Disclaimer: I’ve discovered that almost my entire life can be played out in a series of gifs from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Shameless, The Inbetweeners, and anything by Chris Lilley…so there are a couple animated pictures embedded in this post. Some might consider them to be a bit dark, considering the content, but I am choosing to add a bit of levity to a normally dismal situation. You have been warned. Many gifs ahead.
I’ve never been one to adhere to New Year’s resolutions or to say things like “new year, new me.” The handful of resolutions I have tried in the past usually had to do with either improving my physique or finding an acceptable love interest. However my love of ice cream and assholes has always outweighed my resolve for self-improvement, and I tend to resort back to my old, untoned, trainwreck self. 
So this year, instead of looking to how I’m going to change myself in the upcoming year, I’m just going take a look back and reflect on the things that have occurred over the past twelve months.
The year started out in a confusing and depressing place. As I’ve discussed in previous posts, my work situation wasn’t ideal and I actually wasn’t sure of my relationship st atus come January 1. An ever-tumultuous ride, the person I was/wasn’t seeing was away, so I spent NYE with my family and the first kiss I got was a sloppy one from my dog, Ace. I also had to make sure I got back to Boston as soon as I could, since I was expected to be at work the next day. The rest of the winter only went downhill from there and I ended up having the first of a couple breakdowns at work, leaving halfway through the day and seeking solace at my friend’s house outside the city. This was also the point in the year where I decided talk therapy wasn’t enough, and I worked with my therapist to find a psychopharmacologist to see if medication was necessary. Spoiler alert: it was. Also, my “relationship” was less and less existent, which only made dealing with things more difficult.
Fortunately, winter is only three months long and with the reappearance of the sun also came an improvement in my situation. After working with my therapist, I was able to get my apartment to allow me to have a dog as an emotional support animal. There was a time in my life where I had considered working this angle to get a pet, but with everything going on personally and mentally, Ace was a completely necessary addition to my life (as I write this now, he’s got his head on my lap and I have to type with one hand…but I would’t want it any other way). There was definitely an adjustment period (along with a couple weeks where Ace had to go back to New Hampshire to learn how to go up the stairs…there was no way I could carry his 100 lb. butt up five flights every time he had to take a shit), but having him around made me get into a routine that I was severely lacking. It also forced me to be more active than I’d been, walking the two miles to and from work and consistently hitting the 10K steps that my FitBit suggested I walk daily. We are still working on the tandem running thing; whenever we try, it’s more like run 10ft…stop to let Ace sniff another dog’s piss puddle…run another 10ft…pull Ace away from the crotch of the person walking by us, and my usual 8-9 minute mile ends up being 16+. Regardless, it’s been nice having him around to keep me company.
Between a rough time at work and the diagnosis of a 5cm uterine fibroid, I hit another breaking point in the summer, requiring a sabbatical from work and three weeks in Europe. I’m not going to bore you with the details (if you really want to know what I did while abroad, there are a multitude of previous posts that discuss everything), but I came home after that trip feeling better than I have in years and wanting to make some changes in my life. I immediately started looking for new jobs, both in Boston and in London, and decided that I wanted to write more. I also started to rethink my stance on dating as a sport. Before, I would go into dates assuming that they would end shittily and not caring how I came across to the other party.
Now, I’m being much more selective in the vetting process, not letting the potentially shitty matches through and only going out with people that I think will have some kind of impact, whether it be as a…ugh…love match or as a lesson-learned. Needless to say, I’ve gone on far fewer dates recently that I would like to admit, due mainly in part to the lack of viable matches on Tinder, Bumble, etc. 
Autumn brought the biggest change: unemployment for the first time in my adult life. While there was an initial feeling of failure and depression, ultimately I know that leaving that job was and will be for the best. Side note: This was actually one of three instances in my life where things didn’t end the way I wanted/expected and I’ve had some trouble getting over it (the other two occasions that I still get nightmares about were 1. when I was 17 and had to quit dance my senior year of high school (due to dance mom politics) and wasn’t able to do the senior dance in the recital that spring, and 2. when I was ghosted by someone I was dating for a year and never got the necessary closure). Eventually, after some time and introspection, I went from feeling like shit to feeling hopeful and that this was exactly the push I needed to incite a real change in my life. The past couple months have had their fair share of ups and downs (job searching is always a fucking shitshow, but then add to that the extra stress and work that comes with international job searching…), and I won’t gloss over the fact that I’ve been more down than up recently. However, unlike last winter, I now have the tools necessary to deal with it (read: “medication”).
So yeah, like I’ve said, I’ve never been one for resolutions, but I’ve always been really good at going back and analyzing things….and reanalyzing and reanalyzing. Actually, if I were to decide to make a resolution, that might be one thing I try to change in the future: taking out one instance of reanalyzing and only overthinking things to a small degree. And also to try letting things from the past go…at least things that occurred when I was a teen that still give me nightmares…fucking Walker’s Dance.
It’s highly likely that this will be the last post on this site. I have been working with someone over the past couple months to migrate everything over to a new site, which should be live early in the new year. This is a venture that is both exciting and terrifying for me, and I appreciate all the support I have received. So thank you in advance for being avid supporters of the new site (because clearly, you’ve made it this far into my ramblings and need to see where things go from here) and here’s to a successful and prosperous new year for everyone.
Catch and Release 
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