kaberett | And a year in review, why not.

It's been another year in which Neil Gaiman has done things which distress or annoy me, but it's also the first year in which I feel I can say that this wish came wholeheartedly true:

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

I got medicated. I didn't plan suicide. I started afresh with wanting to learn. I got DLA and a wheelchair - and another wheelchair. I took a train to Germany, cooked a huge pile of lasagna with

footpad, (finally!) met his wonderful beautiful dog, and watched him get married. I spent a glorious, fantastic, nonsensical week in Singapore (with a day-trip to Malaysia) with

noldo,

mustela_nivalis, and

azuire, and I've got the Myspace photo of the four of us on the southernmost point of continental Asia on my bedside table. I learned to code - I've got five? six? patches actually live in the actual Dreamwidth codebase. I migrated my Dreamhack from Mercurial Queues in a CVS repository to github. I went to Edinburgh for the Fringe - I never thought I'd be cool enough to do that. I went to Austria and read scientific papers and watched the swallows migrating and felt like I was home. I read and I wrote - poetry I take seriously; fanfic I take seriously; fanfic I really don't; songs for Lashings, safer space policies for VP; essays and analyses and notelets and most of my Master's project and my diary. I kissed really rather a lot of people who think I'm wonderful. I made a library; I made new friends; I made grad school applications.

I took care of myself. I made mistakes; I was kind, as much as I could be. I took care of other people, as much as I could do.

So here's my plan for 2013: I'm going to try to graduate, and if that doesn't work out that's okay. Whatever else happens, I'm going to spend the summer on me. Come autumn I'll move on to something new - and I don't yet know what, but I don't have to, either. I'm going to read poetry and novels and some more of the Hard Stuff, because I'm starting to be in a place where I can cope with that again. I'm going to finish watching Buffy and Angel. I'm going to write.

I'm going to take risks and I'm going to take care and I'm going to keep on finding out how to best be myself.

Thank you all, so much, for taking care of me and sticking with me this year. Here's to you. <3