It's an 'end of the rainbow' sort of deal

1. What did you do in 2018 that you'd never done before?
I was published - two sole-authored articles in two peer-reviewed journals. I got a book contract. I went on strike (techincally I've been on strike before, but because of how my previous contracts worked I've never had to endure the financial penalty for striking). I was interviewed on BBC Radio. I went to Tenby - which is bloody miles away.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

In 2018 I resolved to look again at my housing and decide if there is enough justification for moving to a (more expensive) one bed flat and letting my (safe, warm, most affordable option in Brighton) studio go when the future is still uncertain in terms of work. I'm also resolved to visit two new countries in 2018.

I did look at my housing situation, many times over, but have to stay where I am until I know what is going to happen with work. I made it to two new countries - USA and Austria. I also travelled to two countries I'd visited before, again.

For 2019, I resolve to commit to one course of action or another over my career (keep hanging on in academia, or pick a new direction in private sector). That's it.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Nope, one on the way though.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
My uncle - my Dad's brother - died. It was distressing for the length of his illness, and the impact it had on my Dad and my Aunt.

5. What countries did you visit?
Spain, the Czech Republic, Austria, and United States of America. And Wales. Again.

I had a fucking trial and a half getting to New York - my flight was rescheduled twice moving departure back 3 hours, then it was delayed by 5 hours. Thanks to EU rules, I got compensation of a greater value than the entire holiday cost me. I never managed to extract an apology - or compensation - from Norweigan Air for making me cross the Atlantic on a plane infested with cockraoches. Then my last flight of the year, which I need to speak to my Insurer about and complain to company, I got diverted to Bristol from Gatwick and lost 4 hours of my life to a fucking coach journey to London. Czech Republic was ace for being paid for by work so I could attend a conference, and then I fit sightseeing in either side of it which felt so luxurious. Austria was my first trip with my parents as an adult and I was vile and it was difficult and the weather was terrible.

6. What would you like to have in 2019 that you lacked in 2018?
Permanent employment. The financial security I need to move to out of my studio to flat to a one bed. A close and constant friend.

7. What date from 2018 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Nothing

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Submitting two job applications, a book proposal, and a co-authored article, and drafting a funding bid. Not going off sick from work - although I probably should have.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not making progress on writing my book.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Meh. No injuries. A lot of aches and pains that the GP can't explain for me beyond "hypermobility" in joints and some truly terrible periods of anxiety.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
A new sofa. And a polaroid camera.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Caroline Lucas

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Jeremy Corbyn.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Train tickets

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Getting a contract from a publisher for a book.

16. What song will always remind you of 2018?
International Blue - Manic Street Preachers.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. Happier or sadder? Sadder
ii. Thinner or fatter? Thinner; made a concerted effort to get in control of, and comfortable with, my body in the latter half of the year
iii. Richer or poorer? The same almost to the penny, I think. Poorer in that this time next year I won't know where my money is coming from, which I did last year.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Writing. I put lots of needed writing (book, articles, job applications) off for impossibly long periods of time and I regret it. It's never as hard as I think it will be when I just knuckle down to it, so why the procrastination?

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Crying. I've been crying a lot since I learnt I haven't got secure employment to the end of the year.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
Spent. After the success of last year's trip to Amsterdam, I booked to go to Valencia over the same period just before Christmas. Thanks to Schrödinger's Drone, my flight home on the 21st ended up diverted to Bristol, then I had to spend 3.5 hours on a bus, wretchedly trying to get home. Not the most auspicious final trip to the continent as a European citizen, although perhaps a good indication of the chaos ahead of us. Then to my parents from 23rd-28th. Dull, dull, dull. Miserable, grumpy, bored.

21. Did you fall in love in 2018?
Nope.

22. How many one-night stands?
Zero

23. What was your favourite TV program?
Loads of good stuff this year; Killing Eve, Doctor Who, A Very English Scandal, The Good Place, Star Trek Discovery, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Crazy Ex Girlfirend, Grace and Frankie...lots of value from Netflix, in short.

The Handmaid's Tale dropped off my list of things that was worth watching, and Im not sure This Is Us is good anymore, so much as perfectly designed to make you cry.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Nope.

25. What was the best book you read?
Marginally better year than last year, although not by much. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet was certainly my favourite and I recommended it (successfully) to almost everyone I met. I was also really inspired and enlivened by The Argonauts

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Nothing new in my world. Lots of singles I like but can't name that I heard on 6Music

27. What did you want and get?
Holidays

28. What did you want and not get?
Same as last year: a girlfriend. Financial security I could [literally] take to the bank [and get a mortgage with]

29. What was your favourite film of this year?
Ladybird. Broke my heart a bit

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I was 34. I invited everyone to the pub and we all had amazing Sunday roasts.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Certainty of career, and financial stability.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2018?
Nonexistent

33. What kept you sane?
I took up more fitness stuff, got a fitbit, and generally embraced exercise as a general good. That has been the only constant, and the only thing I always do which is definitely Not Work.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Probably Jodie Whittaker/13. It was a bit of a sexless, desire-less year, all told.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
Brexshit. And America locking children up in cages and then letting them die for want of water.

36. Who did you miss?
I'm not sure I have any relationships significant enough to have anyone to miss.

37. Who was the best new person you met?
I met a friend of a friend for the first time. She is nice. And it's nice to meet new people at all as you get older and believe they will be in your life longer term

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2018:
You can do everything right and still fail. Which is something I should have taken more notice of when Picard said it on ST:TNG

39. Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?:
My Mum.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
I'm really looking forward/To when I won't be here/When I fly, fly away/To a better day.

In response to some persistent themes being expressed on various platforms of late, or, the 'feminist' return of body fascism;
I shave my legs because I want to.  I like the way skin feels against skin. I like the way clothes feel against skin. I do not like the way hair feels against skin or clothes.  I shave my arm pits because as clean as you are, you'll never find an anti perspirant that works as well when it is applied to hair covered skin.  All the hair removal and trimming I do is because I like it.  Society has not compelled me to do it.  My bare legs are not representative of my subjugation to pervasive beauty narratives.  My clean shaven armpits are indicative only of what I find to be aesthetically pleasing and what gives me confidence regarding my personal hygene.  Do not assume differently without asking me, or any of the other women you are battering with your rhetoric.  Thank you.

On queer liberation;
It is no doubt the proliferation of mediocre to poor dramas on tv of late centring on both fictional and real life gay men and their lives and loves, but increasingly I recognise and understand why lesbians wished to campaign for gay lib separately than gay men.  I also feel the strong tug of obscurity as the voices of queer women throughout history go largely unrecorded and so the obsessive bio-pic making so recently in vogue has no material from which to draw.  I sense also that - in the programming directors minds - the 'edginess' of making a film about men having sex and putting it on at 9pm on BBC2 would be lost were it instead about two women.  Female sexuality is, after all, neither urgent nor insistent nor selfish.  Women do not fuck but make love.  Or so social norms would have us believe, and to counter those ideas is to shoot too often over the head of the viewers,  How to explain that urgent sexuality and sexual satisfaction is not an exception to femininity or characteristic only of lesbianism?  On the occasions strong representations of female centred sexuality occur it is, more often than not, presented cheaply and sordidly - the atrocious scripts and production values on both the Fingersmith and Tipping the Velvet serve as excellent examples.

I cannot think of a single film which concerns a lesbian relationship as it's primary focus which is either beautiful or moving.  I can think of plenty which are trite and poorly executed and a hundred more which have only sold because queer women are so desperate for filmic representation they will buy and watch any old crap - I count myself among that desperate majority.

I have lost interest in stories about gay men struggling in historically-hostile times; they speak to me no more than a mediocre romantic storyline in a heterosexual drama does.  I always felt that LGBT history was a shared discovery, that hearing from one group can tell us about another/our own, but I see now that was naive.  I want to know about the lives of the women who have brought the world to the point it is at now for me - as a queer woman.  My social ancestors are silent - or at the very least silenced - in the current trend for period dramas about minority groups.  

On the ignorance of youth
I was in STA Travel today with a friend from work; we are probably going on holiday for a fortnight in July/August.  The travel agent was suggesting modifications/changes to the route I had in mind, after she mentioned Prague and I rejected it as I have already been there and she went back to furiously tapping away on her computer I turned to my friend, pointed to a photo from the old square in Prague and showed him the hotel I had stayed at for 2 nights.  I commented, in telling the story of how we ended up there and not in the hostel we had booked, that 'and they were also lovely there; they didn't bat an eyelid at the fact we were gay and sharing a double room".  He replied, shocked "is that something that happens then - is that a problem?".  "Yes," I said "indeed, in Paris we were initially refused the key to the double room we had booked (at a major hotel chain no less) until another member of staff intervened".  I watched the information processing on his face; I'm not sure he really believes the world is like that, even now.  Maybe another day I'll tell him about my friends who got beaten up by some thugs in a gay bar, for being gay, whilst the bar staff looked passively on.

On what my life is like of late;
I wake up every morning before my alarm goes off.  I trudge to the bathroom to shower.  I cry as I wash, dress and eat before leaving the house.  I pass through my days like a zombie and I am ready to go back to bed and to sleep at 3pm. I force myself to stay up until 10pm.  I cannot sleep.