There’s not a whole lot in 2017 that I feel I need to look back upon. I’m not the only one who felt it was kind of a bummer of a year, but…
2017 was an interesting year for me. It was a year I needed. To reset myself. The first year in a long time that I didn’t work in an office, instead I went back into retail.
I needed that reset in my life, but I’m ready to move on again. I feel more centred, confident, less willing to take crap, and ready to tackle new challenges.
2017 didn’t end on a high note. All things considered it could have been worse. It wasn’t. I am thankful.
I made decisions this past year that made things better for me. I distanced myself from many things that were drowning me in negativity. I am on social media a lot less than I was. I barely even check twitter. I understand that people have strong opinions about things, especially political, but I chose to block a lot of that out. The world is becoming a little too toxic. You may choose to crusade one way, but I choose a different path.
I spent more time in my craft room this year than I have in the past. Part of this was because I had more time to do so. Part of it was because the crafting helped me in many ways.
I am not hopeful, or rather, full of hope, going into 2018. If I’m being honest I think I lost the ability to be hopeful years ago. I know that sounds sad, but it’s true. Hope just manages to get you high enough to hurt more when you are let down.
I feel mostly anxious and uncertain as this year begins. I know I want change, but I don’t know what I want to change. I do feel like there is a lot of change to come this year. I am tired of feeling trapped, so this year I want to shake things up and make sure that change does happen.
Work-wise, I don’t particularly want to go back to what I was doing (though I miss the people very much), and I know I am ready to move on from where I am now. Finding a happy-medium in the workforce will be difficult. But I’m ready. I will look. I will try new things.
I want to create more this year as well. I started learning watercolour painting in November and made all my christmas cards. They aren’t perfect, but I loved every second of that painting. I want to draw and write more, so I started a bullet journal so I can draw my own planner every week. And add colour, or illustrations as I please.
I want to run a 5k this year. FOR REAL. I don’t know when the snow will go away (I am thinking, late April) but this year I am feeling ready for this. I have been dreaming about it. Once I dream things repeatedly I know I am ready for it.
I am in this forever search for happiness. There is a lot in my life that makes me happy, but I want that happiness to spread into every part of my life.
I had my year off; a year I so desperately needed. I am reset. I am ready to ignite and restart.
I am going to make 2018 into a year I want it to be. It won’t be easy. It might be very messy, but I want to come out of this year knowing that I didn’t just settle because I had to. There are things I want to happen this year, and I will do my best to make sure they do.
I am 23 days away from turning 42 and I am ready to start this new 365 day story. Let’s do this.
per aspera ad astra
– through the thorns, to the stars
I surpassed my reading goal of 50 books this year. As of writing this post I have read 94. Granted some of those were picture books (early in the year), I did read a lot more than I have in the last couple of years. Less stress, more time, and a job that reminds me how much I love books, has helped with this number.
My Goodreads stats tell me:
I read 18,723 pages in total.
My shortest book was I Need a Hug by Aaron Blabey (24 pages)
My longest book was Assassin’s Fate by Robin Hobb (853 pages)
There have been a few books that stood out to me this year. Thought I’d list them here for posterity’s sake. (And maybe to make it look like I update my blog more than once every 2 months…)
Meet Ginny. She’s fourteen, autistic, and has a heart-breaking secret…
Ginny Moon is trying to make sense of a world that just doesn’t seem to add up. After years in foster care, Ginny is in her fourth forever family, finally with parents who will love her. Everyone tells her that she should feel happy, but she has never stopped crafting her Big Secret Plan of Escape.
Because something happened, a long time ago – something that only Ginny knows – and nothing will stop her going back to put it right… (goodreads.com)
You probably all remember how much love I had for this novel. I still get shivers when I talk about it to another person. I think this is the best book I read all year. Another book came close, but Ginny Moon stood out over all 94 books. This novel is amazing.
If it were up to Mattie Markham, there would be a law that said your family wasn’t allowed to move in the middle of the school year. After all, sixth grade is hard enough without wondering if you’ll be able to make new friends or worrying that the kids in Pennsylvania won’t like your North Carolina accent.
But when Mattie meets her next-door neighbor and classmate, she begins to think maybe she was silly to fear being the “new girl.” Agnes is like no one Mattie has ever met—she’s curious, hilarious, smart, and makes up the best games. If winter break is anything to go by, the rest of the school year should be a breeze.
Only it isn’t, because when vacation ends and school starts, Mattie realizes something: At school Agnes is known as the weird girl who no one likes. All Mattie wants is to fit in (okay, and maybe be a little popular too), but is that worth ending her friendship with Agnes? (goodreads.com)
I read a lot of fantastic MG novels this year, although Let’s Pretend We Never Met stands out over the rest. I don’t normally like contemporary novels, but Melissa Walker has a knack for aiming straight to my heart with her writing. It’s certainly something when a story can make me cry, and it doesn’t have to do with an animal. This story is a wonderful one about the struggles of friendship and growing up. It’s honest, funny, and well-crafted.
Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: Her mother is stolen away?by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother’s stories are set. Alice’s only lead is the message her mother left behind: “Stay away from the Hazel Wood.”
Alice has long steered clear of her grandmother’s cultish fans. But now she has no choice but to ally with classmate Ellery Finch, a Hinterland superfan who may have his own reasons for wanting to help her. To retrieve her mother, Alice must venture first to the Hazel Wood, then into the world where her grandmother’s tales began?and where she might find out how her own story went so wrong. (goodreads.com)
This book comes out at the end of January but I had the opportunity to read an advance copy of it through work. The story is a dark, folk-tale that had me holding my breath through the entire read. It has twists and turns I was not expecting. I cannot wait to buy it when it comes out. As I read the novel, I kept thinking of another dark, folk-tale I loved, Uprooted by Naomi Novik. Although this particular book is YA, and Novik’s book is classified as Fantasy (adult), I still think people who read Uprooted would enjoy The Hazel Wood.
Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations.
Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.
But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity already reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and sprawling parks spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.
Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity’s overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society’s ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies… even if it means he has to become one of them to do so. (goodreads.com)
Red Rising is a complicated addition to this list. It can fall into many categories. For the year I have been working at the bookstore, this series has been recommended to me multiple times by multiple people. I refused to try it out. Why? Because I don’t LIKE Science Fiction stories. I like fantasy. I don’t like space, and aliens and stuff. But earlier this month while I was in library picking up another book, this series was on the shelf beside it. I thought, “What the heck”, and picked up the first book. WOAH. I loved it almost instantly. The first book is closer to a dystopian novel than a sci-fi one. Books two and three of the trilogy are more sci-fi, but halfway through Red Rising I knew I was in for the long haul. These books are so well written, and the world so well crafted, that after I finished all three novels, I wasn’t able to read a few other books I tried because I felt they were written poorly. Something I probably would not have noticed (or minded) had I not just read three books with such rich, well-crafted writing. I admitted to my coworkers that they were right, and I was wrong. This series was fantastic.
Pete is gray. He’s round. And he’s not wearing any pants.
So Pete must be a boulder. Or is he a pigeon? Or a squirrel? Or a cloud?
Join Pete in his quest to answer the world’s oldest question: Why do I have to wear pants? Wait, that’s the second oldest. (goodreads.com)
I have a slight elephant obsession. (Cue collective gasp of shock.) The cover art, and title of this book was enough for me to pick it up off the table at work as soon as we got it in. But the story itself is hilarious, charming, and warm-hearted. The illustrations are gorgeous and this hazy, soft, calming colouring. I bought this book for myself. I love Pete. And I, too, often question why I need to wear pants.
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I read a lot of good books this year. I did not finish more than normal. I feel a lot less guilty not continuing with a book I am not enjoying. In fact, I have found I am much pickier with my reads than I have been in the past. I no longer have patience for those cookie cutter plots. If I start a new book and feel like I have already read the story a million times, I’ll put it down and try another book. I didn’t used to be like this, although I have been out of the reading game for a while. Now I want to appreciate what I am reading more than wanting to read what everyone else is reading. I have even abandoned some series I was following faithfully because I just couldn’t read the same story over and over. This might be a normal thing for most people, but it’s a newer thing for me.
What did you read this year that stood out among everything else you read in 2017?
Twenty years ago today, the girl whose parents were certain they would have to sell with the house, moved out, and into her first apartment with her girlfriend.
Twenty years ago.
My parents sold that house almost 5 years ago. I didn’t go with it. In fact, I’ve never moved back home since I moved out. (Ok, there was one week during a rough relationship patch that I went home for a “visit”. But that doesn’t count.
That first apartment was huge. It wasn’t in the best part of town. It was actually a slum of an apartment with cockroaches, and an evil landlord. It had questionable tenants, one of whom tried to burn it down when he was evicted. That prompted a move to a new apartment less than a year into this first one. A place we felt safer. A place I lived in for 6 years. A place that had a possessed bathroom that always had a flood. But my life changed, and grew, in those years. Relationships fell apart, and new ones were created.
Six years later I moved into a place with Shawn. We were robbed. We got married. Our place burned down.
We lived for a year in my in-laws’s basement.
We bought a house. We had two dogs. We still own this house, but now have two different dogs.
In this home we own, we have had downs and ups. We have grieved. We have laughed. We have grown together as a couple.
I have a lovely new kitchen.
Twenty years ago, one month before I turned 22, I moved out of my parents’ home and began my own life as a person.
I have made mistakes. I have learned so much. I have loved, lost, and lived.
This may seem like a trivial thing to most. An odd milestone to mark, but for me, a girl with anxiety so bad she couldn’t sleep anywhere except her own bedroom, this is an epic anniversary to celebrate. I still feel like a kid, scared of the dark, and the realization that 20 years have passed since I LEFT home is bewildering.
About two weeks after moving out we had a major ice storm here. Something that will also be celebrating a 20th anniversary soon. It was awful. Everything was ice. People were without electricity for weeks (or months!) And I survived that, as well as so much more in the past 20 years.
I do sort of hope that the next 20 years have fewer challenges though. Fewer challenges, and more whimsy. That’s what I hope for!
Once there was an evil grinch who decided to try to steal Christmas from us, and possibly many others. That evil grinch should rot in hell. Finding out at 9pm on the 22nd of December that your bank account has been hacked and all your money stolen, is not the way you want to start the Christmas festivities. Trust me, I know first hand.
I have to thank both gentlemen I spoke with, while trying to not break down, as I was in the car, in the parking lot at work. Both the bank call-centre guy, and the credit card call-centre guy, we calm, helpful, and kind. I also need to thank the bank teller, and bank manager, from one of the handful of branches that are open on a Saturday, for being calm, helpful, and kind. Because realizing this happened on a Friday night, when nothing bank-related is open again for another 5 days, and having no access to your bank account, or credit card, AND having all money drained from your accounts, is NOT even close to Feeling Festive.
We won’t find anything out with regards to the fraud claims until who knows when – because nothing will be looked at until December 27, but the people I spoke with Friday night, and Saturday morning, did their best to get the ball rolling. I would just like the money put back in our accounts before the mortgage is due.
And of course we keep having snow storms. Which used to be normal, but hasn’t been for the past 10 or so years. All this shovelling and bad driving. Keeps us active though.
But also this weekend was a wonderful, and much needed, visit from my parents on the 23rd. They drove for 6 hours through a snowstorm to make it into town and come for dinner.
I worked all day Christmas Eve.
Shawn and I had a quiet Christmas day, the first Christmas for Abigail. We postponed going to his parents’ place due to weather. I just couldn’t deal with extra stress on my one day off between Christmas Eve and Boing Day retail shifts. We’ll have Christmas with them next weekend.
We got each other thoughtful gifts.
The floofs each had their own stocking full of goodies.
Abigail had her first Christmas. She was loved. She was spoiled.
I slept for the first time in three days, the anxiety from having my personal information & account breached finally at a lower level than it has been since Friday at 9pm. We will eventually get our money back, but my trust in a lot of things is shaken. My dislike of most people has risen a notch or two. I am ready for this year to be over.
We are together. We are safe. We will weather this new storm together. We are loved. We have friends who care about us. We have three furry animals whom we hug and spoil.
The evil grinch tried to steal our Christmas but we didn’t let him win. I hope that grinch gets run over by his sleigh though.
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