The Year That Was 2021

The end of the year prompts a desire to look back upon it as a whole. This time last year we were perhaps the only people in the United States eager to pay our taxes. This wasn’t borne of any love of giving money to “defense” contractors or funding oil subsidies, but of the need to produce two sets of tax returns to proceed with our home-buying journey.

Photo taken Jan 1st, 2021. We always make sure to take some kind of nice long walk, and on that day, we had no idea how abundant our year was going to be. -Levy

At that point, we still didn’t have any firm plans on our final location. Where we actually ended up seemed like the backup option back then. I’d never ventured beyond the Bronx but I just knew in my gut that our future lay further to the north. Like so many others the tumult of 2020 brought about a rethinking of our lives. The many commuter towns of Long Island used to seem like a good idea for us. A twenty-minute commute once seemed a dream, a house for less than $300,000 seemed a bargain. How differently we see things now.

Full-time small business owning be like...

Once we got a taste for mastering our own destinies, once Levy threw her considerable energy and passion into developing her business and once I started making regular money from writing, there really was no going back. That’s when a commute of any length started to look like an irredeemable timesink and the prospect of paying a hefty premium for the dubious privilege of living within spitting distance of New York City seemed an unacceptable risk. Both physically and financially. By the dawn of 2021, our gaze had fixed northwards. It was just a matter of figuring out the next steps as they came.

Starting our house-hunting road trip in March 2021.

January and February were consumed with paperwork and planning ahead. Once we narrowed our choice of future location down we had to move quickly in March. Homes we shortlisted for viewing were getting snapped up left and right. I remember submitting a list of a dozen places to a realtor a few days before we were to visit and learning all but two had gone. The third location was canceled outright after all the halfway decent places were gone before we’d even left Long Island for the five-hour road trip. It honestly didn’t seem too promising as we drove up to the unknown but things have a habit of working out for us. Somehow we succeeded in our first and only bid on the home we wanted the most. There were some bumps on the road but we made it through it all during a chaotic April.

We stumbled through our first few months of homeownership, still pretty clueless but so grateful to be in the position to learn. That’s generally been the theme of the year for us. Gratitude. We certainly worked for what we have but also benefited from a lot of good fortune along the way. It’s interesting how actually owning the place you live in changes your perspective. Even paying the mortgage isn’t that bad because every time you’re getting closer to paying it off. We’re lucky enough to pay extra principal every month so that reality gets closer and closer each month.

Our road trip in April 2021 with the cats. We signed the home-owning documents and moved right in the next day.

Our first couple weeks in the house were spent putting together furniture.

May was an odd month for us, each week was a case of putting together the next piece of the furniture puzzle until we had more or less everything by June. The summer months were spent trying to keep on top of the garden and deal with the waves of mosquitoes. Often we’d take walks around the neighborhood and just look admiringly at our little house on the way back. It still feels so new.

Taking a little walk around a lake that's a 10-minute drive from us.

This sunset is just down our block. So much gratitude to experience this beauty every day.

I’ve always been quite partial to autumn and it’s quite a treat in this part of the state. Unlike in Asia, the season lasts for a while. There’s some real breathing space between the heat of summer and the chill of winter. I have a rather fetching jacket I bought in South Korea that I like a great deal but have only worn about ten times. I finally got a decent amount of mileage out of it this year.

Winter hasn’t been as cold as we were told to expect though perhaps the coldest weeks are yet to come. I think I gained my upstate wings a few weeks ago when Levy and I went to Wegmans in the snow and I was wearing shorts. This was after I’d played a match in my rec league so maybe it doesn’t count. Levy’s been wearing approximately 17 layers at all times since November. At this point, I’ve forgotten what her ankles look like.

Each day brings with it numerous little moments I cherish. Even the mundane everyday things seem like a privilege after the long struggle to earn them. With the major goal of 2021 accomplished, there’s not a similarly massive target ahead of us in 2022. Rather I think the coming year will be more about embracing the present while building for the future. And maybe getting another cat. Or a dog.

Thank you, reader, for supporting Sparkles of Sol. You are supporting this little family of cats and cat parents.