thaddius, Jacob, Mikaylah, Clay, Trayle, Ryland, Chrissie)
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