Good gods. So, so many things are happening in my life, and very soon this year has come to an end. December has been tumultuous and fantastic, much like the rest of the year. A couple of lovely melodic death metal concerts with good company (Amon Amarth and Dark Tranquility, yay!). A couple of very successful Lucia concerts with the choir and also the master students at the department. Several boardgame- and roleplaying nights together with great friends. A couple of super-cozy gaming conventions with lots of my favourite people. Not nearly enough, but at least a bit of running. A tiny bit of snow, but at least I did get the chance to go out and play in it. A tremendous amount of love. Many sleepless nights filled with laughter and craziness and even more love. Lots of stress around and preparations for a move and a trip to the other side of Earth. Somewhat-neglected studies. Chaos, confusion, wonder and amazement. I’ve been walking around in a euphoric, at times angsty, sleep-deprived state of bliss.
Now things have mostly come together, and the chaos has calmed down to some extent. I no longer have a home. Or I can call any place I like home, depending on the point of view. Which is pretty much what I’m going to do this coming month, travelling around visiting people before I leave for the southern hemisphere. Yikes, I’m so excited. Still a bit stressed out about a couple of practical details that haven’t worked out quite yet, but I’m hoping for that to solve itself rather soon. It feels somewhat unreal to think that in less than a month’s time a dream which I have had for so long will actually come true. Amazing things, things I used to lack even the capacity to dream of, has happened to me in abundance the past few years, but this is probably the first time a dream I’ve had since childhood will become real.
Anyway. This year is drawing to an end, and some sort of recap might be in order. I’ll have to say that 2013 has been the best year in my life so far. I’ve evolved a hell of a lot, had many great adventures, and come close to some fantastic people who I love having in my life. At the beginning of the year I made a couple of resolutions. Firstly to finish the second draft of the book I wrote during NaNoWriMo last year. Heh, didn’t really get that one down. I barely got started. The second resolution, however, was to be brave. And I’ll be damned if that one wasn’t such a slamming success that it might have compensated for the failure of the other one.
Was I ever brave. I started out by explicitly going out in the open with being polyamorous. This brought on a wave of positive response from friends, acquaintances and strangers, and in the long run also a great deal of romance. This also meant that I have openly talked about it more than ever before, and in the process practically all the shame has gone away. I feel more free and secure than ever in myself, and my preferences in the matter have become more well-defined and well-articulated. All this much to the benefit of my own life of course, but it has also served to in a positive way open the eyes of others. So not only did the whole confession make my life more interesting and better, it also made other people’s lives better. That is something to be proud of, I reckon!
I also challenged my LARP-anxiety, and went to several LARPs. All of them were great fun and not half as scary as I had imagined. Made a whole bunch of new friends in the process as well, so nothing but yay to that!
I travelled away from home for longer than ever before to work at a solar telescope on the island La Palma. Had a wonderful and interesting time at a mindblowingly beautiful place, so I am immensely grateful for that opportunity.
I worked hard with the bravery of open-heartedly telling the truth. I confessed feelings to people, which sometimes worked out and sometimes didn’t; that’s life. I talked about fears and past experiences, philosophical and moral thoughts, dreams and hopes, feelings and desires. Things I had never talked about before, things I thought no-one else would understand, things buried so deep within my heart and mind that I had thought they would never see the light again. And in return I got the same honesty, got very close in a very short time, and felt such trust that I have hardly ever felt before.
All in all this year was freakin’ fantastic. I’ve learned so very much, not least about myself. I feel more well-defined in who I am, and more secure in the knowledge that I am a pretty damn good person. I have started to find a way of living that not only helps me cope with life’s various difficulties, but also makes me absolutely love my life.
I can only hope for an equally great 2014. The premises look amazing; I’m going to spend half of it living in friggin’ New Zealand. And then I’m going to come back and spend time with people I love and not have to worry about what to do with my life juuust yet. Feels kinda silly making plans that stretch further than a year or two into the future, considering how much my existence has a tendency to be turned upside down in an even shorter time-span. I have lots of hopes and dreams, but when it comes to solid plans I’ll be thankful enough if I have the luck to be alive in a year’s time. I’m sure I’ll think of something interesting to do with my time.
When it comes to resolutions I’d like to change the wording into ambitions, considering my preference for attempting slightly impossible things. How about three of them? Yeah, sure, let’s run with that. These things I shall endeavour to accomplish in 2014:
- I will aspire to keep up my running to such an extent that I manage to run from Lund to Malmö and back again before the year is over. That’s about the equivalent of a marathon, so considering the fact that I’ve never run further than ten kilometres before, and even that with great effort, it’s going to take some hard work indeed. But what the hell, let’s see how far the ambition will take me!
- I will try to finish draft two of my book before November, and also to successfully participate in NaNoWriMo with the next part in the trilogy. I’d say this is about as realistic as the above ambition. But bring on the writing, I am motivated as fuck!
- I will try to stop apologising for everything. This is something that several people of late has pointed out to me; that I have a tendency for saying ‘sorry’ all the time, and even apologising for things that couldn’t even theoretically have been my fault. I believe that this is a rather self-destructive tendency in my personality, so my ambition is to make myself think about whether an apology is really warranted each time before I blurt out “I’m sorry!” and take on all the blame automatically. If this goes according to plan it might do some good for my self-esteem.
I hope you have all had a year even remotely as great as mine, dear readers. If you wish to share any thoughts regarding your experiences of the past year or resolutions for the new one I’d be delighted to read them. Regardless I wish you a happy new year! I’m gonna go back to being happy with my life now, so I’ll see you on the other side of this arbitrary but symbolically heavy-laden night of renewal.
Happy year indeed,
Winterdragon
