Happy New Year!

[amairylle]

Happy New Year! I hope you all are doing well!

This one's been pretty rough for me both creatively and in brickspace, but I wanted to do a short roundup of cool things that happened to me in 2018. Because, let's be real, 2018 was garbage in a lot of spheres, both personally and globally, and I feel like a lot of you will agree with me on that, but those aren't the things I want to remember. Some of those things are ongoing problems, especially the things bigger than me, and I'm going to remember them whether I want to or not (I can't just ignore problems I wish weren't happening), but I don't want to forget the good too. So here goes!

• According to Ao3, I wrote 39879 words this year, which is an awful lot for a year where I felt like I wasn't really writing. The actual number might be different, because that's just things I've posted to Ao3 and I had to do some math (it included all of sfmdfy instead of just what I wrote this year) but that's a damn satisfying number.
• In particular I started publishing Living Legends, which is a series of letters between my guild wars 2 commander, Feorylle, and Trahearne. This one in particular is an accomplishment because I've been claiming to be a multifandom writer without publishing anything besides Haikyuu, and I've felt bad about that. It's also the first time I'm publishing something with a buffer, so this one updates regularly, which is cool.
• On that note, I got back into Guild Wars 2 and finally found a guild I like. I made a lot of quality new friends and we're even learning to raid, which I've wanted to do since starting to play.
• Sing For Me, I'll Dance For You, my first and one of my favorite Haikyuu fics, got a Russian translation courtesy of earlsmokey on twitter. I haven't screamed so much in a while. Holy shit. I'm honestly still kinda shook. It's on ficbook and ao3 if you read Russian. It's really well done, too.
• I took my first solo road trip to Tulsa to see two of my best friends from college and see Panic! at the Disco live and it was hecking spectacular. Especially since I've had a really hard time meeting people in ABQ because of my weird retail schedule and the fact that I don't like going out to drink. I'd missed my people a lot.
• Got to see so many of my favorite relatives this year. It was kind of a bummer because my favorite uncle died, and so the reason I got to see everyone is because his remaining siblings and his wife all went "life is short and we need to see each other more," but I hadn't seen most of these people in over a year at least because plane tickets. I'd missed them.
• Dragged one of my best friends out to NM and took him around to see every cool rock I could find. Also took him to balloon fiesta and my favorite hot springs. He enjoyed it a lot.
• I found a job and a place to live so I can move out of my parents' house in two weeks. I'm moving to Boston and I'm living with one of my best friends and working with another of my best friends.
• Finally figured out what I want to do with life long-term and career wise. Part of the reason I'm moving to Boston is so I can go to grad school and set myself up to take the foreign service exam. That plan has a lot of steps in it, but the first and biggest, figuring out what I wanted, has eluded me for almost four years now.

  I wish I could remember more from the beginning of the year, but I'm really happy with what I accomplished this year, even if most of it happened in the second half of the year.

  Here's to a better 2019! I hope that you all find satisfaction in whatever you do, no matter how small.