With unspoken insinuation of desire for elaboration

My goals for the year were: 100 books, 2 classic sci fi books, 1 in French or German. Uh. ...maybe I'll finish my French book.... any time now. (Lies: I won't. It was L'Étranger and I got to halfway and just ...ugh, I don't want to.) So yeah, another year where I didn't meet that goal, whoops.
( it's a long pile of text about lots of books )

My list of Books I Finished Despite Loathing was still short this year, huzzah! I think it was just two - Isaac Asimov - Foundation, which I'd already mentioned, including why. And Thea Harrison - The Adversary, which was a novella, so reasonably short, and just. So inane. I generally have liked her other stuff for being simplistic, escapist, nonsense. This was simplistic and nonsense, but I'm not sure I detected any positive attributes. Oh well. We all have off days.

And generally I enjoyed a lot of what I read - in my personal ratings I had >60% with <3 or even more enthusiastic than that attached. So overall, good year! I was really happy with this.

So I'm back in the US after five weeks out of the country running around the UK, Germany, Denmark and Ireland. Mostly not vacation. We have offices in London, Munich, Copenhagen, and Dublin, and I wanted to meet my coworkers. Have wanted to meet my coworkers for more than three years.

Anyhow, with the pandemic sort of in a manageable-ish place, I finally said I am not waiting anymore, I don't care if you help me finance or plan it, I am just flipping going. I am hoping to plan another such trip to Ukraine when it's ...doable? Remotely reasonable? But for the time being this is what I could do, and I did get to meet some coworkers who had been in Ukraine and Belarus, but have relocated. Best part of this for me was getting to meet the last person I mentored at work. When I was helping him onboard, we were totally remote and 7 hours apart in time zones. I wished so hard that whole time to be able to sit down with him, and it was really nice finally doing so.

I did also have a couple holidays while I was over there and took four half days so I could go do some things I wanted to, such as: head up to Sheffield to see a comedian I like on a weekday, stay over and take a trip over to Manchester so I could go see Thea Gilmore in concert (!!! after being a fan over 20 years!), and travel from the UK to Germany via train rather than plane because ye gods I don't like flying.

Anyhow. So I got to see several UK comedians while I was over there, spent some time seeing Bonn, bopped over briefly to Malmö mostly just so I can say I've been to Sweden, saw Rossini's William Tell from front row seats in Dublin, and did a day tour in Ireland of the Cliffs of Moher and Galway.

Broadly this was all really nice, and traveling this year has been a great antidote to the past couple of years where that was totally untenable. And though it was a bit of an expense, it was totally doable and isn't going to put a huge hole in my budgeting for this year. (I did generally stay in hostels and minimize costs in as much as I could. This is not to say it was totally inexpensive, but it wasn't bad.)

It's also nice, afterwards, to be back in Boston and in my own apartment again. Staying in hostels is sort of fun and social for me, but ye gods, when the bathrooms are stupid it stresses me out so much. Like the ones in Munich and Dublin where the shower setup was unavoidably creating somewhere between a lake and a puddle in the bathroom. In Dublin I kept wanting to go downstairs to shared bathrooms by preference over using the one in the room with me, it was so unpleasant.

After this trip I'm beginning to form more of an opinion about Germany, which is useful. It's not entirely positive or negative, which I suppose is more likely to be a realistic take. This was a particularly interesting time to go through several European countries including Germany - I consistently was masking on mass transit and generally in grocery stores. From what I saw in the UK, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, and Ireland nearly no one else was. In Germany it's still required on transit. When on a train that went from London through France and Belgium, no masking required the whole time. Going from Belgium on to Germany we had the first point where we got an announcement it was required on crossing the border.

I don't know how I feel about everything on this topic at this point, but I think if anywhere makes sense, to me transit makes sense. It's something where some people cannot actually live their lives without it. For people who are immunocompromised, I'd sure as hell rather be living in a place like Germany right now if I were them, versus anywhere else I'm seeing. And I'll be visiting my (elderly, not in amazing health) mom for Thanksgiving again, so whether or not I might at some point stop masking on transit, I'm not stopping in the next couple of weeks. I'm honestly not sure I see the point of stopping during winter at all. It's not that arduous. I understand school being a difficulty, and I wouldn't want to mask for 8+ hours at work, but transit?

Well. Anyhow, I'm glad to have gotten to do this trip, and it felt like a reasonable point in time to get in before whatever happens this winter with the war and everything else. ...boy do I hope next year trends better.

Stats
Number Of Books You Read: 110, assuming I don't make it through my current one tomorrow.

Authors were 76 female, 20 male, 1 non-binary, 17 anthology/mixed.

The average rating was 4.4 stars, but I mostly don't rate things unless I like them or really, truly hate them.

Number of Re-Reads:
Either 5 or 6, depending on if you count it as a re-read when a book I loved as a kid I picked up in French this year.

Superlatives
( Read more... )
My one particular failure with this list is that I haven't read a book in German yet, which is on my yearly list of goals. I'm like a quarter of the way through one. I left it until last minute and couldn't persuade myself on vacation to actually do it. Because it's hard. So many words I don't know. Sigh.

At least as compared with last year I read fewer books I hated. This year I have only two books marked with </3 on my spreadsheet, and one of them was particularly short.

This was a weird year for me, in that I have never before pushed through quite so many books I hated, or at least strongly disliked, in one year. Also, mostly unrelatedly, I read a lot of books outside my usual genres, including a half dozen non-fiction. That's something I nearly never do, unless you count books for classes. Oh, I also read one book in French and one book in German, a goal I'm looking to do again in 2021.
( Read more... )

So that was 2020 in books, for me. I think I stretched myself in a bunch of ways, and was sometimes rewarded and sometimes really, really not.

BTW, if you have any desire to link up on Goodreads, please hit me up. I find it really useful to look at what other folks are reading for inspiration on what to hit next.

1. Are you an essential worker?
No. I've been working from home and am tremendously grateful for that, because I think it's really helping with keeping my mood stable.

2. How many drinks have you had since the quarantine started?
Alcoholic? One. I had a grown up chocolate milk. :P (Milk plus chocolate Bailey's.) I am thinking about making supplies for lemon drops this week, perhaps.

3. If you have kids... Are they driving you nuts?
No kids.

4. What new hobby have you taken up during this?
No new hobbies. Have been practicing flute a ton more, though. I'm trying somewhat seriously to prepare Bach's flute sonata in B minor to a point of possibly being performable in front of humans, which I haven't really from scratch done that kind of prep since leaving music school.

5. How many grocery runs have you done?
I did one on 3/17, didn't stock up enough and had to go back on 3/20, then another on 3/28, another on 4/4, and haven't been back since. I tried to get delivery, but they canceled, so I probably need to again. I should maybe figure out just getting a huge store of oats and making oat milk? I don't know. Recipe planning in these circumstances is odd and difficult.

6. What are you spending your stimulus check on?
I'm default assuming I don't get one. If I do, I'm going to donate it to charity - other people definitely need help more than I do.

7. Do you have any special occasions that you will miss during this quarantine?
A concert I'd planned to go to. Actually I guess the big one is I'd planned to take two weeks of vacation in Morocco, and that obviously didn't occur.

8. Are you keeping your housework done?
Yeah. Keeping my kitchen clean and my sink empty actively makes me feel better, so it's happening regularly. I've cleaned my microwave and stove repeatedly, as well. Though I could really stand to clean my fridge. It's been a few months.

9. What movie have you watched during this quarantine?
Several coworkers told me I should watch Battlestar Galactica, so I watched the miniseries. I am not watching more BSG. It was fine, but I don't have that much time to spend and I'd prefer not to prioritize watching things.

10. What are you streaming?
Jackbox games somewhat regularly. A couple episodes of The Good Place per week with Thomas. I think that's it? Early on I watched Carmen from the Metropolitan Opera, and I should do more opera again, but am low on time. (Yes, I know. I can't explain myself.)

11. Nine months from now is there any chance of you having a baby?
Uh, no. Zero chance.

12. What's your go-to quarantine meal?
I've made two Thai curries in two weeks, so I guess that?

13. Is this whole situation making you paranoid?
Eehh, not a ton, but I am definitely experiencing some issues trying to handle my mom being high anxiety about this (where she is vulnerable, so she's not 100% unreasonable in all concerns, but some of the stuff she asks me about is straight up bizarre and unhelpful).

14. Has your internet gone out on you during this time?
Thankfully no. Nor power, despite yesterday's high winds.

15. What month do you predict this all ends?
*All* ends? ...Globally? Maybe somewhere around October or November 2021. Generating a vaccine, validating it, distributing it, that's a bunch of complex logistics. I don't think we'll be continuously in lockdown through that point, and am hoping something improves by August such that we're better prepared, herd immunity improves, and maybe it'll be possible to work out of the office again. I miss that *so much*. And walks to French and German class.

16. First thing you’re gonna do when you get off quarantine?
Has to be a walk somewhere. Maybe go to the beach at night?

17. Where do you wish you were right now?
Very specifically Wombat's City Hostel London is what I'm experiencing severe nostalgia for reasonably consistently. But honestly I would love to just be in the office and have the usual people there.

18. What free-from-quarantine activity are you missing the most?
I mean, fundamentally it's walks and seeing humans. I sound like a puppy when described this way. :P Friday happy hours at work would be high on my list, I guess, for a specific activity, or in person gaming with friends.

19. Have you run out of toilet paper and hand sanitizer?
I was never able to get hand sanitizer to begin with and never had it previously. I'm good on toilet paper because the only time I was able to buy any, my only option was a 12 pack.

20. Do you have enough food to last a month?
Yes. I've always kept absolutely tons of rice, lentils, and beans in the house, and I have a chest freezer, though not enough frozen vegetables at this point, IMO. I don't think I'd have problems lasting a month, though, just I'd be sick of some of my options by the end, as would anyone, I'd assume.

Well, I don't know how well thought out this all is, but I have already not posted it for about two weeks, so I should just bite the bullet at some point and let it go. :P

( My usual month by month format... )

General stuff for the year:
OMG, I am not good at medical anything. I did my best with trying to follow the problems and attempts at correction for my mom while she was in the CTICU for a week and a half, and I could deal with just the knowledge sorts of parts of it, though I didn't have context sufficient to totally follow some of it, but all the social bits of it were *awful*, and the emotional load was double awful.

I think what I did effectively during that stretch was a) generally make sure mom wasn't alone for too long, b) write up updates to send to mom's friends for what was going on, and c) after it all ended actually catch mom up on what happened for the first week and a half when she was mostly sort of delirious and really didn't even know how much time passed.

That whole experience was so difficult and was just a week and a half of me feeling like I wasn't doing work from a logical standpoint, but from a mental overhead and emotional standpoint feeling like I was running a marathon. The point where she hadn't shown any real signs of awareness for the fourth day I was completely having a breakdown and terrified the next step was going to be having to deal with all of my mom's business for her for the rest of my life. I am so, so glad she is herself again.

Over the year I read, according to goodreads, 159 books. I'd argue, though, that many of those were novellas and not full books. Also, the vast majority I read in the first six months, and I sort of stopped reading after mom's surgery. Nonetheless, I did a ton of reading, and I wish I hadn't sort of stopped so abruptly, while also totally feeling the reason I did is totally fair. Basically when I headed down to NYC I was in the middle of Neal Stephenson's Seveneves, which I had been enjoying, but also sort of fighting because you can see the problems coming, and suddenly my brain said, "no, we're all full up on difficult, heavy things to handle right now thank you." and the only thing I read while I was in NYC was slowly fighting my way through Harry Potter à L'école des Sorciers, because that was the level of tension I was able to take at that point. I think I could start up reading again (and should), but have ended up doing more frivolous things instead lately (like trying to play Mass Effect and failing).

I did sort of prioritize going to music things this year, and I think that went well and made me happy, so I'm going to try to keep doing that. I'm not entirely sure how to usefully *find* them consistently, though. I think a lot of the time I was sort of just stumbling across things. Happy to take suggestions here. I have already gotten tickets for Walk the Moon next month, which I'm excited for.

I am a little worried the continued living on my own is making me weirder and less tolerant of things I used to habitually deal with, but I'm also still not unhappy with being alone, so I'm sort of unclear on my end conclusion here. I do think I did a better job of making sure I was being social throughout the year, and didn't hit a sort of drought, the way I felt I did in 2017.

One thing I couldn't fit in a monthly format, but which definitely shaped this year was oddness at work with some unfortunate hires of toxic people in power, which eventually resolved itself and we got rid of them, but caused um. A lot of strife and contributed to losing some coworkers I really miss. I'm reasonably happy with where we are now, but had been considering leaving for a while in there. On the positive side, if I had to leave at this point, I feel like I have a much more solid skillset and no detractors on my resume, like I was afraid of a couple years back.

Semi-relatedly, I think over 2018 one thing I did consistently improve on is technical skills at my job. I look at queries I write now with no pausing for looking at reference information, etc, versus what I was doing in January and it's a quite significant improvement. I also explicitly went out of my way to get more comfortable with rails console, and I'm happy about that.

I'm also happy about the places I put myself forward, musically, even when it didn't pay off. I don't consider myself a singer, but most of my opportunities now are there, since being a classical flutist doesn't allow for a lot of opportunities, so I'm putting in some work on that, and I'm happy that I'm doing so.

Oh, and I'm super happy to have found a way to volunteer for political causes that doesn't involve a lot of talking to strangers - data entry is apparently a constant need for campaigns, and is 100% in my skill set and doesn't make me hate life. I am absolutely doing that again in the future.

I also finally starting hanging artwork in my place, and got a print done of my favorite pic from vacation, taken from Blackfriar's bridge, looking over the Thames at sunset. I'm pretty happy with it. :)

On the whole... I dunno, I guess it was a reasonable year, and I definitely made sure to get enough experience type things I enjoy into it. I am still sucking at balancing how busy I am versus not seeing people enough. Some weeks are just "AUGH, what is free time??" and some are "well, I have three nights free, so I guess I'll play some more BS video games this week..." and I never end up in what feels like quite the right place for long.

Well, belatedly, that was my 2018. Here's hoping 2019 is good to all of us.

Life keeps happening at me and I feel like I'm behind it at least half the time. But I'll try to get some broad strokes of the last year down.

I'm doing traditional monthly highlights format, 'cause I've enjoyed it more than most normal end of year formats.

( The nitty gritty in month-by-month format )

This year was largely shaped by all the changes of moving out of my living situation for so many years. There were a lot of sort of new experiences, and some of it was great and some of it was lonely, but on the whole I'm definitely not complaining. Though there's definitely something about living by myself that seems to just cause the thought of "if I die, no one will ever find me" to run through my head totally unhelpfully at the most random times.

I think my main lesson from this year is that I need to be more proactive about seeing people and setting up social time. And I'm definitely not any good at that, so some of it may just be "if it looks like you'll have spare time, go sign up for a class somewhere" or something like that. Because I will get extremely frustrated if I'm underscheduled, and I continually forget that's as much of a problem as being overscheduled. I guess it's a nice change of pace, though?

Also, I feel so, so grateful that I have the capability and resources to take vacations at my current job, and it felt so relaxing, restorative, low pressure... It was fantastic, and there have definitely been way more years in my working life than not where the type of time I took for myself would just not have been possible.

I did some amount of activist things in this year, but like, countable on one hand. Definitely many, many other people I know were much better about doing this consistently, and I should step up. I often feel unknowledgeable/incompetent/afraid of being alone, and have generally not done as well as I want to because of those feelings, but if you're thinking of going to something local and want company, please feel free to ask me, because it'd help me be better about this, and I want to support people more than I have been.

2017 was definitely not a year I appreciated for its global impact, but in a personal sphere I feel like I came out of it more or less doing well. I'm trying to have hopes for 2018, but am feeling really cynical about it, which honestly serves no one. I guess I can hope the world positively surprises me and that's about the best I can do right now.

Also... every year looking back on what I focus on, it seems like work is just a huge part of my life and my thoughts, and I don't know if that's normal or not. I definitely think I get a lot of identity from work, and prioritize it really, really highly in terms of time and effort, while simultaneously constantly wondering if I'm actually slacking off, which is probably objectively ridiculous, but in my head is a real concern. Is life like this for other people? /: Luckily I don't resent it, particularly in my current job, so I guess it's okay?

Anyhow. So that was my 2017, sort of. Only 10 days late.

So I'm about six months in on the new job, still super happy. Life is generally great. Recently went to Seattle and Vancouver (where Vancouver almost tried to keep me) for a professional conference. That was interesting... I need to start actually reading blogs to know what the industry is talking about at the moment, because there's a whole shared vocabulary I'm not aware of.

Over the summer I've done a fair bit of name change paperwork stuff. I now have updated name with Massachusetts and Social Security as well as some of my banks. There are so many banks. So many. Why so many?

I'm thinking about a couple of ongoing learning things I could do with myself now that I finished my degree. I may take a class on French Idioms from the Alliance Française of Boston, particularly since it's been ages since I've kept my French in practice and I don't want to lose it. (Also because I feel like idioms are one of those things that keeps you from following what's going on when you aren't native, and I'd love to specifically learn some.)

Also considering a graduate degree, but trying not to rush into things. I may want to look at some Data Science related classes (statistics, analysis of algorithms, maybe other things) to figure out if that looks like something I may want to do with my life. I think in particular I should be trying to do some online learning in a few topics to get a feeling for how good a fit any of the options I'm considering are.

I dunno. I'm happy, not stressed, and have accomplished most of the aspirations I had previously, so I'm spending a lot of time thinking about larger questions. It's a good thing, but I feel a bit adrift and floating on the wind.

I'm going to join a community chorus again this fall so I can keep something musical in my life. If I do that and the French course, then fall will have my Tuesdays and Thursdays busy, which might be a nice thing, actually. Having too little to do seems like a problem for me.

Feels harder to have much to update when it's like, "well, life is pretty good. Okay then." I am not complaining that this is a problem. :)

I'm not getting a lot of time to update in detail, but at least this'll be something.

Major life changes?
Nothing really major?
Fall semester has started (I'm taking Discrete Math and Web Application Development this semester)
I'm sort of house searching sort of at the behest of my mom


What fandom are you in/do you spend most of your time in?
Probably Dragon Age right now. But I'm also not terribly active in either - most just consuming it.


Where do you hang out online?
Twitter is probably the most common, then Slack and LJ/DW.


What are you reading?
I had been on a kick of taking out scads of eBooks from the BPL (mostly romance novels), but since class has started that's basically stopped. Also, work is being ridiculous right now. There's just no time. Oh, and aside from BPL stuff, I got the first three or four books of Annie Bellet's 20 sided sorceress stuff, which I've been quite enjoying.


What are you watching?
Nothing. Um. Occasional episodes of You Suck at Cooking on YouTube? Basically nothing. What is time?


What are you making?
Hopefully pupusas this weekend! In a crafty sense, not much at the moment. I'm intermittently working on an Ursula cosplay, but it's very intermittent right now.


What are you squeeing about today?
It's Friday. We're having a game night. I'm extremely excited to do some cooking and possibly figure out the Rojo sauce one of the local restaurants our house loves.

In a general way, I'm also really enthused about my Discrete Math class. My prof for that is great, and it makes me happy.


If you could rope old fandom friends into a new fandom, it would be...
Well, I do basically want to enthuse at everyone about Dragon Age. Entertainingly, our house is likely soon to have three copies of Dragon Age: Inquisition. But I think there are a lot of folks already in that fandom, so I don't really need to rope people in.

I should really watch/read/dive into _______ and then come talk to you about it!
I don't even know how to answer this. I want to get into Steven Universe so I can talk to everyone else in existence about it, but time. Time is not a thing in my life.

What else is on your mind?
Work is a giant disaster area and I'm drowning and I've been coughing for weeks and all my friends are sick and I am stressed out of my gourd and I can't keep up...

But on the plus side, I'm going to see the symphony this weekend with a work friend, so that'll be really, really nice.

Oh, also I'm pleased about making progress on our Stranger Ways album. And we have videos from our summer concerts up now! They're here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djj1qvh_0Vo&list=PL27VSS-Ph9fecEoX5mg5WrDQUyiuFXo6Y

I am off to sea. Hurray! See you all in a week. :)