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2018 in Review, and Looking Ahead
From last year: For next year...maintenance mode. I have a LOT of balls in the air. I do not need to add more. I just need to keep them moving. I'm really pleased with how much I've gotten done in the last year, and I want to keep that up. Read at least 100 books. Start getting this novel shopped around to agents. Start another one, in a different subgenre. Keep exercising. Possibly do another obstacle course, because I had a lot of fun doing the first one. Travel. (Nothing is nailed down yet, but I've got the possibility of two different international trips this year floating around.) Keep trying to be a good mom, wife, daughter, employee, citizen. Try to be active in the 2018 election cycle. (Which I'm dreading, but needs to be done.) Keep volunteering. Just keep moving and doing all the things I did this year. I did good. Need to keep doing that.
So this year was...a thing. A really weird thing. Basically, almost everyone I care about had some kind of deep life-event crisis this year. In my social circle and family and immediate coworkers, we had death, divorce, foundering relationships, miscarriages, terrifyingly premature deliveries, unemployment, homelessness, crippling illness, depression, and dementia onset. It was a raging garbage fire shitshow of a year. Chuckro and I did our level best to staunch the bleeding and offer support (from hand-holding and shoulders to cry on to networking and gifts and places to crash), but there was only so much we could really do and by midsummer we were having our own breakdowns. I spent most of summer and fall incapable of reading or watching anything but the fluffiest of media because I'd completely blown out my empathy circuits.
Thank god, a lot of these stories have resolved themselves somewhat at this point, and many (not all, but many) are in better places now than they were in the spring. But it was awful for them, and I really, really hope that 2019 is better.
Meanwhile, completely isolated from anyone else's angst...I had an awesome year. I had multiple short stories published. I got not one, but two raises. I got to go to Australia, Iceland, Toronto, and Prague. ARR and I did so much stuff - museums and skiing and horseback riding and skating. We made crafts and did science projects and volunteer work. We went to conventions and multiple amusement parks. It made for whiplash, and I've tried not to feel guilty that my life is going well when people I love's lives weren't. (And it's hard to enjoy successes when people you care about are in pain.) But it really was an amazing year.
I'm also pretty proud of how I've handled the year. I didn't do everything perfectly, and I definitely wish I could go back in time and lend my summer self a little more patience and empathy and peace. But...we did a lot to help where we could, and I think we made a difference in several people's lives. On the less personal level, I also did a bunch of work around the 2018 election, including donating, writing postcards, and canvassing, and it paid off - the folks I did the most work for all won their races. I'm hopeful that 2019 will in fact be a better year for a lot of people, both people I know and the world in general. I don't have any illusions here - a lot of stuff is still going to suck and a lot of work still needs to be done. But I feel like I can personally say that I did a small part in making things better, and I'm really proud of that.
(I also finished the last novel and started sending it out to agents. Lots of rejections so far, but it's out there. I started a new one that's about a third of the way through the rough draft. Read my 100 books. Kept donating and volunteering. Didn't do an obstacle course but did lose a couple pounds I'm pretty sure I put back on in the last two weeks. House is clean, child is happy and healthy, marriage is doing fine, job is going very well. And this holiday season has been amazing. Seriously, this was a fantastic December.)
So, 2019 goals:
- Keep it up: volunteering, sending out query letters, keeping family happy and well cared for.
- I've got some ambitious plans at work for changing the structure of our workflow. The details are boring to people outside my field, just that it's a huge project that may pay off or may blow up, and I really want to make this thing a success.
- I haven't actually looked at a scale since I came home. I'd like to get back to where I was at the beginning of December, weight-wise, wherever I might be at the moment.
- Finish the book I'm working on.
- Go at least one cool new place. (There are a couple possibilities in the air at the moment.)
- This may or may not be likely, but I want to try to spend a lot less time wasting time on the internet, at least for January. Go read a book or something. Step away from the Buzzfeed meme list. It's not healthy.
That's enough - more than enough. Bye, 2018. It was...weird.
So this year was...a thing. A really weird thing. Basically, almost everyone I care about had some kind of deep life-event crisis this year. In my social circle and family and immediate coworkers, we had death, divorce, foundering relationships, miscarriages, terrifyingly premature deliveries, unemployment, homelessness, crippling illness, depression, and dementia onset. It was a raging garbage fire shitshow of a year. Chuckro and I did our level best to staunch the bleeding and offer support (from hand-holding and shoulders to cry on to networking and gifts and places to crash), but there was only so much we could really do and by midsummer we were having our own breakdowns. I spent most of summer and fall incapable of reading or watching anything but the fluffiest of media because I'd completely blown out my empathy circuits.
Thank god, a lot of these stories have resolved themselves somewhat at this point, and many (not all, but many) are in better places now than they were in the spring. But it was awful for them, and I really, really hope that 2019 is better.
Meanwhile, completely isolated from anyone else's angst...I had an awesome year. I had multiple short stories published. I got not one, but two raises. I got to go to Australia, Iceland, Toronto, and Prague. ARR and I did so much stuff - museums and skiing and horseback riding and skating. We made crafts and did science projects and volunteer work. We went to conventions and multiple amusement parks. It made for whiplash, and I've tried not to feel guilty that my life is going well when people I love's lives weren't. (And it's hard to enjoy successes when people you care about are in pain.) But it really was an amazing year.
I'm also pretty proud of how I've handled the year. I didn't do everything perfectly, and I definitely wish I could go back in time and lend my summer self a little more patience and empathy and peace. But...we did a lot to help where we could, and I think we made a difference in several people's lives. On the less personal level, I also did a bunch of work around the 2018 election, including donating, writing postcards, and canvassing, and it paid off - the folks I did the most work for all won their races. I'm hopeful that 2019 will in fact be a better year for a lot of people, both people I know and the world in general. I don't have any illusions here - a lot of stuff is still going to suck and a lot of work still needs to be done. But I feel like I can personally say that I did a small part in making things better, and I'm really proud of that.
(I also finished the last novel and started sending it out to agents. Lots of rejections so far, but it's out there. I started a new one that's about a third of the way through the rough draft. Read my 100 books. Kept donating and volunteering. Didn't do an obstacle course but did lose a couple pounds I'm pretty sure I put back on in the last two weeks. House is clean, child is happy and healthy, marriage is doing fine, job is going very well. And this holiday season has been amazing. Seriously, this was a fantastic December.)
So, 2019 goals:
- Keep it up: volunteering, sending out query letters, keeping family happy and well cared for.
- I've got some ambitious plans at work for changing the structure of our workflow. The details are boring to people outside my field, just that it's a huge project that may pay off or may blow up, and I really want to make this thing a success.
- I haven't actually looked at a scale since I came home. I'd like to get back to where I was at the beginning of December, weight-wise, wherever I might be at the moment.
- Finish the book I'm working on.
- Go at least one cool new place. (There are a couple possibilities in the air at the moment.)
- This may or may not be likely, but I want to try to spend a lot less time wasting time on the internet, at least for January. Go read a book or something. Step away from the Buzzfeed meme list. It's not healthy.
That's enough - more than enough. Bye, 2018. It was...weird.