Last selfie of 2019. I’m so happy Jabs looked at the camera.
Hey, it’s the new year! Goodie gee. I didn’t have work off between Christmas and New Year’s this year, which is a shame because that’s usually my self-reflection time and I like it. Or I get all weird during it. One of the two! So my planning for this next year has been a little late, and I’ve also missed out on the wave of posts about the last year and/or decade.
But being a little late doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it, and I thought it might be fun! So over the next few days (weeks? depends on my schedule) I wanted to do those things anyway. This post is just reflecting on the past year. The next one will be on the decade, which will be buck wild because I’ve changed a lot. Like people tend to do, but still. And then after I’ve done all that I’ll talk about my goals for this next year.
So let’s get started, then. What happened this year? Lots of good, bad, and ugly. In no particular order:
Wrote Many Words, Did Nothing With Them
I’ve done a lot of writing this year, but the lion’s share of it has been writing morning pages. It’s a practice from the book The Artist’s Way where you write a few pages each morning of whatever you want before you start your day, be that going to a day job or other creative work. I type it, so I treat the baseline for “a few pages” as 500 words.
Some of these words have been stories, or connect to other pieces I’ve written. Lots of them are scenes from stories, or stories that don’t complete even if I continue them later on. There’s a lot of rambling freewriting journal entries, too. And that’s the point of the practice, so I don’t feel bad about it. But I do wish more words had gone into rewriting Shivering Deeps, writing new short stories I actually finished, that sort of thing.
I also wrote a bunch of blog posts. That was nice. 😉
Lost a Friend
I’ll miss you so much, my darling tiny friend
Jerry the leopard gecko passed away towards the end of the year. He didn’t get a full memorial post because honestly I didn’t think I could handle it, and then it felt awkwardly long after the event to write one. It still makes me sad, and it’s been a few months now. The little guy ended up being far sicker than we initially thought, and it was definitely his time to go (though my vet and I did everything we could, and didn’t know until the autopsy just how bad stuff had gotten). I miss seeing his little face every day. It blew my mind to realize I only took care of him for two years. It seems like longer, in a good way. And he made it to NINETEEN years old, which is bonkers old for a leopard gecko to get. Apparently he’s only the second one my vet’s ever seen that has gotten that old, and she works with a lot of geckos.
Someday soon here I need to get around to cleaning up his enclosure. I shut off all the heating and stuff, which was hard enough, pretty quick after he went away. But I hate taking apart an animal’s enclosure after they pass. It’s a lot like, I imagine, packing up the house of a loved one after they die. You see all their stuff, it triggers memories, and in the process too you’re admitting they’re not coming back ever again. So, yeah. Giving that a bit of time.
I also have to figure out what to do with the cockroach colony I kept for him. I love the little dorks but I have no use for them and there’s so many but I don’t want to let them just die. (I don’t take great care of them, but there’s a league of difference between that and intentionally killing the lot of them.) Probably find someone to sell them to. Anyway.
Figured Out Some Gender Stuff
I said some, not all. Figured out I’m deeeefinitely some stripe of non-binary. Still figuring out how that translates to how I want to present. A lot of the details are just private enough that I don’t want to talk about them much here. More updates as events warrant, but that’s the gist of it for now. (Also they/them pronouns are much appreciated, but not currently a hard requirement.)
Got A (Mediocre) Job
I started working at my current employer in May, after getting fired from my construction job in December of 2018. (I’m still sad/angry about that firing, but that says more about me at this point.) The new job, at a certain pet insurance company *cough cough*, is fine. The work is tedious, but I understand why it needs doing. It’s nice to have a job that’s inside an office instead of in a deafening server room or out in the cold and wet. It’s nice to have free coffee, because god do I need it on a lot of days to stay focused.
However, it’s also underpaid by a good amount, some of the ways we do things seem ridiculous to me even after they’re explained, the internal software we use seems to constantly not be a priority despite it being buggy as hell, and management at all levels seems more focused on trying to keep a happy face on everything than fixing it. Though I’m more forgiving of the last part for my team’s managers, as they don’t have a lot of leverage to work with to try and get things to change. I wish they’d go for it anyway and stick their necks out, but I get why they don’t.
It’s a job that keeps the bills more or less paid and doesn’t absolutely suck. It could be worse. It could be better, though, and I’m thinking I’ll be aiming to try to improve things there or moving on sometime this year.
Dated. A Lot.
I counted it up the other day and I went on first dates with a dozen or so people this year who I hadn’t met before that point. I met some cool people, engaged in a few excellent cavortings, had a lot of awkward conversations, and gained a lot of confidence in handling the need to reject people (and a little more about being rejected, in turn). I wasn’t looking for anything serious when I started, and while that’s been changing lately, in the end nothing’s really worked out long-term (or even been a satisfying short-term “yep, that was awesome and now to move on!” thing). Hell, I can count the number of third dates on one hand.
But it’s good to get out there, and this way I can’t say I’m not at least trying.
Made a Few Rad New Friends
They’re goode. <3
Became Really Fucking Anti-Capitalist
Like, I’m at the point I’m literally willing to put the wealthy up against a wall. Our system is broken as hell and it’s resistant to change by design. I don’t think working within our current systems is going to create change quickly enough to head off the worst of climate change, much less deal with the less apocalypse-level existential and social issues.
The trick is getting through to a critical mass of people that they can, in fact, stop doing things “the way they’ve always been.” And that capitalism ultimately sucks for virtually everyone. Oh, and building enough guillotines for us to use. That’s probably hard, I should work on that.
Felt Lost
“You are in a mazy of twisty passages, all alike.” — Zork I: The Great Underground Empire (also in Colossal Cave Adventure, the founding work of the genre)
I’ve felt lost or at the bottom of virtually every aspect of my life this year. Career, romantic relationships, friendships and community, creatively, etc. It’s been fucking rough. Some parts feel like truly being lost, other parts feel like I’m flying a plane that’s threatening to crash and am at the point where the tops of trees are scraping against the belly of the plane, so I’m about to be super fucked unless something changes. Working on finding what needs to be changed, no solutions yet, though.
Didn’t Finish Shivering Deeps
I thought I was going to be done with the next draft of this, and be subbing it to agents by now. I’m still working on it, slowly, but I’m not anywhere near where I thought I would be. I’m definitely scared. It’s just a lot of work and I’m worried I’ll make a hash of it and take my mediocre story, start unraveling it to re-weave it into something better, and end up with an unfixable knot of thread and yarn.
Still, I made progress, and that’s not nothing.
Probably a Bunch of Other Stuff
I mean, it was a whole year. Last think I can think of to mention is that I’m now very very close to being done with my grad school program. But nothing of particular note happened there, just more steady progress.
Something I should definitely do this next year? Find more things that can be short-term wins. But that’s another post.
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