New Year's / Year in Review Post
Overall, 2015 was a pretty good year for me.
I found some new communities and developed new friendships at Uni in the fall of 2014, and those only grew and strengthened in the winter and spring of 2015. I had interesting classes and did well academically those last two quarters, and in June, six years after I started, I finally graduated undergrad.
My parents and Will came for graduation. After the ceremony, my parents and I took most of a week to tourist around north-central California, including going to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, kayaking in Morro Bay, and hiking in the redwoods and on the coast. Then Mum flew out, but Dad and I took the next week and road-tripped from California back to Alaska. We stopped in Portland to go to Powell's and the Saturday Market, in Seattle to visit Kurt, and at a lovely little hot springs somewhere in Canada, and passed a whole lot of gorgeous scenery on the way.
Upon arriving back home, I moved in with Will for real (we'd also lived together the previous summer), and went back to cashiering at the natural foods grocery store I worked at the last two summers (and where Will is now also working).
Life since than has mostly been taken up with the daily grind, but there have been bright spots. The local dance community and SCA group continue to be major sources of sanity, as they have been whenever I've been in Alaska for an extended period of time in the past few years. Since I got Will into it about a year and a half ago, the SCA in particular has become an increasingly large part of our lives. We drove down to Summer Coronet in July, I got my Award of Arms and Will won a tourney to become the Barony's rapier champion in September, Will co-autocratted a weekend of workshops in November, and I became a Lady in Waiting and Court Artisan to our Baroness in December. We've also ended up doing a fair amount of social stuff with that crowd, and our SCA friends are steadily becoming more like family.
In late September, we went to South Carolina for a week for Will's cousin's wedding, and I met his family for the first time. Nearly all of them were lovely and very welcoming to me. It was also my first time in the South, which I must admit I had my worries about, but I was pleasantly surprised. In October, we celebrated our second anniversary.
In December, we took a trip to California to visit my friends from Uni and go to Dickens Fair. It was a bit of a logistical nightmare at times, in an "anything that can go wrong, will" kind of way, but it all ended up working out anyway because my friends are awesome, and we had a great time and are hoping to make it an annual thing.
I've done quite a bit of jewelry-making and beadwork (in fact, I went a little crazy this holiday season making ball ornaments covered with beaded netting), and I've been picking up a bit of leather crafting. But apart from those sorts of crafting, I haven't done much creatively. I've barely done any writing at all, less than I have in quite a few years, and for at least a few months I was in a funk where I could hardly even think of ideas to potentially work on. I did start to get back into it a bit in November and December, though. While I missed the deadline to sign up for Yuletide, I did pick up a pinch hit and was able to write a story for it that I was happy with, and I've got more ideas floating around now, so I'm hopeful that I'll be better off going forward.
Will and I are definitely past the honeymoon phase in our relationship. We've never had a big fight, but we get frustrated with each other and have little arguments a lot more than we used to. But I know part of that is just things that naturally happen as you get further into a relationship, and it's still a really good relationship and I still love him like crazy. And a lot of it, too, is just that we're both pretty stressed with where we are in life right now, feeling like we're stalled and not really going anywhere. The grocery store we work at is a pretty good place to work, but when it comes down to it, it's a low-paid, dead-end job, and we're both getting tired of that, which means we're both carrying a lot of tension and get more easily out of sorts. I wanted to just go back to cashiering for a while after graduation because I was ready to have a break from school and just do something that wasn't a lot of responsibility or thought for a while. I still think it was a good idea for where I was then, but by now I'm ready to move on. Meanwhile, Will's had to cut way back on classes the last few years to earn money to afford taking more classes going forward, and he's getting sick of being stalled on that. So this spring semester, I'm taking a class at the local tech college to become a Certified Nurse Aide (and will be looking for a job using that once I finish the course), and Will's going back up towards full-time student status, and I think that will make life better.
The holiday season has been nice, if hectic since the actual days of the holidays are all the time we get off from work. We had a fun Christmas Eve with SCA people and a lovely quiet Christmas Day with my parents. New Year's Eve we went to a dance for long enough to see dance community friends, toast with sparkling cider, and waltz in the new year to Auld Lang Syne, but spent most of the night at a mellow house party with SCA family.
2015 had its frustrations, but for the most part it was a good year, and a year of progress. I think 2016 is going to be even better.
New Year's Resolutions 2015:
Graduate Yes!
Get GPA up to 3.0 by graduation Didn't quite make it (there was one class my last quarter that screwed me over) but I got it up to 2.8- or 2.9-something, so I think I did pretty well
Write more Alas, no.
Sew new garb I sewed new garb for Will, does that count? I also ended up acquiring a fair amount of garb over the course of the year, and crafted various accessories, but I can't say I've made any progress to speak of on any of my own sewing projects.
Pull together coherent SCA persona Made some progress - I now have two named personas and have a fairly specific location and time period for each, and I have my heraldry figured out, but I can't really cross this off yet because I want to have at least a basic life story for each of my personas.
Do more outdoorsy stuff Alas, no.
Contribute to social justice efforts Check.
Stay on top of my mental health Yes, I'm now going on several years since my last major depressive episode, and haven't even really had any slumps worth speaking of in the past year, plus managed to get to a point where I could get off my meds and still be doing fine. (Which is good, since I lost my good insurance when I graduated and can no longer afford them.)
New Year's Resolutions 2016:
Get a better job
Cook regularly
Write at least once a week
Write polished story each month
Draw something
Sew new garb
Pull together coherent SCA persona
Stay on top of my mental health
Happy New Year, everyone! May your joys be many, and your troubles few.
I found some new communities and developed new friendships at Uni in the fall of 2014, and those only grew and strengthened in the winter and spring of 2015. I had interesting classes and did well academically those last two quarters, and in June, six years after I started, I finally graduated undergrad.
My parents and Will came for graduation. After the ceremony, my parents and I took most of a week to tourist around north-central California, including going to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, kayaking in Morro Bay, and hiking in the redwoods and on the coast. Then Mum flew out, but Dad and I took the next week and road-tripped from California back to Alaska. We stopped in Portland to go to Powell's and the Saturday Market, in Seattle to visit Kurt, and at a lovely little hot springs somewhere in Canada, and passed a whole lot of gorgeous scenery on the way.
Upon arriving back home, I moved in with Will for real (we'd also lived together the previous summer), and went back to cashiering at the natural foods grocery store I worked at the last two summers (and where Will is now also working).
Life since than has mostly been taken up with the daily grind, but there have been bright spots. The local dance community and SCA group continue to be major sources of sanity, as they have been whenever I've been in Alaska for an extended period of time in the past few years. Since I got Will into it about a year and a half ago, the SCA in particular has become an increasingly large part of our lives. We drove down to Summer Coronet in July, I got my Award of Arms and Will won a tourney to become the Barony's rapier champion in September, Will co-autocratted a weekend of workshops in November, and I became a Lady in Waiting and Court Artisan to our Baroness in December. We've also ended up doing a fair amount of social stuff with that crowd, and our SCA friends are steadily becoming more like family.
In late September, we went to South Carolina for a week for Will's cousin's wedding, and I met his family for the first time. Nearly all of them were lovely and very welcoming to me. It was also my first time in the South, which I must admit I had my worries about, but I was pleasantly surprised. In October, we celebrated our second anniversary.
In December, we took a trip to California to visit my friends from Uni and go to Dickens Fair. It was a bit of a logistical nightmare at times, in an "anything that can go wrong, will" kind of way, but it all ended up working out anyway because my friends are awesome, and we had a great time and are hoping to make it an annual thing.
I've done quite a bit of jewelry-making and beadwork (in fact, I went a little crazy this holiday season making ball ornaments covered with beaded netting), and I've been picking up a bit of leather crafting. But apart from those sorts of crafting, I haven't done much creatively. I've barely done any writing at all, less than I have in quite a few years, and for at least a few months I was in a funk where I could hardly even think of ideas to potentially work on. I did start to get back into it a bit in November and December, though. While I missed the deadline to sign up for Yuletide, I did pick up a pinch hit and was able to write a story for it that I was happy with, and I've got more ideas floating around now, so I'm hopeful that I'll be better off going forward.
Will and I are definitely past the honeymoon phase in our relationship. We've never had a big fight, but we get frustrated with each other and have little arguments a lot more than we used to. But I know part of that is just things that naturally happen as you get further into a relationship, and it's still a really good relationship and I still love him like crazy. And a lot of it, too, is just that we're both pretty stressed with where we are in life right now, feeling like we're stalled and not really going anywhere. The grocery store we work at is a pretty good place to work, but when it comes down to it, it's a low-paid, dead-end job, and we're both getting tired of that, which means we're both carrying a lot of tension and get more easily out of sorts. I wanted to just go back to cashiering for a while after graduation because I was ready to have a break from school and just do something that wasn't a lot of responsibility or thought for a while. I still think it was a good idea for where I was then, but by now I'm ready to move on. Meanwhile, Will's had to cut way back on classes the last few years to earn money to afford taking more classes going forward, and he's getting sick of being stalled on that. So this spring semester, I'm taking a class at the local tech college to become a Certified Nurse Aide (and will be looking for a job using that once I finish the course), and Will's going back up towards full-time student status, and I think that will make life better.
The holiday season has been nice, if hectic since the actual days of the holidays are all the time we get off from work. We had a fun Christmas Eve with SCA people and a lovely quiet Christmas Day with my parents. New Year's Eve we went to a dance for long enough to see dance community friends, toast with sparkling cider, and waltz in the new year to Auld Lang Syne, but spent most of the night at a mellow house party with SCA family.
2015 had its frustrations, but for the most part it was a good year, and a year of progress. I think 2016 is going to be even better.
New Year's Resolutions 2015:
Graduate Yes!
Get GPA up to 3.0 by graduation Didn't quite make it (there was one class my last quarter that screwed me over) but I got it up to 2.8- or 2.9-something, so I think I did pretty well
Write more Alas, no.
Sew new garb I sewed new garb for Will, does that count? I also ended up acquiring a fair amount of garb over the course of the year, and crafted various accessories, but I can't say I've made any progress to speak of on any of my own sewing projects.
Pull together coherent SCA persona Made some progress - I now have two named personas and have a fairly specific location and time period for each, and I have my heraldry figured out, but I can't really cross this off yet because I want to have at least a basic life story for each of my personas.
Do more outdoorsy stuff Alas, no.
Contribute to social justice efforts Check.
Stay on top of my mental health Yes, I'm now going on several years since my last major depressive episode, and haven't even really had any slumps worth speaking of in the past year, plus managed to get to a point where I could get off my meds and still be doing fine. (Which is good, since I lost my good insurance when I graduated and can no longer afford them.)
New Year's Resolutions 2016:
Get a better job
Cook regularly
Write at least once a week
Write polished story each month
Draw something
Sew new garb
Pull together coherent SCA persona
Stay on top of my mental health
Happy New Year, everyone! May your joys be many, and your troubles few.