What a Year, Huh?

[corpsebrigadier]

I went through my phone and my diary today to try to figure out what 2024 was like for me, and... I honestly did a lot and had a pretty cool time of things before the final few months saw fit to kick me in the teeth. I felt a little down that I didn't find as much time for writing as I did in previous years, but actually looking things over, I've definitely been flexing a lot creative muscles elsewhere. It certainly wasn't the year I wanted in all respects, but it was a full and memorable one.

So anyway, in 2024 I...

• Re-cut and lined my coat designed to look like it's made out of the skin of furbies.


• Saw a full solar eclipse.


• Discovered an absolute gem of a hole-in-the-wall bookstore that I keep suspecting will be vanished when I come back to the location.


• Saw the northern lights.


• Discovered a mysterious hole (probably a coal chute) underneath my kitchen flooring.


• Learned to make takoyaki and shokupan.


• Won free tickets to my favorite local drag show by winning a timed hot-dog-eating contest during intermission.


• Built a giant paper mache robot in my basement.


• Obtained my driver's license for the first time.


• Made the hard decision to ditch a social group for my own well-being.


• Worked my way up to running a half-marathon again.


• Donated a kidney to an unknown recipient.


• Inherited the sword of my murdered brother (the whole thing was awful, but I ended up in receipt of his mall katana and I can now give a factual statement that sounds like a viable D&D backstory I guess...).


• Started using the library's STEAM lab to start various deranged cricut and 3D printing projects.


• Sent over 300 political postcards, mostly targeting down ballot races, voter registration, and special elections.


• Kept up serving as part of the observer corps for my local government and writing dry reports on beautifully petty City Council drama for my local paper.


• Made foods and simple syrups out of all of the edible flowers I could identify growing in my yard.


• Made tons of weird art cakes for friends and family that I didn't actually post online (and a few that I did).


• Managed to recover from my grad school damage enough to make it through 16 books. Slow but steady progress.


• Still wrote some fic (made it through two exchanges somehow!), even if my output is far from where it was at its peak.

I don't know quite what to hope for from 2025. There's a lot of things that make me anxious. Still, I feel like I can make it through a lot, and that's pretty reassuring.

Comments

[suzume]

Well, if you made it through all of that, I'm sure you can make it through anything 2025 throws at you! (I am also a very anxious person, so, uh, there's that)

[corpsebrigadier]

Anxiety continues, but 2025 hasn't licked me yet. ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ

[suzume]

YES! Fight on! :D

[lassarina]

Anxiety fistbump.

What a year! You did so much. Congrats on all you accomplished!

[corpsebrigadier]

Thanks! Anxiety fistbump back at you some 12 days in.

[shinon]

Ooh, what kinds of flower syrups did you make? Violet syrup is an annual tradition for me, but I haven't explored other options much. (Tangentially, I actually made so much dandelion root tea in 2022 and 2023 that I had no dandelions of sufficient size in 2024... Not a crop I ever imagined I would over-harvest. I think the population will recover for this year, if I don't overdo it again.)

It sounds like you did a lot of cool stuff despite the ordeals - here is hoping for more cool stuff and fewer ordeals.

[corpsebrigadier]

I made violet (which I used for ice cream), dandelion (which went super great on cornmeal pancakes with some blossoms in the batter), and Queen Anne's Lace (which I used to make some weird cocktails. I also made some mulberry scones and dockseed crackers, but the forageable elements were neither flowers nor from my back yard.

Here's hoping I continue to have a high cool stuff and low ordeal 2025. :]