2015 in review
2015, in meme form:
New year: In a pub by the river, with Shim and an old work friend who was unexpectedly at a loose end. The pub was weirdly, eerily deserted - though both the next door pubs were heaving - and at midnight they gave us champagne on the house for being their only custom!
Birthday: I have a strange feeling I let my birthday slip past unremarked upon this year. Can that be true?
(Okay, having looked through my emails, this is not true! I went with friends for dinner in Covent Garden. I turned twenty-eight, and I do remember it, though I seem to have forgotten it was my birthday - because there were so many joyful evenings this year precisely like that one. That seems like better than the reverse, to me.
Also, from my email: apparently my security clearance came through on my birthday, as well. Huh.)
Christmas: For once, with my parents in Liverpool. For various reasons, they had a lot of family visiting this year - my cousin from America, and many of her other relatives, and family friends, and their relatives. I think we tried to celebrate Christmas but failed, and that's all right. We made lasagne with dal in it ("Dal-sagne," Shim said, intelligently; we ate a lot of oranges (as per my last post, my father had a bit of a panic and came home with three crates full); there were some gifts, but not many. My mother does not trust the oven, so many things were slightly incinerated. Shim has learnt to say; "One orange; two oranges; THOUSANDS OF ORANGES!" in Hindi.
Also, the heating went out on Boxing Day, which wasn't bad, because the temperature was in double figures, but we needed the hot water. So every time a guest arrived I went to the door and said, "Oh. You're not British Gas." Until the gas man actually came, at which point I opened the door and said, like an adherent of some exotic religion, "You're BRITISH GAS!"
The gas man edged away from me, but he fixed the boiler. And we sent him away with a tupperware of slightly incinerated dal lasagne, so all ends well.
Sadly, this is the place to note that I didn't celebrate Diwali this year. I'm sorry and angry with myself for this, but it was what it was. I hope that next year I can make up for it with - bright, shining - bells on.
Employment status: Oh - well. All right. A year ago, almost exactly, I got a new job working for a central government department as a professional civil servant and lawyer. It is - well. It is the job I've always wanted. I have a great team of colleagues and the kind of responsibility I'd never get anywhere else. It's challenging and worthwhile and valuable. But - it can be really very hard, in ways I'm not allowed to speak about. It's hard. It's very, very hard. In the almost-a-year I've been there, I've learned a lot, but I've also been finding it very difficult to eat and sleep. It's been improving recently, but I had something of a meltdown on Christmas Eve, which was a little bit unpleasant.
But - as I keep saying, often at 2am - it isn't makework; it isn't meaningless; it is sometimes painful but it's the job that's in front of me, and it needs to be done.
Creative output: This year, for the first time since I discovered online media fandom in 2001, most of my writing has been non-transformative. I wrote five pieces of fanfic this year, to a total of only about 15,000 words. Otherwise, I spent January and February writing something that became Quarter Days, the 25k novella that was published on December 1st. (In the last version of this meme, I referred to it as "Immensely Aggravating Fantasy Historical", which is - well. Accurate.) Then I wrote a couple of short stories ("Archana and Chandni", an Indian wedding in SPAAAACE, which came out in July, and "Lamplighters", which is a fantasy Cold War story that still hasn't found a home, though I'm cutting myself a break as not one but two markets have actually ceased publishing while it was on sub to them).
In April, I started writing a novel. I am still writing it now. I will be writing it forever. And ever. World without end, amen, etc. It's - complicated? If you've read some of my other stories, you may have come across the people of the Salt, who can do magic and are nevertheless very boring. They write textbooks and debate the ethical philosophy of magic. They keep the lights on and they make the trains run on time. They're accompanied by Birds-in-Flight, who can also do magic, but theirs is the magic of living things. They have an organic fluidity which sometimes manifests through their genders, and sometimes doesn't. (They're genderqueer, and/or genderfluid, and/or trans, or cis. They're also very boring.)
In 1939, the War Office, mindful of what's looming in Europe, gets the idea that maybe these boring people who keep the trains running on time might be useful as weapons of war, what? To this effect they conscript a team of magic-users from the intelligence services - Felix, Kira and Laurie - who then bicker constantly for the next 70,000 words. It is a great time. Writing it is a great time. Everything is wonderful. This is a lie.
So I think I wrote about 120,000 words in total, but not a great deal of it has seen the light of day and I actually don't have much lined up for publication - a novelette with Luna Station in March, and that's it - so, hmm. I would like to submit to POC Destroy Science Fiction and, well, 2015 isn't over yet.
Nevertheless, a reasonable year, especially as it was (still) a year of working full-time and commuting four hours a day.
Academic: (i.e., language-learning!) Slim to minimal. I am still taking Hindi classes, nominally, but haven't actually attended properly since October. I will start again in the summer term, I think. In the meantime, I have booked myself on a short Gaelic course at Sabhal Mor Ostaig at Easter. I'm really, really excited about this; I went to SMO for a visit in September and they couldn't have been nicer or more welcoming.
Financial situation: I'm coming up on two years post-qualification. I'm fine.
Family stuff: Both my parents turned sixty this year and are now entitled to Senior Citizens' Railcards (!), which is of course a reason for celebration - but also one for a small intake of breath, I suppose. My maternal grandfather never made it to sixty; my maternal grandmother only lived till 65. On the other side, my paternal grandmother (Hindi, a far more sensible language, would allow me to express this a lot more neatly) turned ninety two weeks ago. So I am thinking about things I have often taken for granted.
Relationship stuff: Eight years together and two years of marriage, and we do go on.
Friend stuff: I could say something new and profound, but I have the best friends anyone could have, 2015 was no different.
Living situation: It is increasingly untenable for me to live in Cambridge and commute to London for four hours a day. Shim and I have gone back and forth on this, but finally in August we agreed that's it - we need to move to London. Since then, we have made offers on three places, had two declined and pulled out of one ourselves (not after spending three months on it though); we have sold our own house; had a fourth offer accepted, and now are waiting with bated breath for the other side's solicitors to bloody well do something. So we're in a good position, mostly - it's just that I'm really ready to move, and we've been in limbo for nearly six months. I hope this works out, I really do.
Travel: I went to the US in the spring - New York for a holiday and Indianapolis for a family wedding - and to the Highlands in the autumn. Which is actually a lot less travelling than I wanted to do this year, but I already have four (!) trips planned for next year, one of which involves a 9000-mile roundtrip, so.
Health (inc mental): Oh, dear. Well - see employment status above, but I am fine. I am fine, and still here.
Weddings attended: My cousin N's wedding in Indianapolis in May. It was a very tiring wedding and I can't say I enjoyed all of it, but I'm very glad I went. Three family friends' weddings in the summer, none of which were exactly wonderful (people who follow me on Twitter may recall an evening of my increasingly irate tweets in re: NO TRAINS DREADFUL WEDDING NO FOOD), and then two of my dearest friends got married to each other and it was the BEST.
happydork's and
such_heights' space-themed wedding in September was beautiful, heartfelt, and delightful. I loved every quirky, loving minute of it.
Babies born: Plenty of acquaintances' babies, but none of particular note, I think.
Best books read: I read eighty-five books this year, which is the most since I started counting in 2009. I wish I'd done more book-reviewing as I went along! But my favourites were The Sparrow, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and Ancillary Mercy. And also there were also the four Hilary Tamar books by Sarah Caudwell, which, I just, I loved them SO MUCH I keep giving them to people as presents, they are the perfect hapless-lawyers-solve-mysteries books I never knew I needed like burning!
I also read a lot of the Brother Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters, which startled me by how textured, beautiful and life-affirming they are; I read some Frances Hardinge books, but the only one that really really stood out for me was Gullstruck Island; and for the first time, I read Slaughterhouse-5, which made me cry and cry and cry, in a heartening and cathartic sort of way.
Oh, and I am halfway through The Goblin Emperor, on one of my colleagues' recommendations - if I finish it before January 1st and it stays as good as it has been until now, I think it'll be among my favourites of the year, too.
Best TV watched: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries! I've written at length elsewhere about how much I love this show, but omg, I really love this show.
Best things bought: I was hoping to say - my house? But no. So let it be a new phone and these boots.
The music of 2015: So there's this musical about the life of Alexander Hamilton you may have vaguely heard of that I sort of like? My favourite songs are - surprising no one - "Wait For It" and "It's Quiet Uptown", which apparently I have listened to mumble times since September; also, I may have mentioned once or twice or many times that I'm going to see the show on Broadway in June of next year with seven of my closest friends. I mean. It's okay, I guess.
Global happenings and politics: No.
Things never done before: More than I thought! Working for the public sector is the main one, though. Also I had never, until this week, bought a scented candle. Turns out they're quite nice!
Resolutions: Last year's resolutions: 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.
Done; attempted in good faith; done. This year: I resolve to finish the novel; to not let my job destroy me more than I can help; and again, to try and take pleasure in small things. (Especially those that involve being outside.)
An older version of this meme asked for a song lyric, or a life lesson, or some such good place to end. In lieu of both, here is something I have been listening to a lot just recently: from Lin-Manuel Miranda's first musical, In The Heights, "Alabanza".
raven is also at Dreamwidth: there is or are
comment(s). Comment there or here.
New year: In a pub by the river, with Shim and an old work friend who was unexpectedly at a loose end. The pub was weirdly, eerily deserted - though both the next door pubs were heaving - and at midnight they gave us champagne on the house for being their only custom!
Birthday: I have a strange feeling I let my birthday slip past unremarked upon this year. Can that be true?
(Okay, having looked through my emails, this is not true! I went with friends for dinner in Covent Garden. I turned twenty-eight, and I do remember it, though I seem to have forgotten it was my birthday - because there were so many joyful evenings this year precisely like that one. That seems like better than the reverse, to me.
Also, from my email: apparently my security clearance came through on my birthday, as well. Huh.)
Christmas: For once, with my parents in Liverpool. For various reasons, they had a lot of family visiting this year - my cousin from America, and many of her other relatives, and family friends, and their relatives. I think we tried to celebrate Christmas but failed, and that's all right. We made lasagne with dal in it ("Dal-sagne," Shim said, intelligently; we ate a lot of oranges (as per my last post, my father had a bit of a panic and came home with three crates full); there were some gifts, but not many. My mother does not trust the oven, so many things were slightly incinerated. Shim has learnt to say; "One orange; two oranges; THOUSANDS OF ORANGES!" in Hindi.
Also, the heating went out on Boxing Day, which wasn't bad, because the temperature was in double figures, but we needed the hot water. So every time a guest arrived I went to the door and said, "Oh. You're not British Gas." Until the gas man actually came, at which point I opened the door and said, like an adherent of some exotic religion, "You're BRITISH GAS!"
The gas man edged away from me, but he fixed the boiler. And we sent him away with a tupperware of slightly incinerated dal lasagne, so all ends well.
Sadly, this is the place to note that I didn't celebrate Diwali this year. I'm sorry and angry with myself for this, but it was what it was. I hope that next year I can make up for it with - bright, shining - bells on.
Employment status: Oh - well. All right. A year ago, almost exactly, I got a new job working for a central government department as a professional civil servant and lawyer. It is - well. It is the job I've always wanted. I have a great team of colleagues and the kind of responsibility I'd never get anywhere else. It's challenging and worthwhile and valuable. But - it can be really very hard, in ways I'm not allowed to speak about. It's hard. It's very, very hard. In the almost-a-year I've been there, I've learned a lot, but I've also been finding it very difficult to eat and sleep. It's been improving recently, but I had something of a meltdown on Christmas Eve, which was a little bit unpleasant.
But - as I keep saying, often at 2am - it isn't makework; it isn't meaningless; it is sometimes painful but it's the job that's in front of me, and it needs to be done.
Creative output: This year, for the first time since I discovered online media fandom in 2001, most of my writing has been non-transformative. I wrote five pieces of fanfic this year, to a total of only about 15,000 words. Otherwise, I spent January and February writing something that became Quarter Days, the 25k novella that was published on December 1st. (In the last version of this meme, I referred to it as "Immensely Aggravating Fantasy Historical", which is - well. Accurate.) Then I wrote a couple of short stories ("Archana and Chandni", an Indian wedding in SPAAAACE, which came out in July, and "Lamplighters", which is a fantasy Cold War story that still hasn't found a home, though I'm cutting myself a break as not one but two markets have actually ceased publishing while it was on sub to them).
In April, I started writing a novel. I am still writing it now. I will be writing it forever. And ever. World without end, amen, etc. It's - complicated? If you've read some of my other stories, you may have come across the people of the Salt, who can do magic and are nevertheless very boring. They write textbooks and debate the ethical philosophy of magic. They keep the lights on and they make the trains run on time. They're accompanied by Birds-in-Flight, who can also do magic, but theirs is the magic of living things. They have an organic fluidity which sometimes manifests through their genders, and sometimes doesn't. (They're genderqueer, and/or genderfluid, and/or trans, or cis. They're also very boring.)
In 1939, the War Office, mindful of what's looming in Europe, gets the idea that maybe these boring people who keep the trains running on time might be useful as weapons of war, what? To this effect they conscript a team of magic-users from the intelligence services - Felix, Kira and Laurie - who then bicker constantly for the next 70,000 words. It is a great time. Writing it is a great time. Everything is wonderful. This is a lie.
So I think I wrote about 120,000 words in total, but not a great deal of it has seen the light of day and I actually don't have much lined up for publication - a novelette with Luna Station in March, and that's it - so, hmm. I would like to submit to POC Destroy Science Fiction and, well, 2015 isn't over yet.
Nevertheless, a reasonable year, especially as it was (still) a year of working full-time and commuting four hours a day.
Academic: (i.e., language-learning!) Slim to minimal. I am still taking Hindi classes, nominally, but haven't actually attended properly since October. I will start again in the summer term, I think. In the meantime, I have booked myself on a short Gaelic course at Sabhal Mor Ostaig at Easter. I'm really, really excited about this; I went to SMO for a visit in September and they couldn't have been nicer or more welcoming.
Financial situation: I'm coming up on two years post-qualification. I'm fine.
Family stuff: Both my parents turned sixty this year and are now entitled to Senior Citizens' Railcards (!), which is of course a reason for celebration - but also one for a small intake of breath, I suppose. My maternal grandfather never made it to sixty; my maternal grandmother only lived till 65. On the other side, my paternal grandmother (Hindi, a far more sensible language, would allow me to express this a lot more neatly) turned ninety two weeks ago. So I am thinking about things I have often taken for granted.
Relationship stuff: Eight years together and two years of marriage, and we do go on.
Friend stuff: I could say something new and profound, but I have the best friends anyone could have, 2015 was no different.
Living situation: It is increasingly untenable for me to live in Cambridge and commute to London for four hours a day. Shim and I have gone back and forth on this, but finally in August we agreed that's it - we need to move to London. Since then, we have made offers on three places, had two declined and pulled out of one ourselves (not after spending three months on it though); we have sold our own house; had a fourth offer accepted, and now are waiting with bated breath for the other side's solicitors to bloody well do something. So we're in a good position, mostly - it's just that I'm really ready to move, and we've been in limbo for nearly six months. I hope this works out, I really do.
Travel: I went to the US in the spring - New York for a holiday and Indianapolis for a family wedding - and to the Highlands in the autumn. Which is actually a lot less travelling than I wanted to do this year, but I already have four (!) trips planned for next year, one of which involves a 9000-mile roundtrip, so.
Health (inc mental): Oh, dear. Well - see employment status above, but I am fine. I am fine, and still here.
Weddings attended: My cousin N's wedding in Indianapolis in May. It was a very tiring wedding and I can't say I enjoyed all of it, but I'm very glad I went. Three family friends' weddings in the summer, none of which were exactly wonderful (people who follow me on Twitter may recall an evening of my increasingly irate tweets in re: NO TRAINS DREADFUL WEDDING NO FOOD), and then two of my dearest friends got married to each other and it was the BEST.
happydork's and
such_heights' space-themed wedding in September was beautiful, heartfelt, and delightful. I loved every quirky, loving minute of it.
Babies born: Plenty of acquaintances' babies, but none of particular note, I think.
Best books read: I read eighty-five books this year, which is the most since I started counting in 2009. I wish I'd done more book-reviewing as I went along! But my favourites were The Sparrow, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and Ancillary Mercy. And also there were also the four Hilary Tamar books by Sarah Caudwell, which, I just, I loved them SO MUCH I keep giving them to people as presents, they are the perfect hapless-lawyers-solve-mysteries books I never knew I needed like burning!
I also read a lot of the Brother Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters, which startled me by how textured, beautiful and life-affirming they are; I read some Frances Hardinge books, but the only one that really really stood out for me was Gullstruck Island; and for the first time, I read Slaughterhouse-5, which made me cry and cry and cry, in a heartening and cathartic sort of way.
Oh, and I am halfway through The Goblin Emperor, on one of my colleagues' recommendations - if I finish it before January 1st and it stays as good as it has been until now, I think it'll be among my favourites of the year, too.
Best TV watched: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries! I've written at length elsewhere about how much I love this show, but omg, I really love this show.
Best things bought: I was hoping to say - my house? But no. So let it be a new phone and these boots.
The music of 2015: So there's this musical about the life of Alexander Hamilton you may have vaguely heard of that I sort of like? My favourite songs are - surprising no one - "Wait For It" and "It's Quiet Uptown", which apparently I have listened to mumble times since September; also, I may have mentioned once or twice or many times that I'm going to see the show on Broadway in June of next year with seven of my closest friends. I mean. It's okay, I guess.
Global happenings and politics: No.
Things never done before: More than I thought! Working for the public sector is the main one, though. Also I had never, until this week, bought a scented candle. Turns out they're quite nice!
Resolutions: Last year's resolutions: 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.
Done; attempted in good faith; done. This year: I resolve to finish the novel; to not let my job destroy me more than I can help; and again, to try and take pleasure in small things. (Especially those that involve being outside.)
An older version of this meme asked for a song lyric, or a life lesson, or some such good place to end. In lieu of both, here is something I have been listening to a lot just recently: from Lin-Manuel Miranda's first musical, In The Heights, "Alabanza".
raven is also at Dreamwidth: there is or are
comment(s). Comment there or here.