My face when thinking about 2016 as a whole.
I figured I should do a 2016 wrap-up post, closing out a week or so of more blog output than this thing has seen in months. But seriously, I like doing wrap-up posts and reflecting a little on the past year. Forward-looking things, such as potential New Year’s resolutions, will happen tomorrow.
2016 has had a lot of ups and downs. First off, at least it’s over. Some bad shit went down this year. America elected a fascist, the electors didn’t rise up and do the job they were originally intended to do (not that I super-blame them, given how their job has been reduced to a rubber stamp over the years), a bunch of wonderful, wonderful artists died (RIP Carrie Fisher, among many others)… Yeah, a lot of shit. The worst part is that I know I’m missing a ton of it, because so much came in this year that it overloaded my brain’s RAM and processing through the pages on the broken disk that is my long-term memory will take quite some time.
And there’s been some personal bad things, too. I’ve been exhausted a lot. I took on a bit too much this year and only really got through by the skin of my teeth. In some ways, I felt like I did a lot of running in place this year, making little appreciable progress while still ending up panting with effort.
But not all was negative. I moved into a new apartment with my boyfriend, and while sometimes I miss the old place, this new one is about as close to living in the woods as I can get while still being in Seattle proper. I got to spend lots of lovely time with him (sharing a place = lots of nice casual together time), and I’ve been growing as a person as I figure out what it is to truly function as a team. (Including the need to curb some of my impatience that expresses itself as excessive independence.) I met a lot of great new friends, and kept up connections with some old ones. I finished the first year of my MLIS degree, which has been exciting but challenging in ways I didn’t quite expect. I was able to get some additional training at my day job, which opened up new opportunities for me. I slowly started figuring out an exercise plan that I actually enjoy. I even went backpacking for the first time in forever, which is fucking awesome.
But most importantly for me, I created. A lot of my big projects still aren’t done, but even though ti’s been faltering at times, I’ve been writing, and I’ve been drawing. Looking back, making things, even the things I haven’t shared and may never share, is what I’m proudest of this last year. Because it means that I’m still learning and growing, and going to (hopefully!) make even better things in the future.
I realize that’s not a lot of detail on what happened this year, but that’s what years end up being. Blurs with highlights. I’m looking forward towards next year, towards fighting whatever fascism comes our way, towards creating more art, towards more great times with friends, and towards gaining, hopefully, a drop or two more of wisdom.
Happy New Year, everyone.
P.S. No total word count for the year because I did a very bad job of tracking it this year (haha, creative depression sucks!), so it’ll take some effort to figure it out. I’ll likely talk about it in a future post.