2014
This is what I did for:
New year: I was on a plane from Delhi to Singapore. The flight crew announced the new year's arrival and the stewardesses brought wine. I remember writing at the time I was grateful for it: that the new year came when we were still on Indian time, over Indian soil. This time last year was hard - one of the reasons I'm so pleased so many of my friends enjoyed the wedding was that I very much didn't, which some notable exceptions - but India itself became closer to home. And Shim, too, seems to have found something of it within himself - no one else has been particularly surprised by this; are we all not, deep down, Indians - which is one of those things you don't hope for, but are just quietly happy about.
Birthday: A cocktail bar in Camden with many loving friends - opposite my work, because I'm that predictable - followed by a rather pink-wine laden dinner at Rossopomodoro over the road. This is becoming a tradition and I'm glad of it. On my actual birthday, my colleagues of four weeks' standing brought me a cake.
Christmas: Shim and I were kindly invited by
happydork and her family to spend Christmas with them, and it was a very lovely time.
Employment status: Ah. Well, I don't think I can overestimate what this year has done for me, professionally. I felt like I was, and was, in a bad place, by December of last year: and then this year happened. Colleagues who like and respect me! Valuable work that is enormously interesting in itself but also builds up my skill set! Opportunities to do all sorts of things - to manage projects, to run teams, to stand up by myself in meetings and politely say things that boil down to, I am right and you are wrong, and even though you're twenty years more qualified then me I trust my own judgement! Everything we've done has been extraordinary to be a part of, and to top it off my lovely boss discovered on Christmas Eve that apparently we knocked it out of the park, in terms of things actually achieved this year, and sent us all £50 of vouchers each.
Of course, I'm moving on soon: I'm working as a lawyer civil servant in an as-yet-unidentified government department from the new year. But a year ago I applied for this self-same job with the GLS and didn't even get beyond the first stage; this time around they gave me the job within twelve hours of the interview. This year has been amazing.
Creative output: Well. I'm not really sure on this. I wrote 110,000 words of fanfiction, of which the best story is [redacted until yuletide reveals] and there are several others I'm proud of. I wrote some original fiction, too. Two short stories which were both accepted for publication (my very first original credits!), and a third with requested revisions which I'm working on now. I also finished and revised Receiver of Wreck, but it's on the back burner now - I've had good advice on it and I think it needs rather a lot more rewriting, but having worked on it for a couple of years I really need a break from it.
Other projects:
-Lollipop, a story that stubbornly seems set on being an unsellable novella length - 35,000 words, neither use nor ornament - of which about half is written, and to be fair I'm quite enjoying. (A generation ship! Bickering roommates who find a baby on their doorstep! Zero gravity go-karting!)
-Story With Planes In, about 6000 words right now (of maybe 7000? 10,000 at most? Please god not another novella), which I'm hoping to finish. Well. Tomorrow, in the case of the first draft.
-Immensely Aggravating Fantasy Historical, which for some reason is set in 1920, a period of which I know precious little and am having to read up on. It's kind of a courtroom drama, I think, and involves a genderqueer protagonist, and a train crash. And magic. Another goshdarned novella, sadly.
The reason I'm not sure about what to say for this question is that - well, writing is hard, right now. I can't remember when it's been so hard. Everything I write is going through multiple revisions and drafts and total rejiggings of the structure and bouts of self-doubt, I'm staring yesterday's writing hating every word of it, I've never fussed so much. I don't know what's happening to me. I haven't had the urge to pack it all in, far from it, but urgh, it's so hard and I don't know what to do about it.
(Oh! I almost forgot, I made four vids this year, and they were fun, but as the claims on my time get more intense, I think vidding may have to be the hobby that falls off the list, rather than writing or languages. We shall see.)
Academic: I'm just coming up on a year of Hindi classes, which have been a really great experience. I learn at the Mary Ward Centre in north London and it's amazing there: the classes are incredibly inexpensive and the teachers are great. My Hindi teacher is a stickler for grammar, which I love, and I've learned an embarrassing amount this year: I've gone from one-word answers to questions to impromptu sentences with semi-colons and subjunctive clauses. It means my other languages have dropped out rather, but that's okay, actually - Hindi for another eighteen months, I think, and then I actually think I'll be done. By which I don't mean done, but done insofar as formal teaching can take me, and then I'll take up French or Gaelic again.
(I also want to take a term of classes at Irreverent Dance! But they haven't opened for registration, so I signed up for Hindi from January again. I'm such a huge fan of adult education - it is the best thing, it makes me so happy.)
Financial situation: I learned recently that my new employer will pay me conmensurate with my post-qualification experience (i.e., none) for my first year, then regrade me as though I had three years' PQE. Which is another way of saying I have no complaints whatsoever, and I'm grateful.
Family stuff: My parents continue ever onwards, stately as a galleon. My father's work gets ever more interesting and a teensy bit concerning - he's being sent to Khartoum soon, he says. Also, they and my in-laws are now best of friends, which while being a little alarming - the grapevine now contains multitudes - is a comfort to me in many ways: it makes me think I'm not the only family my parents have for thousand and thousands of miles. Elsewhere, my cousin N. is getting married in Indianapolis in May. I expect hungama.
Relationship stuff: After seven years together, and one year of marriage - well. We go on, and we go on.
Friend stuff: I've really, really enjoyed a year of being in London several days a week and seeing friends basically every week once if not twice, and then doing the con circuit in the summer to some extent and hanging out with many people I love.
Also, I'm really enjoyed being part of a creative community, of other writers and vidders. I have always been hesitant to call myself a writer or an artist or a creative person, but among others, that becomes easier and more comfortable.
Living situation: I now own this flat! It was a little anticlimactic at the time, as we bought the flat off our own landlord, so we didn't have to pack and move, we didn't have to deal with estate agents, completion passed unremarked-upon - but it's made such a difference. In the eight months since the sale, we've massively refurbished it using the money that would have gone to the estate agent, getting rid of horrible carpets and sofas. Barring some picture frames I'm going to get in the new year, it's all refloored and rearmchaired and looks very nice.
Travel: I went to Singapore, Indonesia, the US, and many bits of Scotland this year. I also promised Shim, after we returned from Bali in January, that we wouldn't go anywhere very much for a while, and true to my word I went to the US without him and was content with Scotland in the summer. Now my wanderlust has returned with an incurable vengeance and I have many plans for the coming year. (Perhaps with friends! Do you want to go anywhere? Please talk to me about it.)
Health: I had a horrible migraine cluster in the first few months of the year; then a period of increasingly worrying ennui, limping and brain fog that turned out to be vitamin D deficiency, thank goodness, and nothing scarier or more difficult to remedy, and then a head cold that has lasted about six weeks, now. I haven't been exceptionally good at looking after my own health this year, which has been partly a matter of circumstance, as I've adjusted to a life that features - no getting away from it - a lot of commuting in the freezing rain and not very many meals. I will try and do better.
General mental state: I'm nervous about the new job, and suffering a little from seasonal anxiety and depression. Onwards and upwards, though. I've done a lot this year and I'm going to try and remember it.
Weddings attended: Two family weddings in Scotland! One perfectly nice one in Carnoustie, and one spectacularly beautiful one on the west coast of the Highlands at the height of summer, that involved dancing a ceilidh in a marquee with the Milky Way visible above.
Babies born: Among friends and extended family and colleagues and acquaintances, so many babies. So many. Also, one of my former colleagues' due date is today: I await news.
Best books read: I read about sixty books this year, which for me is very good. The best were Ancillary Sword, by Ann Leckie (so excited for the next book in 2015!) and the two Mathey and Lynes books, by Amy Griswold and Melissa Scott. Also, hathy_col made me a gift of the collected short stories of Lord Dunsany, and I loved them so, so much: they're such beautiful, literate, tissue-paper exquisite things.
Best TV watched: Pushing Daisies! I can't believe I left it so long to watch this show. They're all so perfect.
Best films seen: Oh goodness, I think at the age of 27 I can finally admit it: I don't like films. I just, they're nice enough, but I don't have the attention span. And then when I watch the ones everyone tells me I'd love, I hate them and resent the entire art form entirely irrationally. I shall stick with my TV and books and music.
Best things bought: This flat! And much of the furniture in it. My favourite is the lovely corner sofa and armchair we got for the living room, which mean I can actually sit down in my own house without falling down the back of the sofa.
The music of 2014: Oooh. There was a new Gaslight Anthem album, which I liked well enough, but then I discovered Brian Fallon has two side projects, the Horrible Crowes (who have one album, Elsie) and Molly and the Zombies, who have literally five songs. Nevertheless I love them both utterly and have played them to distraction. Ditto two albums by the Irish folk band, I Draw Slow - Shim and I have been playing these in the car a lot - and also, Taylor Swift! I adored her new album, 1989, and now I'm working through her back catalogue to see what I missed.
Fashion concept: I wrote about it elsewhere, but: dresses! Boots! Frock coats! Being tiny but determined.
Global happenings and politics: You know, I think 2014 was the first year I've actually just stopped reading the news for days at a time. I actually believed that it would be better for me to live in ignorance, at least for a little while.
Things never done before: Not a lot of things! After such a busy and dramatic 2013, it's for the best. Let's go with: I got paid actual money for my fiction.
Resolutions: Last year's resolution: I resolve to finish revising my stupid novel, and try to write some original short stories.
Done, and done. This year: I resolve to make a good fist of the new job, to take more pleasure in the small things of life, and keep writing though it's hard.
Also, life lesson learned this year, related to writing but probably generalisable: only I can write my stories. So even if everyone else writes way more, or better, or gets more damn comments - it's epiphenomenal.
Happy new year, my friends. I hope 2015 brings all you hope for.
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