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askygoneonfire) wrote2020-12-15 05:21 pm
askygoneonfire) wrote2020-12-15 05:21 pm
Entry tags:
51/52 - Annual Review of the Year 2020
1. What did you do in 2020 that you'd never done before?
My answer to this is going to be so similar to so many other people's; wore a mask in public, went more than a month without touching another living being (broken by an off lead, determined dog who apparently knew how much I needed a waggy greeting), did all my socialising online for months, learnt new words and phrases like "social distancing", "lockdown", and "novel coronavirus"
More personally: hired a car in the UK; put an offer in on a house; had an offer accepted on a house; 'instructed a solicitor' (what a weirdly adult phrase that is); delivered all teaching remotely for 10 months; bought a car; got a mortgage offer; had more than 5 sessions of therapy with the same person; infused seemingly endless quantities of vodka with foraged fruit; cooked dishes that felt too complex to attempt before now. I also fainted for the first time in my life; it was weird.
So instead, I'm going to go broad; keep looking after my body with an absolute, non-negotiable committment to exercising regularly - keep doing pilates, maintain a minimum of 50,000 steps a week (the level I've ended up at during the dark nights, in the summer 70,000 is my minimum), keep listening to my body in how I eat.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Close to, no. My wider orbit seems to regularly include people making other humans in recent years. Heterosexuals just can't help themselves.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
An aunt and uncle died this year. My aunt after a long illness and estrangement from most of our family (which doesn't seem to have resulted in my uncle getting back in touch with his remaning 1 brother and sister, which seems sad) and my uncle died shortly after a surprise diagnosis of a brain tumour. I feel sad for my parents for how it must feel to have your peers (both aunt and uncle were the spouses of my Dad's siblings) die and suddenly it feels like you are the last generation in a family. I didn't have much connection to either my aunt or uncle, so it's more an abstract sort of sadness that comes from sympathy for others. It was sad to write, and receive, a christmas card from my now widowed aunt - small things of just writing one name instead of two is how these distanced losses feel real.
5. What countries did you visit?
Not a single one, somewhat predictably. I didn't even get to visit Edinburgh, Birmingham and Cardiff for various planned work/leisure/Manics reasons. I did have some really lovely holidays this year though - whether they were day trips to Glastonbury, evening outings to the Hampshire coast, or overnights to Brighton and with Teddy. These have been the things that kept me hanging on.
6. What would you like to have in 2021 that you lacked in 2020?
It's astonishing to look back on these and see how I described 2019 as "fraught". In many ways, this is still true - 2020 has been hard, but it's been hard for everyone. And personally, on the tiny scale of one, I've had a pretty good year. I was really ill at the beginning of the year, but I survived it and it's prompted me to get back on to the NHS therapy merry-go-round and I'm actually doing therapy for the first time ever (so far). For all the awfulness of lockdown, it also gave me a reason to find out about the city I live in, and come to an understanding with my body about exercise and food (broadly). Professionally, things are solid, not spectacular, but secure enough and I'm ticking all the right boxes.
7. What date from 2020 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
23rd March, "lockdown".
5th June, 9th June. Teddy.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Making it to the end in better shape than I was at the start.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Not submitting my cocking funding bid, again.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
In the year of corona, I have been mercifully free of physical illness. At the beginning of the year I had one of the total collapse to non functioning which happen every couple of years or so. Just typing this makes my heart race. It's traumatic. I survived it. It's fine.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
A car!
12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Every one of my people. Early in the year when I was ill, a bunch of people just quietly were there and offered me things I needed in terms of reassurance I could go home/Brighton, and consistency of connection. As the pandemic kicked in I had this sense of a shaking out - who was going to still be there at the end of the year? Who would join in the gargantuan task of holding each other up as we all stand on uncertain ground. And the answer turns out to be everyone I trusted was everything I thought they were. Plus a few extra people picked up along the way.
13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Where to even begin this year? A government whose absolute dedication to protecting their money and their pals money over human life has been breathtaking in how consumingly amoral it is. Leaders who will send us all to our deaths in the face of overwhelming scientific advice and examples of best practice from across the world. Ordinary people who will be cruel and abandon compassion for one another in the moment kindness and generosity is needed most. I could go on, I don't think I should.
14. Where did most of your money go?
On a car. Followed by money being thrown at solicitors and surveyors.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Teddy. A house. A car.
16. What song will always remind you of 2020?
I made a very silly playlist of songs about the pandemic which will individually all be tied to the year.
More specifically, partly because it has been on 6Music all year and partly because it's wordless - and this year has not had a lot of words out loud - it's Ezra Collective's Dark Side Riddim.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. Happier or sadder? Happier
ii. Thinner or fatter? Thinner
iii. Richer or poorer? Richer but about to get a lot poorer for the house buying thing.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Reading. I have probably watched less TV this year than I have in the last 16 years (2004: last year I didn't have a TV) and although that's been filled up with lots of lovely other things - mostly conversation over Whatsapp or Zoom or Google Hangouts - there has still been loads of space for me to read and I haven't prompted myself into that.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Worrying about being too much or not enough and feeling terror struck at what it meant to let people see that I have needs. Running away.
20. How will you be spending Christmas?
With Teddy. It will be quiet and calm and lovely and on Monday I made a great big list of food and did an online order for click and collect (which is sadly not drive through click and collect because everywhere had already booked out for next week? Argh. But hopefully will still be less stress than physically schleping up and down the aisles. Oh god I hope it is) and we get to just be and it's going to be lovely.
21. Did you fall in love in 2020?
Yes
22. How many one-night stands?
None
23. What was your favourite TV program?
I am delighted that in the year we stayed in, there was so much good stuff on TV. Favourites included; Staged; Star Trek Discovery s3; Picard; Ghosts; What We Do In the Shadows; Taskmaster; Never Have I Ever; The Queen's Gambit; Unorthodox; Spinning Out; and most important of all: Schitts Creek.
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
No. I feel sad that I had to come to terms with one person having decided, against all available evidence and consistent efforts on my part to stay in touch, that I hated her and detaching herself from any social contact with me. That's galling, because it's horrible to have someone think badly of you - but eventually it's not ok for someone to actively work at believing you hate them, of thinking the worst about your neutral actions. So I'm done.
25. What was the best book you read?
I've had a terrible year, reading wise. I've started another 4 or more books this year that lie half finished around my bedroom. That does at least make it easy to pick my favourite book of the year; Becky Chambers To Be Taught if Fortunate. I am so excited another book in the Wayfayrers series is out next year.
26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
3 steps behind as ever, this year I finally bought a Christine and the Queens record and really got into that.
27. What did you want and get?
Stability, after a fashion.
28. What did you want and not get?
A manageable workload? There are so many pandemic-related answers to this but I don't want to dredge that well. I have been fortunate this year. I won't pick at it.
29. What was your favourite film of this year?
I have seen so few films this year. One of two or three I saw at the cinema was Birds of Prey which I loved - a rip roaring good time and everything mainstream cinema should be.
30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I was 36, I spent it with Teddy, and I did some counting and made breakfast.
31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
A much shorter pandemic. Like, 3 months, tops.
32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2020?
Comfortable.
33. What kept you sane?
Prescription medication
34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I'm not sure I crushed on any celebrities this year, which is a surprise
35. What political issue stirred you the most?
Coronavirus. Brexit. Women's Strike in Poland. Hungary tearing apart any hope for equality in a few directions. GRA reforms being scrapped. America's election. Denial of trans children's bodily autonomy.
36. Who did you miss?
Everyone. It suddenly struck me last week that part of what is difficult right now is that I miss everyone in my life simultaneously. The full social range of people - from colleagues and acquantances (who, really, it's very rare to have a sense of missing) to my most important people and chosen family. It's not something I've ever had to experience before, I imagine few people have, and I hope it won't be something which is still true in 12 months time.
37. Who was the best new person you met?
Fables and Cate
38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2020:
Less is less. And that's something we all need - life gets faster and faster and you can stop, and that's better.
39. Who did you spend the most time on the phone with and/or most time chatting with via Whatsapp etc?:
Teddy by a country mile. I cleared my Whatsapp messages from about 2 months back the other day and it was over 8000, and that's without the hours of phonecalls :-) Even taking them out of the mix, the competition is tight. Lockdown has meant many more hours of phonecalls and videocalls than ever before and a near constant stream of chat on my already busy Whatsapp groups. It's been a strangely strong year for connection - even in the midst of physical isolation.
40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
In my place of quarantine/Gives us a chance, a chance to feel
My answer to this is going to be so similar to so many other people's; wore a mask in public, went more than a month without touching another living being (broken by an off lead, determined dog who apparently knew how much I needed a waggy greeting), did all my socialising online for months, learnt new words and phrases like "social distancing", "lockdown", and "novel coronavirus"
More personally: hired a car in the UK; put an offer in on a house; had an offer accepted on a house; 'instructed a solicitor' (what a weirdly adult phrase that is); delivered all teaching remotely for 10 months; bought a car; got a mortgage offer; had more than 5 sessions of therapy with the same person; infused seemingly endless quantities of vodka with foraged fruit; cooked dishes that felt too complex to attempt before now. I also fainted for the first time in my life; it was weird.
2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year
Last year I was wondering if I was right to leave Goldsmiths, early on this year it became evident that opting for security over the unknown was the right choice as my precarious colleagues at Goldsmiths - the position I would have been in - all got made redundant. It seems curious too to reflect on the resolutions I made for 2020, which also included a 6 month plan in February. In all then, my resolutions versus achieviements look like this:
- submit funding bid by May: nope. I was fucked on this one really early when I got ill and had to take time off sick in January, and then went on strike Feb/March. But then the pandemic hit and there was barely an hour to do anything but slog on. I've got 'finished' in my sights and have an idea about getting it to review in January and if that works, submission by May 2021 is plausible.
- actively research locations I might want to live long term: Yes. I did this. Not in the way I thought, in the end. I did some window shopping of homes in Worthing, some calculations and consultation on travel times, and then the pandemic happened and I ended up with a changed relationship to Southampton, which in turn resulted in my researching places I wanted to live long term in this city.
- actively look for job opportunities that will allow me to live in Brighton: I only got as far as setting up job alerts for this, but by the time some jobs came up in Brighton, at my prefered university, I had changed my mind about what priority I wanted to put on my career over living in Brighton and decided that (especially now I have the car) I want to put in a good few years here, get promotion, and take myself out of the entry level scrum before I move job again.
- continually evaluate my priorities in life - including deciding if there is a different career path I can take which means I can prioritise where I live over my job: Curiously, as above this ended up being a choice to prioritise this career path over where I live. I think the pandemic had a big hand in that; it's easy to say "fuck this career, I will do any job if I get to live in this one place" when jobs are easy to come by and job security is not vanishingly rare. But it's also true that in this most difficult of years, I've realised I am quite good at some things in my job, and I do get satisfaction from doing it well. I've also come to a different relationship with this city which means it no longer feels like purgatory, but a place which can offer some comfort and protection.
- Post each week of the year. A bold claim perhaps, but with just one week left to write, I think I can tick this one off as achieved.
So instead, I'm going to go broad; keep looking after my body with an absolute, non-negotiable committment to exercising regularly - keep doing pilates, maintain a minimum of 50,000 steps a week (the level I've ended up at during the dark nights, in the summer 70,000 is my minimum), keep listening to my body in how I eat.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Close to, no. My wider orbit seems to regularly include people making other humans in recent years. Heterosexuals just can't help themselves.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
An aunt and uncle died this year. My aunt after a long illness and estrangement from most of our family (which doesn't seem to have resulted in my uncle getting back in touch with his remaning 1 brother and sister, which seems sad) and my uncle died shortly after a surprise diagnosis of a brain tumour. I feel sad for my parents for how it must feel to have your peers (both aunt and uncle were the spouses of my Dad's siblings) die and suddenly it feels like you are the last generation in a family. I didn't have much connection to either my aunt or uncle, so it's more an abstract sort of sadness that comes from sympathy for others. It was sad to write, and receive, a christmas card from my now widowed aunt - small things of just writing one name instead of two is how these distanced losses feel real.
5. What countries did you visit?
Not a single one, somewhat predictably. I didn't even get to visit Edinburgh, Birmingham and Cardiff for various planned work/leisure/Manics reasons. I did have some really lovely holidays this year though - whether they were day trips to Glastonbury, evening outings to the Hampshire coast, or overnights to Brighton and with Teddy. These have been the things that kept me hanging on.
6. What would you like to have in 2021 that you lacked in 2020?
It's astonishing to look back on these and see how I described 2019 as "fraught". In many ways, this is still true - 2020 has been hard, but it's been hard for everyone. And personally, on the tiny scale of one, I've had a pretty good year. I was really ill at the beginning of the year, but I survived it and it's prompted me to get back on to the NHS therapy merry-go-round and I'm actually doing therapy for the first time ever (so far). For all the awfulness of lockdown, it also gave me a reason to find out about the city I live in, and come to an understanding with my body about exercise and food (broadly). Professionally, things are solid, not spectacular, but secure enough and I'm ticking all the right boxes.
7. What date from 2020 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
23rd March, "lockdown".
5th June, 9th June. Teddy.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Making it to the end in better shape than I was at the start.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Not submitting my cocking funding bid, again.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
In the year of corona, I have been mercifully free of physical illness. At the beginning of the year I had one of the total collapse to non functioning which happen every couple of years or so. Just typing this makes my heart race. It's traumatic. I survived it. It's fine.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
A car!
12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Every one of my people. Early in the year when I was ill, a bunch of people just quietly were there and offered me things I needed in terms of reassurance I could go home/Brighton, and consistency of connection. As the pandemic kicked in I had this sense of a shaking out - who was going to still be there at the end of the year? Who would join in the gargantuan task of holding each other up as we all stand on uncertain ground. And the answer turns out to be everyone I trusted was everything I thought they were. Plus a few extra people picked up along the way.
13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Where to even begin this year? A government whose absolute dedication to protecting their money and their pals money over human life has been breathtaking in how consumingly amoral it is. Leaders who will send us all to our deaths in the face of overwhelming scientific advice and examples of best practice from across the world. Ordinary people who will be cruel and abandon compassion for one another in the moment kindness and generosity is needed most. I could go on, I don't think I should.
14. Where did most of your money go?
On a car. Followed by money being thrown at solicitors and surveyors.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Teddy. A house. A car.
16. What song will always remind you of 2020?
I made a very silly playlist of songs about the pandemic which will individually all be tied to the year.
More specifically, partly because it has been on 6Music all year and partly because it's wordless - and this year has not had a lot of words out loud - it's Ezra Collective's Dark Side Riddim.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. Happier or sadder? Happier
ii. Thinner or fatter? Thinner
iii. Richer or poorer? Richer but about to get a lot poorer for the house buying thing.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Reading. I have probably watched less TV this year than I have in the last 16 years (2004: last year I didn't have a TV) and although that's been filled up with lots of lovely other things - mostly conversation over Whatsapp or Zoom or Google Hangouts - there has still been loads of space for me to read and I haven't prompted myself into that.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Worrying about being too much or not enough and feeling terror struck at what it meant to let people see that I have needs. Running away.
20. How will you be spending Christmas?
With Teddy. It will be quiet and calm and lovely and on Monday I made a great big list of food and did an online order for click and collect (which is sadly not drive through click and collect because everywhere had already booked out for next week? Argh. But hopefully will still be less stress than physically schleping up and down the aisles. Oh god I hope it is) and we get to just be and it's going to be lovely.
21. Did you fall in love in 2020?
Yes
22. How many one-night stands?
None
23. What was your favourite TV program?
I am delighted that in the year we stayed in, there was so much good stuff on TV. Favourites included; Staged; Star Trek Discovery s3; Picard; Ghosts; What We Do In the Shadows; Taskmaster; Never Have I Ever; The Queen's Gambit; Unorthodox; Spinning Out; and most important of all: Schitts Creek.
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
No. I feel sad that I had to come to terms with one person having decided, against all available evidence and consistent efforts on my part to stay in touch, that I hated her and detaching herself from any social contact with me. That's galling, because it's horrible to have someone think badly of you - but eventually it's not ok for someone to actively work at believing you hate them, of thinking the worst about your neutral actions. So I'm done.
25. What was the best book you read?
I've had a terrible year, reading wise. I've started another 4 or more books this year that lie half finished around my bedroom. That does at least make it easy to pick my favourite book of the year; Becky Chambers To Be Taught if Fortunate. I am so excited another book in the Wayfayrers series is out next year.
26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
3 steps behind as ever, this year I finally bought a Christine and the Queens record and really got into that.
27. What did you want and get?
Stability, after a fashion.
28. What did you want and not get?
A manageable workload? There are so many pandemic-related answers to this but I don't want to dredge that well. I have been fortunate this year. I won't pick at it.
29. What was your favourite film of this year?
I have seen so few films this year. One of two or three I saw at the cinema was Birds of Prey which I loved - a rip roaring good time and everything mainstream cinema should be.
30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I was 36, I spent it with Teddy, and I did some counting and made breakfast.
31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
A much shorter pandemic. Like, 3 months, tops.
32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2020?
Comfortable.
33. What kept you sane?
Prescription medication
34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I'm not sure I crushed on any celebrities this year, which is a surprise
35. What political issue stirred you the most?
Coronavirus. Brexit. Women's Strike in Poland. Hungary tearing apart any hope for equality in a few directions. GRA reforms being scrapped. America's election. Denial of trans children's bodily autonomy.
36. Who did you miss?
Everyone. It suddenly struck me last week that part of what is difficult right now is that I miss everyone in my life simultaneously. The full social range of people - from colleagues and acquantances (who, really, it's very rare to have a sense of missing) to my most important people and chosen family. It's not something I've ever had to experience before, I imagine few people have, and I hope it won't be something which is still true in 12 months time.
37. Who was the best new person you met?
Fables and Cate
38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2020:
Less is less. And that's something we all need - life gets faster and faster and you can stop, and that's better.
39. Who did you spend the most time on the phone with and/or most time chatting with via Whatsapp etc?:
Teddy by a country mile. I cleared my Whatsapp messages from about 2 months back the other day and it was over 8000, and that's without the hours of phonecalls :-) Even taking them out of the mix, the competition is tight. Lockdown has meant many more hours of phonecalls and videocalls than ever before and a near constant stream of chat on my already busy Whatsapp groups. It's been a strangely strong year for connection - even in the midst of physical isolation.
40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
In my place of quarantine/Gives us a chance, a chance to feel
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