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dolorosa_12I'm just back from the pool, having done my final swim of 2023, it's getting close to the point where my friends and family in Australia start posting photos of fireworks, and the view from 2024, so let's do this.
In the spirit of breaking routines and habits that no longer serve me, this is going to be the last time I do this meme in its entirety. I think I've been using it as a year-end summary every year since I joined Livejournal in 2003, and I've been feeling for a while that many of its questions are more appropriate to a teenager, or an undergraduate student in their early twenties, and their answers don't really say anything fundamental about the shape of the year when the respondant is closer to forty than fifteen. Twenty years of this meme seemed like a good point to stop, and as of 2024, I'll cannibalise its questions and keep only the ones that I feel are relevant to my life.
1. What did you do in 2023 that you'd never done before?
Travel to a new-to-me country: Slovenia. Do zumba classes at the gym. (I took up pump classes as well, but I'd done those previously, when I was a teenager in the final year of secondary school.) As you can see, really not a lot of new things at all, and I think if I don't change this, I'm going to end up trapped in fear in rigid, safe little routines.
2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
My resolutions for 2023 were, as they have been for several years now, to carve out spaces of safety, kindness, empathy and beauty where I can, to draw my own personal lines in the sand, and hold to them, to support and live and love with integrity, and to remember, always, that love, love is a verb, love is a doing word.
I actually think this year I did this really well.
I had some concrete personal goals relating to the fitness classes I've already mentioned, which were definitely achieved without any difficulties. I also had a goal to write at least 10,000 words of fanfic, which has been achieved if you take unrevealed exchange gifts into account.
This is the first time in many years that I feel the above resolutions aren't enough. Obviously I want to maintain them, and I have a couple of other concrete personal and professional goals, but above all, I feel I need to make an explicit commitment to doing something new that takes me outside myself, working with other people, to help other people. Some kind of in-person, communal effort to do something concrete in support of something that matters to me. I have some ideas, but nothing firm at this point, but I feel that if I don't state this specific goal publicly, I won't take it seriously.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Several friends from different spheres of my life had babies.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
Not this year, thankfully.
5. What countries did you visit?
I went back to Australia for the first time since 2018. The flights transitted through Changi Airport, but I don't count that as visiting Singapore. My mum and I went to Italy (and ended up having to travel back via Helsinki due to Italian airport staff strikes, so I also had an unexpected visit to Finland). Matthias and I went on holiday to visit friends in Austria, and then on to Slovenia. We travelled by train, so this trip passed through France, Belgium, and the Netherlands (and we ended up due to German train chaos having to stay overnight in Brussels, so again an unexpected visit to Belgium; travel chaos was definitely the theme of the year).
6. What would you like to have in 2024 that you lacked in 2023?
As is probably obvious by this point, I would like to have some better mechanisms in place for being open to change and spontaneity, and for dealing with the intense anxiety and unease that I feel whenever plans and routines go awry. I'd like to have some in-person social connections based on shared interests or activities.
7. What date from 2023 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
This didn't really feel like a year of profound moments. The trip in April to Australia was memorable, and that first return to the waters of 'my' beaches and oceans was incredibly healing, but it was the trip as a whole rather than specific days.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Sticking to a good routine when it came to exercise and movement, getting my (or really our) act together and organising some large-scale work done on the house on projects that had long been bothering me.
Leaving Twitter and not jumping immediately onto Threads, Mastodon, BlueSky or some other replacement also feels in retrospect like a monumental achievement, and I'm so happy and relieved I've done it.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Boxing myself in with all these routines and structures that help me get things done, but have also started isolating me in a way that I suddenly recognised has the potential to be incredibly damaging.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I guess what I'm describing is a kind of anxiety, although I'm not sure it meets the threshold for 'illness.' I also have a lot of pain and tension in my body caused by constant tensing of my jaw and shoulders and inability to relax those parts of my body.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
Not one thing, but the various tickets and accommodation and meals and activities for international travel. Also, the tickets for the Go_A concert.
12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
The same as last year's answer: that of every Ukrainian as they fought an existential battle for survival as individuals, as a nation, and for the right to chart their own political and foreign policy course. They restored something that was broken in me.
Supporters of Ukrainians both on a national/political/diplomatic/military level, and on an individual level, who showed that it is possible to enact foreign policy that is both moral and self-interested. I have some worries about the long-term sustainability of this support, but for most of 2023, it was pretty solid, although not without flaws. It is my greatest wish that we could see more of this in more parts of the world, becasue it shows what is possible when a people's will to fight for their democracy and human rights is provided with an adequate level of global support.
13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
The usual endless list of murderous authoritarian and dictatorial political leaders (for obvious reasons most notably Putin and his regime, but unfortunately violent authoritarianism is a global phenomenon), our travesty of a 'government' in the UK, the far right in various countries, tankies and other geopolitical abuse apologists, and various incopetent and/or predatory men who continue to fail upwards into positions of power.
Australian voters appalled and depressed me, but unfortunately did not surprise me.
14. Where did most of your money go?
Mortgage repayments, and just the day to day cost of living. Probably costs associated with international travel as well.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Going back to Australia.
16. What song will always remind you of 2023?
'Please Ask for Help' (Telekinesis)
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? Sadder.
ii. thinner or fatter? Thinner.
iii. richer or poorer? Slightly poorer. *cries in inflation* However, Matthias got a new, much better paid job, so I'd say the pair of us are slightly better off as a whole, but as I'm still in the same job, at the same pay, my money doesn't go as far as it used to.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Anything outside my safe, isolating little routines.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
I wish I'd left Twitter sooner, and I wish I'd done less endless scrolling through it. I wish I'd found it easier not to get completely crushed by people's terrible takes (disinformation, deliberate, antagonistic cruelty, oblivious sharing of material from people whose statements on one issue supported their position, but whose statements on other issues were abysmal) on social media.
20. How did you spend Christmas?
We stayed home this year, and it was wonderful. It was just a lovely, slow, restful time, filled with cooking, grazing, reading, TV, swimming, yoga, walks, and planning. It made me so happy.
22. Did you fall in love in 2023?
I'm still in love my wonderful Matthias.
I fell in love with places, bodies of water, and ideas.
23. Did your heart break in 2023?
It broke for others, so many times, but not for myself.
24. What was your favourite TV program?
Honestly, probably Reservation Dogs, whose second season I just finished watching this week. I also really loved Deadloch, and thought that Warrior and Lupin finished on high notes.
25. Where were you when 2023 began?
In Ely.
26. Who were you with?
With Matthias.
27. Where will you be when 2023 ends?
In Ely.
28. Who will you be with when 2023 ends?
Matthias. We'll watch some films, and graze on blinis with smoked salmon, cheese and charcuterie.
29. What was the best book you read?
I read 161 books in 2023. Barring rereads, my favourites were probably The Dance Tree by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (which resonated with my experiences and made me feel seen in an incredibly profound way), The Women of Troy (Pat Barker), and All the Horses of Iceland (Sarah Tolmie).
30. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Not so much a discovery, but more a rediscovery of a lot of Ukrainian music that I'd loved for years, but not thought about much: Go_A, Onuka, and more.
31. What did you want and get?
To return to Australia, and swim in all those southern oceans.
32. What did you want and not get?
Loads of political things.
33. What was your favourite film of this year?
I watched quite a lot of films this year, and to be honest, going back over my list, none of them blew me away. Rye Lane was very good at what it was trying to do, I suppose.
34. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
It was an ordinary working day for me, so I went into Cambridge for work. When I came home, Matthias had surprised me with sushi, champagne, chocolate, and a bunch of flowers, and I was so astonished (and just generally emotionally exhausted; my birthday is just before Christmas) that I burst into happy tears. I was thirty-nine.
35. How many different states/cities did you travel to in 2023?
Within the UK, I went to London several times, travelled back and forth to Cambridge for work, and went to various East Anglian villages for day trips. Mum, Matthias and I also spent a long weekend in Bath. In Australia I was in Sydney, Thirroul, and Woodend, plus half a day in Melbourne. In Italy I was in Milan, plus various towns around Lake Como, then the aforementioned stopover in Helsinki. On our other holiday, Matthias and I were in Vienna (plus a day trip to a winery in a village outside the city), Ljubljana (plus a day trip to Lake Bled), plus the aforementioned unintentional stopover in Brussels.
36. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2023?
I pretty much lived in pyjamas and athleisure wear this year, and I regret nothing.
37. What kept you sane?
Cooking. Yoga. Swimming laps in the pool. Picking heavy things up and putting them down. Very silly dancing. Reading. Walking every day in the beautiful fenlands outside my door. Growing things. Working slowly and methodically. Crossing things off lists.
Leaving Twitter.
38. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I feel like this question is aimed at someone whose sense of attraction is different to my own.
39. What political issue stirred you the most?
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the Ukrainian and global response to it.
I believe the outcome of this war will be the most important geopolitical event of this half of this century, and I believe the fact that most people in western Europe, the United States, and other aligned countries don't realise this is an incredibly dangerous thing.
40. How many concerts did you see in 2023?
Two: XYLØ and Go_A.
41. Did you have a favourite concert in 2023?
Go_A wasn't just my favourite concert of 2023, it's probably in my top five concerts of all time.
42. Who was the best new person you met?
I met some nice new people through Dreamwidth, as always.
43. Did you do anything you are ashamed of this year?
No.
44. What was your most embarrassing moment of 2023?
I'm not easily embarrassed.
45. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2023.
Structuring your life around safe, regular, easily-managed routines is great for short-term productivity, but it is also a potentially damaging coping mechanism.
Leave Twitter behind, and don't look back.
46. What are your plans for 2024?
To unfurl my wings.
47. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
I'm not gonna let you down,
But I'm not gonna help you up
It takes so long to turn me around,
When I think nothing could be wrong
In the spirit of breaking routines and habits that no longer serve me, this is going to be the last time I do this meme in its entirety. I think I've been using it as a year-end summary every year since I joined Livejournal in 2003, and I've been feeling for a while that many of its questions are more appropriate to a teenager, or an undergraduate student in their early twenties, and their answers don't really say anything fundamental about the shape of the year when the respondant is closer to forty than fifteen. Twenty years of this meme seemed like a good point to stop, and as of 2024, I'll cannibalise its questions and keep only the ones that I feel are relevant to my life.
1. What did you do in 2023 that you'd never done before?
Travel to a new-to-me country: Slovenia. Do zumba classes at the gym. (I took up pump classes as well, but I'd done those previously, when I was a teenager in the final year of secondary school.) As you can see, really not a lot of new things at all, and I think if I don't change this, I'm going to end up trapped in fear in rigid, safe little routines.
2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
My resolutions for 2023 were, as they have been for several years now, to carve out spaces of safety, kindness, empathy and beauty where I can, to draw my own personal lines in the sand, and hold to them, to support and live and love with integrity, and to remember, always, that love, love is a verb, love is a doing word.
I actually think this year I did this really well.
I had some concrete personal goals relating to the fitness classes I've already mentioned, which were definitely achieved without any difficulties. I also had a goal to write at least 10,000 words of fanfic, which has been achieved if you take unrevealed exchange gifts into account.
This is the first time in many years that I feel the above resolutions aren't enough. Obviously I want to maintain them, and I have a couple of other concrete personal and professional goals, but above all, I feel I need to make an explicit commitment to doing something new that takes me outside myself, working with other people, to help other people. Some kind of in-person, communal effort to do something concrete in support of something that matters to me. I have some ideas, but nothing firm at this point, but I feel that if I don't state this specific goal publicly, I won't take it seriously.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Several friends from different spheres of my life had babies.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
Not this year, thankfully.
5. What countries did you visit?
I went back to Australia for the first time since 2018. The flights transitted through Changi Airport, but I don't count that as visiting Singapore. My mum and I went to Italy (and ended up having to travel back via Helsinki due to Italian airport staff strikes, so I also had an unexpected visit to Finland). Matthias and I went on holiday to visit friends in Austria, and then on to Slovenia. We travelled by train, so this trip passed through France, Belgium, and the Netherlands (and we ended up due to German train chaos having to stay overnight in Brussels, so again an unexpected visit to Belgium; travel chaos was definitely the theme of the year).
6. What would you like to have in 2024 that you lacked in 2023?
As is probably obvious by this point, I would like to have some better mechanisms in place for being open to change and spontaneity, and for dealing with the intense anxiety and unease that I feel whenever plans and routines go awry. I'd like to have some in-person social connections based on shared interests or activities.
7. What date from 2023 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
This didn't really feel like a year of profound moments. The trip in April to Australia was memorable, and that first return to the waters of 'my' beaches and oceans was incredibly healing, but it was the trip as a whole rather than specific days.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Sticking to a good routine when it came to exercise and movement, getting my (or really our) act together and organising some large-scale work done on the house on projects that had long been bothering me.
Leaving Twitter and not jumping immediately onto Threads, Mastodon, BlueSky or some other replacement also feels in retrospect like a monumental achievement, and I'm so happy and relieved I've done it.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Boxing myself in with all these routines and structures that help me get things done, but have also started isolating me in a way that I suddenly recognised has the potential to be incredibly damaging.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I guess what I'm describing is a kind of anxiety, although I'm not sure it meets the threshold for 'illness.' I also have a lot of pain and tension in my body caused by constant tensing of my jaw and shoulders and inability to relax those parts of my body.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
Not one thing, but the various tickets and accommodation and meals and activities for international travel. Also, the tickets for the Go_A concert.
12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
The same as last year's answer: that of every Ukrainian as they fought an existential battle for survival as individuals, as a nation, and for the right to chart their own political and foreign policy course. They restored something that was broken in me.
Supporters of Ukrainians both on a national/political/diplomatic/military level, and on an individual level, who showed that it is possible to enact foreign policy that is both moral and self-interested. I have some worries about the long-term sustainability of this support, but for most of 2023, it was pretty solid, although not without flaws. It is my greatest wish that we could see more of this in more parts of the world, becasue it shows what is possible when a people's will to fight for their democracy and human rights is provided with an adequate level of global support.
13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
The usual endless list of murderous authoritarian and dictatorial political leaders (for obvious reasons most notably Putin and his regime, but unfortunately violent authoritarianism is a global phenomenon), our travesty of a 'government' in the UK, the far right in various countries, tankies and other geopolitical abuse apologists, and various incopetent and/or predatory men who continue to fail upwards into positions of power.
Australian voters appalled and depressed me, but unfortunately did not surprise me.
14. Where did most of your money go?
Mortgage repayments, and just the day to day cost of living. Probably costs associated with international travel as well.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Going back to Australia.
16. What song will always remind you of 2023?
'Please Ask for Help' (Telekinesis)
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? Sadder.
ii. thinner or fatter? Thinner.
iii. richer or poorer? Slightly poorer. *cries in inflation* However, Matthias got a new, much better paid job, so I'd say the pair of us are slightly better off as a whole, but as I'm still in the same job, at the same pay, my money doesn't go as far as it used to.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Anything outside my safe, isolating little routines.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
I wish I'd left Twitter sooner, and I wish I'd done less endless scrolling through it. I wish I'd found it easier not to get completely crushed by people's terrible takes (disinformation, deliberate, antagonistic cruelty, oblivious sharing of material from people whose statements on one issue supported their position, but whose statements on other issues were abysmal) on social media.
20. How did you spend Christmas?
We stayed home this year, and it was wonderful. It was just a lovely, slow, restful time, filled with cooking, grazing, reading, TV, swimming, yoga, walks, and planning. It made me so happy.
22. Did you fall in love in 2023?
I'm still in love my wonderful Matthias.
I fell in love with places, bodies of water, and ideas.
23. Did your heart break in 2023?
It broke for others, so many times, but not for myself.
24. What was your favourite TV program?
Honestly, probably Reservation Dogs, whose second season I just finished watching this week. I also really loved Deadloch, and thought that Warrior and Lupin finished on high notes.
25. Where were you when 2023 began?
In Ely.
26. Who were you with?
With Matthias.
27. Where will you be when 2023 ends?
In Ely.
28. Who will you be with when 2023 ends?
Matthias. We'll watch some films, and graze on blinis with smoked salmon, cheese and charcuterie.
29. What was the best book you read?
I read 161 books in 2023. Barring rereads, my favourites were probably The Dance Tree by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (which resonated with my experiences and made me feel seen in an incredibly profound way), The Women of Troy (Pat Barker), and All the Horses of Iceland (Sarah Tolmie).
30. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Not so much a discovery, but more a rediscovery of a lot of Ukrainian music that I'd loved for years, but not thought about much: Go_A, Onuka, and more.
31. What did you want and get?
To return to Australia, and swim in all those southern oceans.
32. What did you want and not get?
Loads of political things.
33. What was your favourite film of this year?
I watched quite a lot of films this year, and to be honest, going back over my list, none of them blew me away. Rye Lane was very good at what it was trying to do, I suppose.
34. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
It was an ordinary working day for me, so I went into Cambridge for work. When I came home, Matthias had surprised me with sushi, champagne, chocolate, and a bunch of flowers, and I was so astonished (and just generally emotionally exhausted; my birthday is just before Christmas) that I burst into happy tears. I was thirty-nine.
35. How many different states/cities did you travel to in 2023?
Within the UK, I went to London several times, travelled back and forth to Cambridge for work, and went to various East Anglian villages for day trips. Mum, Matthias and I also spent a long weekend in Bath. In Australia I was in Sydney, Thirroul, and Woodend, plus half a day in Melbourne. In Italy I was in Milan, plus various towns around Lake Como, then the aforementioned stopover in Helsinki. On our other holiday, Matthias and I were in Vienna (plus a day trip to a winery in a village outside the city), Ljubljana (plus a day trip to Lake Bled), plus the aforementioned unintentional stopover in Brussels.
36. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2023?
I pretty much lived in pyjamas and athleisure wear this year, and I regret nothing.
37. What kept you sane?
Cooking. Yoga. Swimming laps in the pool. Picking heavy things up and putting them down. Very silly dancing. Reading. Walking every day in the beautiful fenlands outside my door. Growing things. Working slowly and methodically. Crossing things off lists.
Leaving Twitter.
38. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I feel like this question is aimed at someone whose sense of attraction is different to my own.
39. What political issue stirred you the most?
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the Ukrainian and global response to it.
I believe the outcome of this war will be the most important geopolitical event of this half of this century, and I believe the fact that most people in western Europe, the United States, and other aligned countries don't realise this is an incredibly dangerous thing.
40. How many concerts did you see in 2023?
Two: XYLØ and Go_A.
41. Did you have a favourite concert in 2023?
Go_A wasn't just my favourite concert of 2023, it's probably in my top five concerts of all time.
42. Who was the best new person you met?
I met some nice new people through Dreamwidth, as always.
43. Did you do anything you are ashamed of this year?
No.
44. What was your most embarrassing moment of 2023?
I'm not easily embarrassed.
45. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2023.
Structuring your life around safe, regular, easily-managed routines is great for short-term productivity, but it is also a potentially damaging coping mechanism.
Leave Twitter behind, and don't look back.
46. What are your plans for 2024?
To unfurl my wings.
47. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
I'm not gonna let you down,
But I'm not gonna help you up
It takes so long to turn me around,
When I think nothing could be wrong