I started 2019 in a hotel room in El Paso with my cousins and my sobris, listening to “Happy Talk” by Nancy Wilson on repeat. It’s arguably the cheesiest song in existence, but my heart swells every time she sings “You’ve got to have a dream/If you don’t have a dream/How’re you gonna have a dream come truuuuue?”

I signed up for Spotify Premium just so I could listen to “Old Town Road” on demand and without interruption –– the original, not the Billy Ray Cyrus remix. The remix, I am sad to say, is not good. (I am only sad to say it because it seems to be the one that will be remembered in posterity, and I will have to dance at it at weddings while my interior monologue grumbles about how the original is so much better.)

I smiled so big every time I heard “Juice” by Lizzo, especially when she sings “If I’m shining, everybody gonna shine.” (That is exactly the world I want to live in, Lizzo! Thank you for articulating it!)

I went through my phone and picked out my happiest pictures from the year so I can look at them forever. I could tell a story about each of them, but mostly the story is “I was happy, and I took a picture.” Except for the first picture. The story about the first picture is that I asked my friends to come to my house for an Elton John party, and we all sang “Bennie and the Jets,” along with every other song in Sir Elton’s catalog. Devin and I made a buffet of snacks that spanned the entire hallway. Party of my dreams.