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I have been staring at this End of the Year Meme and mostly what it tells me is that I can't remember anything that happened this year.
(That's not quite true, I can retrieve fragments if I concentrate really hard, but they're the kind of fragments that a couple of years ago I would have to have gone back to when I was five or six to suffer such vague recollections.)
It's like my brain really didn't bother recording 99% of this year other than a little tag saying 'actually just the same as last year really'.
Alas I have still just spent hideous amounts of time when I should have been doing useful things procrastinating by doing this instead...
1. What did you do in 2010 that you'd never done before?
Joined a political party, canvassed and delivered for them at a General Election. Helped run a national-level LARP with about a thousand people on the field. Climbed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Goredale2.jpg (albeit with a lot of hysterics and significant help from friends!).
2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I have for a very long time now made precisely one New Year's Resolution, and that is Not To Make Any Meaningful New Year's Resolutions. I leave it as an exercise to the reader whether that counts as keeping or breaking it.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
4. Did anyone close to you die?
You know, I really hate these questions, because I know I am going to answer '...I don't think so' and then someone is going to say 'OMG I TOTALLY GAVE BIRTH / YOUR FRIEND FOOBAR TOTALLY DIED, DO YOU NOT LOVE ME / THEM'.
Because it turns out that actually, if you give birth I probably won't notice and if you die I will probably forget you. It's a defence mechanism.
5. What countries did you visit?
Going abroad is for people who like the actual, physical, real world more than I do. My passport has been expired for the whole of 2010 and 2011 isn't looking good either. Other than this one, all the country-visiting I have done has been purely fictional.
6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?
More Get Up And Go. The ability to finish things / see things through in the long haul rather than just start them and then quickly lose interest and relegate them to the back burner.
7. What date from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Nothing from 2010 is etched on my memory. I am only managing to fill in this meme courtesy of keeping the old entries in my 'things you really need not to forget the date of' file. Dates pretty much don't stay with me anyway - I can just about remember my own date of birth but I have to look up my wedding anniversary, and as for anyone else's birthday, not a chance...
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Probably 'finally getting around to actually joining the Liberal Democrats'. Maybe 'getting on the crew of Maelstrom at last'. Both are kind of seeming pretty hollow from this side though - not because of the obvious (in the first case) but both because I haven't really put in the amount of effort I was planning on either of them.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Not Finishing Things. Approximately in order - Not canvassing in East Chesterton or Coleridge or going to Lib Dem meetings after the first flush of enthusiasm; not going to more Take Back Parliament meetings after the first couple; not getting to church much; not making much progress on downtime guides for Maelstrom; not finishing NaNoWriMo...
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Nothing serious; the usual Random Respiritory Ick and all the happy fun chronic conditions still ticking along, and I fell over and over-exerted myself a bunch on various occasions, I guess.
11. What were the best things you bought?
Probably my new Skullcandy headphones? I'm sure they're only on my mind because I did it recently though and I had a dream the other night of getting more headphones for Christmas and having spares (my nocternal fantasies are so interesting). I don't think I've really bought very much beside the usual - food, fuel, a few movie tickets, a few event tickets...
12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
All of the people who still mysteriously put up with me despite the constant whining / fishing for compliments / being an awful human being :). Again, like the births/deaths question, I am sure someone has in fact done something super-awesome that I have totally forgotten about due to the aformentioned awful human being thing...
13. Whose behaviour appalled you?
PEOPLE IN THE GENERAL CASE. You know. The PEOPLE who produce headlines like 'barely 50% of people think that the government should ensure everyone has a decent basic standard of living' or 'Iraqi Christians slaughtered or driven out of their homes' or who lie and dissemble like incredibly bad liars while holding public office.
I am sure their motivations all make perfect sense to them and I would probably accidentally find myself sympathising with them if I knew them, and I know that I am a miserable hypocrite who spends money on movie tickets and nice food and has an enormous flat as my personal space rather than giving everything I have to the poor and having homeless people sleep in my front room, but many people just appear to be inexplicably and inexcusably self-serving / deluded / unpleasant to each other and it gets me down.
14. Where did most of your money go?
Rent (and electricity / gas / internet / water / council tax). Not quite a majority perhaps but definitely a plurality. Add 'food' and that's definitely a majority; add 'fuel' and that's almost all of it. (Some of it went on computer games, footwear, computer accessories, general entertainment and booze. Not quite enough of it goes to charity.)
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Running Maelstrom! Especially writing battle reports. I love writing battle reports, and they really seem to make people's days.
16. What song will always remind you of 2010?
I'm... not really sure it has one? I guess the bits of Amaranth's soundtrack that she acquired this year, maybe Elbow, Offspring, Bad Religion and the Jars of Clay album Good Monsters because I only really discovered them this year... but not just one song. It's been too scattered and disconnected a year for that.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? I consulted my LJ posts for December of last year and I concluded 'pretty much the same then' - right now I am fairly happy as I am on the 'take on all the projects!' part of the cycle rather than the 'drop everything on the floor!' part, but I looked pretty content at the end of December last year too (there isn't anything from the middle to compare with).
ii. thinner or fatter? Fatter by about two stone :(. I should do something about that but I like pies and I don't like physical activity...
iii. richer or poorer? Slightly richer; I haven't managed to put much in the saving account this year but I have been earning more money than last year and I haven't taken any out.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Political activity. Religious activity. Writing. The Maelstrom Downtime Guide Project.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Getting stressed over things which I am actually perfectly capable of handling but can't quite believe that I am. Being stressed really irritates me, it is like this subconscious process I can't stop which makes me stupid and clumsy and useless for NO GOOD REASON.
I would say 'playing computer games' and 'reading the Interwebs' but actually I refuse to apologise for my recreational activities even though they may well be timewasting, so there.
20. How will you be spending Christmas and/or New Year's?
I hear I get to do Christmas Day with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tienelle's family, snow permitting. I intend to spend the rest of the Christmas Period having a serious case of Playing Computer Games And Ignoring The World, probably with a spot of Reading Fanfiction.
New Year's, I'm really not sure yet - there seems to be some kind of Plan Collision going on with new year parties amongst my local friends at the moment, so I am refraining from caring until it looks like it's settled down.
Number 21 is, alas, no longer with us...
22. Did you fall in love in 2010?
No, although I continued to be happily married totienelle :).
23. How many one-night stands?
Zero. I barely have enough of a sex drive for one person, thank you very much...
24. What was your favorite TV program?
I only did TV at hotels and when really ill; I don't think I can reasonably answer this question as although I remember a couple of the things I watched when in Birmingham for the Oracle conference, they are biased by being recent enough to still be in my memory rather than by being any good.
25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
I still don't really do hating individual specific people. I can't even bring myself to hate Nick Clegg, even though he won't stop speaking like a politician even when addressing members of his own party; I just kind of feel sorry for him. I'm not sure I even hate the faceless masses who do horrible things that appall me? I'm pretty sure if I found out why then I would mostly just kind of feel sorry for them, too.
...okay, maybe I did kind of start hating someone, but I have tried very hard to bury it and I think it's working, and saying who would be entirely counterproductive. (I don't believe they read my LJ, so you can all stop thinking it is you - and if you are still anxious just ask me and rest assured I will actually tell you if it is you :).) I don't like hating people, it is unpleasant and generally pretty irrational and just doesn't help with anything.
26. What was the best book you read?
I have this problem where I can't actually remember when I read books, above and beyond the trouble I'm having remembering this year at all. I'm pretty sure I haven't read many new books this year although I did just get a big shipment to try to fix that. I did get quite addicted to The House On The Strand while reading it, but that was very recent so it's probably just that it's in my mind because of that.
27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
The Offspring and Bad Religion, which have been lurking in my music collection approximately forever but I believe I hadn't actually dug out and put on my 'tested and found not bad' list until this year.
28. What did you want and get?
No bad stuff - I didn't lose my job, my husband, my mind, or my health;
a place on the Maelstrom crew;
time to actually play and finish some computer games;
a sense of purpose, briefly, although then I lost it again.
29. What did you want and not get?
A lasting sense of purpose; more self-discipline; augmented reality; brain uploads; world peace; the cornucopia machine; a progressive government; people (in the general case) to stop being hideously self-serving and generally unpleasent to each other...
30. What was your favourite film of this year?
Probably the Harry Potter film. Inception wasn't bad but couldn't beat HERMIONE and the PHOTOGRAPHS and OH SO SAD...
31. What did you do on your birthday?
My schedule tells me I was recovering from Maelstrom that day, and my journal tells me that I was writing fic and generally making a nuisence of myself on the internet :).
32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Not letting the cold I got in September knock me out for the next three months and stop me from properly getting involved in local politics / generally doing anything in the last three months...
33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?
'The clothes my parents bought me up to a decade ago'
34. What kept you sane?
Not letting myself care too much.
35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I paid so incredibly little attention to celebrities / public figures that the thought of being sexually attracted to any of them didn't even occur to me. I am attracted to remarkably few people anyway so I'm not surprised.
36. What political issue stirred you the most?
'Let us go forth and dick over the people with mental health issues by re-assessing them all, because lo verily that will really help and totally not just be a smoke and mirrors show for the least pleasant people in our electorate while actually costing more money than it saves and causing people who really need government support not to get it any more.'
37. Who did you miss?
I was going to put something cowardly or something banal here, but frankly the person I have missed most has been24_hour_techie not being at Maelstrom any more (and me being so busy and exhausted from crewing 1318 that I didn't really get to catch up much there either).
38. Who was the best new person you met?
Like books I've read, people I've met are pretty hard to place chronologically (and like births and deaths I am rather paranoid about missing someone out who I really should be mentioning!).
Hang on, I know - it's Max, my local councillor and also the guy who taught me how to do canvassing, who I might just be a little bit in awe of and who I also feel really bad about letting down by turning out to be a rubbish activist and not really worth the time investment.
(That's not quite true, I can retrieve fragments if I concentrate really hard, but they're the kind of fragments that a couple of years ago I would have to have gone back to when I was five or six to suffer such vague recollections.)
It's like my brain really didn't bother recording 99% of this year other than a little tag saying 'actually just the same as last year really'.
Alas I have still just spent hideous amounts of time when I should have been doing useful things procrastinating by doing this instead...
1. What did you do in 2010 that you'd never done before?
Joined a political party, canvassed and delivered for them at a General Election. Helped run a national-level LARP with about a thousand people on the field. Climbed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Goredale2.jpg (albeit with a lot of hysterics and significant help from friends!).
2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I have for a very long time now made precisely one New Year's Resolution, and that is Not To Make Any Meaningful New Year's Resolutions. I leave it as an exercise to the reader whether that counts as keeping or breaking it.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
4. Did anyone close to you die?
You know, I really hate these questions, because I know I am going to answer '...I don't think so' and then someone is going to say 'OMG I TOTALLY GAVE BIRTH / YOUR FRIEND FOOBAR TOTALLY DIED, DO YOU NOT LOVE ME / THEM'.
Because it turns out that actually, if you give birth I probably won't notice and if you die I will probably forget you. It's a defence mechanism.
5. What countries did you visit?
Going abroad is for people who like the actual, physical, real world more than I do. My passport has been expired for the whole of 2010 and 2011 isn't looking good either. Other than this one, all the country-visiting I have done has been purely fictional.
6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?
More Get Up And Go. The ability to finish things / see things through in the long haul rather than just start them and then quickly lose interest and relegate them to the back burner.
7. What date from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Nothing from 2010 is etched on my memory. I am only managing to fill in this meme courtesy of keeping the old entries in my 'things you really need not to forget the date of' file. Dates pretty much don't stay with me anyway - I can just about remember my own date of birth but I have to look up my wedding anniversary, and as for anyone else's birthday, not a chance...
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Probably 'finally getting around to actually joining the Liberal Democrats'. Maybe 'getting on the crew of Maelstrom at last'. Both are kind of seeming pretty hollow from this side though - not because of the obvious (in the first case) but both because I haven't really put in the amount of effort I was planning on either of them.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Not Finishing Things. Approximately in order - Not canvassing in East Chesterton or Coleridge or going to Lib Dem meetings after the first flush of enthusiasm; not going to more Take Back Parliament meetings after the first couple; not getting to church much; not making much progress on downtime guides for Maelstrom; not finishing NaNoWriMo...
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Nothing serious; the usual Random Respiritory Ick and all the happy fun chronic conditions still ticking along, and I fell over and over-exerted myself a bunch on various occasions, I guess.
11. What were the best things you bought?
Probably my new Skullcandy headphones? I'm sure they're only on my mind because I did it recently though and I had a dream the other night of getting more headphones for Christmas and having spares (my nocternal fantasies are so interesting). I don't think I've really bought very much beside the usual - food, fuel, a few movie tickets, a few event tickets...
12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
All of the people who still mysteriously put up with me despite the constant whining / fishing for compliments / being an awful human being :). Again, like the births/deaths question, I am sure someone has in fact done something super-awesome that I have totally forgotten about due to the aformentioned awful human being thing...
13. Whose behaviour appalled you?
PEOPLE IN THE GENERAL CASE. You know. The PEOPLE who produce headlines like 'barely 50% of people think that the government should ensure everyone has a decent basic standard of living' or 'Iraqi Christians slaughtered or driven out of their homes' or who lie and dissemble like incredibly bad liars while holding public office.
I am sure their motivations all make perfect sense to them and I would probably accidentally find myself sympathising with them if I knew them, and I know that I am a miserable hypocrite who spends money on movie tickets and nice food and has an enormous flat as my personal space rather than giving everything I have to the poor and having homeless people sleep in my front room, but many people just appear to be inexplicably and inexcusably self-serving / deluded / unpleasant to each other and it gets me down.
14. Where did most of your money go?
Rent (and electricity / gas / internet / water / council tax). Not quite a majority perhaps but definitely a plurality. Add 'food' and that's definitely a majority; add 'fuel' and that's almost all of it. (Some of it went on computer games, footwear, computer accessories, general entertainment and booze. Not quite enough of it goes to charity.)
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Running Maelstrom! Especially writing battle reports. I love writing battle reports, and they really seem to make people's days.
16. What song will always remind you of 2010?
I'm... not really sure it has one? I guess the bits of Amaranth's soundtrack that she acquired this year, maybe Elbow, Offspring, Bad Religion and the Jars of Clay album Good Monsters because I only really discovered them this year... but not just one song. It's been too scattered and disconnected a year for that.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? I consulted my LJ posts for December of last year and I concluded 'pretty much the same then' - right now I am fairly happy as I am on the 'take on all the projects!' part of the cycle rather than the 'drop everything on the floor!' part, but I looked pretty content at the end of December last year too (there isn't anything from the middle to compare with).
ii. thinner or fatter? Fatter by about two stone :(. I should do something about that but I like pies and I don't like physical activity...
iii. richer or poorer? Slightly richer; I haven't managed to put much in the saving account this year but I have been earning more money than last year and I haven't taken any out.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Political activity. Religious activity. Writing. The Maelstrom Downtime Guide Project.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Getting stressed over things which I am actually perfectly capable of handling but can't quite believe that I am. Being stressed really irritates me, it is like this subconscious process I can't stop which makes me stupid and clumsy and useless for NO GOOD REASON.
I would say 'playing computer games' and 'reading the Interwebs' but actually I refuse to apologise for my recreational activities even though they may well be timewasting, so there.
20. How will you be spending Christmas and/or New Year's?
I hear I get to do Christmas Day with
tienelle's family, snow permitting. I intend to spend the rest of the Christmas Period having a serious case of Playing Computer Games And Ignoring The World, probably with a spot of Reading Fanfiction.New Year's, I'm really not sure yet - there seems to be some kind of Plan Collision going on with new year parties amongst my local friends at the moment, so I am refraining from caring until it looks like it's settled down.
Number 21 is, alas, no longer with us...
22. Did you fall in love in 2010?
No, although I continued to be happily married to
tienelle :).23. How many one-night stands?
Zero. I barely have enough of a sex drive for one person, thank you very much...
24. What was your favorite TV program?
I only did TV at hotels and when really ill; I don't think I can reasonably answer this question as although I remember a couple of the things I watched when in Birmingham for the Oracle conference, they are biased by being recent enough to still be in my memory rather than by being any good.
25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
I still don't really do hating individual specific people. I can't even bring myself to hate Nick Clegg, even though he won't stop speaking like a politician even when addressing members of his own party; I just kind of feel sorry for him. I'm not sure I even hate the faceless masses who do horrible things that appall me? I'm pretty sure if I found out why then I would mostly just kind of feel sorry for them, too.
...okay, maybe I did kind of start hating someone, but I have tried very hard to bury it and I think it's working, and saying who would be entirely counterproductive. (I don't believe they read my LJ, so you can all stop thinking it is you - and if you are still anxious just ask me and rest assured I will actually tell you if it is you :).) I don't like hating people, it is unpleasant and generally pretty irrational and just doesn't help with anything.
26. What was the best book you read?
I have this problem where I can't actually remember when I read books, above and beyond the trouble I'm having remembering this year at all. I'm pretty sure I haven't read many new books this year although I did just get a big shipment to try to fix that. I did get quite addicted to The House On The Strand while reading it, but that was very recent so it's probably just that it's in my mind because of that.
27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
The Offspring and Bad Religion, which have been lurking in my music collection approximately forever but I believe I hadn't actually dug out and put on my 'tested and found not bad' list until this year.
28. What did you want and get?
No bad stuff - I didn't lose my job, my husband, my mind, or my health;
a place on the Maelstrom crew;
time to actually play and finish some computer games;
a sense of purpose, briefly, although then I lost it again.
29. What did you want and not get?
A lasting sense of purpose; more self-discipline; augmented reality; brain uploads; world peace; the cornucopia machine; a progressive government; people (in the general case) to stop being hideously self-serving and generally unpleasent to each other...
30. What was your favourite film of this year?
Probably the Harry Potter film. Inception wasn't bad but couldn't beat HERMIONE and the PHOTOGRAPHS and OH SO SAD...
31. What did you do on your birthday?
My schedule tells me I was recovering from Maelstrom that day, and my journal tells me that I was writing fic and generally making a nuisence of myself on the internet :).
32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Not letting the cold I got in September knock me out for the next three months and stop me from properly getting involved in local politics / generally doing anything in the last three months...
33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?
'The clothes my parents bought me up to a decade ago'
34. What kept you sane?
Not letting myself care too much.
35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I paid so incredibly little attention to celebrities / public figures that the thought of being sexually attracted to any of them didn't even occur to me. I am attracted to remarkably few people anyway so I'm not surprised.
36. What political issue stirred you the most?
'Let us go forth and dick over the people with mental health issues by re-assessing them all, because lo verily that will really help and totally not just be a smoke and mirrors show for the least pleasant people in our electorate while actually costing more money than it saves and causing people who really need government support not to get it any more.'
37. Who did you miss?
I was going to put something cowardly or something banal here, but frankly the person I have missed most has been
24_hour_techie not being at Maelstrom any more (and me being so busy and exhausted from crewing 1318 that I didn't really get to catch up much there either).38. Who was the best new person you met?
Like books I've read, people I've met are pretty hard to place chronologically (and like births and deaths I am rather paranoid about missing someone out who I really should be mentioning!).
Hang on, I know - it's Max, my local councillor and also the guy who taught me how to do canvassing, who I might just be a little bit in awe of and who I also feel really bad about letting down by turning out to be a rubbish activist and not really worth the time investment.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 12:52 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 01:17 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 02:32 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 04:37 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 03:41 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 04:15 pm (UTC)From:And I am also extremely impressed by all the maelstrom and actual organising and stuff that you did, that is fairly epic and you shouldn't forget it :D
I'm going to attempt this by cheating and looking stuff up on various websites to see what I did ;)
no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 09:15 pm (UTC)From:They certainly do. <3
no subject
Date: 2010-12-14 10:00 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-12-15 03:42 am (UTC)From:I hate not being at Maelstrom. Not because of the game, which was stressing me to the point of it not being fun any more.
I hate it because of the friends I made that I only saw at events. Good people, like you.
I hope, one day, that things can change. But if they don't, you should know that playing with you made a lot of my events.
And you're always, always welcome in my halls.