The Year in Review
Well that felt like getting twelve colonoscopies in a row while stuck in an underfunded public hospital with your most racist relative as a roommate.
But it's probably better to focus on the positive?
I had seven short stories come out in 2017, plus two short comics and two poems. If this is what success feels like, success feels like mitigated failure. It's hard to push back against every rejection letter by counting the acceptances, especially when the ratio highly favors rejection, but I know that the me of three years ago would have been eccstatic with these stats so maybe I should shush?
It is the universal human reaction to composing the year-in-review journal entry to feel one has done nothing, accomplished nothing, and is in general a terrible human being.
So let's take that as a given and move on.
One of my resolutions was to become more politically active. I attended The Women's March in DC last January , the March for Science in Cleveland on Earth Day. I joined facebook groups and email lists and went to postcard-sending parties and attended city council sessions. I called my senators and emailed them and hassled Portman on twitter because that Republi-CAN'T never seems to answer his phone and his voicemail is always full and his email replies are condescending twaddle.
Not that I was in any danger of liking him.
I could have done more, but I'm glad I didn't do less.
FYI: we extroverts do suffer social anxiety. I worked a help desk for three years - phones make me break out in a cold sweat, even when I'm calling someone I know.
OKAY. My other resolutions were to submit stories 100 times (a milestone I hit in October!) and to do 100 push-ups a day for 100 days. This I failed at utterly, early, and never quite got back to. Physically I am a blobby weak mess.
I did the IF Comp (Interactive Fiction) for the second time and rose from DEAD LAST on my first venture to a respectable top-third placement. Got some positive reviews for the game, too! It was fun and I played around a lot with adding javascript mini-games to a TWINE format.
OH and I was the top earner in the Clarion Write-a-Thon! I hope this isn't because of a lack of other earners? Anyway that was pretty awesome.
Why does this feel like a helpless grasp to find anything positive to say when it's also a pretty impressive list of accomplishments? I changed jobs - no increase in pay but a huge increase in respect and privacy. Also the job came with my first smart phone! I've always been too cheap to buy one on my own. Now I'm enjoying reading library ebooks on it in my spare time and posting the occassional selfie to Instagram.
My first few weeks at the new job they didn't have a lot of work for me, and I was delighted with being in Kelvin Smith Library, accross the street from Wade Lagoon, so I took my lunches there almost every day. Looking back over my year's photos a lot of them are of the art museum gardens.
We finally took Jennifer to the Botanical Gardens! She loved it. yay. And I also finally got to see (with Jennifer and Brian) the Superior Road subway on its annual tour opening. It was strange fun to cross the underside of the Detroit-Superior bridge and see so many other happy Clevelanders taking photos around the abandoned subway car or down the barracaded-off sections of tunnel. We saw a water-filled stairway down to a lower level on the Detroit side, near a curve of track heading south.
If I had as much money as it took, I'd see Cleveland have a subway system again. Did you know in the 50s the populace voted overwhelmingly on a bond to increase the subway? And the state blocked it and used the money in other ways because it was a threat to the auto industry!
Twats.
We took Jennifer to Cedar Point and she rode her first roller coaster. :) She rode her first FIVE roller coasters. Such a brave girl!
Brian and I did a game jam, and for once I was lead programmer - he just did the art. That felt... neat.
I did my first cosplay - at a con where no one cosplays much. DOH. It was my second WisCon, and the year before there'd been a Rose Quartz cosplay. I attended three science fiction conventions - which is the most I've done in one year - I went to WisCon, Cleveland ConCoction... at which I lost my most expensive gloves. alas! but also I got to do my first panel presentation. My friend Steve Swinarski had ended up on a panel all by himself and reached out to the workshop to get volunteers. AND I went to the Nebula Awards in Pittsburgh. That was kind of awesome. I'm excited to go again next year.
I read 48 books. I saw probably too many movies, but that's not my fault, because there have been so many awesome science fiction nerd movies.
I set up a twitter bot this year, @Optimist_SciFi tweets out an optimistic science fiction story idea once every four hours.
I took Jen to her first concert, Toderick Hall at the Agora.
I attended the 40th Anniversery Party for Azimov's Science Fiction and got to spend the weekend with my clarion buddy Angus.
I started a small ladies' writing club, The Gentlewomen's Adventure Society and Liquor-Adjacent Debate Club. (GAS LAD). It's been fun, and helpful
Grace and I celebrated our birthday together at a B&B in Geneva on the Lake. It was unreasonably warm for February. Likewise the Brite Winter festival downtown was downright balmy. Odd thinking about last winter - it was so unreasonably warm that it felt like we didn't have a winter. This week it has snowed every day.
Our year started sadly with the death of Brian's grandma, and he and John were in California for the new year. Feels good to have him back with me this year.
So there's the year, I guess?