2021 Year in Review - Personal
Dec. 31st, 2021 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catherineldfThis one will be shorter than the publishing one. 2021 was kind of a trashfire on the personal level. I kicked off January in a seriously unpleasant and abusive job situation, didn't get much support from my union and got bounced out of my job under circumstances that suggested that my supervisor had a younger buddy that he wanted to hire. I was out of work for a month, then picked up a 3 month contract, with assurances of more work to come, with a former employer. They were "unable to place" me after 3 months (and believe me, given my skill sets, if you can't come up with something, you're not trying very hard or don't know what you're doing - my guess is that the problem lay between these two points). So I interviewed and interviewed and interviewed, 3 and 4 times at the same place in some cases and about 3.5 months later, got picked up for another contract at a company I had interviewed at 4 times previously for other gigs (5th time's the charm!).
I lost a good friend to cancer, several acquaintances to other illnesses and saw my friends and social networks lose an enormous number of people and pets to all kinds of things. Minneapolis is still struggling to recover, unsurprisingly, and that process is very fraught. The environment and social issues, the attempted coup, the refugee crisis and on and on, overlaid with COVID and its impacts, made for an incredibly hard year.
We spent most of the year on stopgap insurance because I wasn't sure how long I'd be out of work. Jana's health issues are definitely getting worse, so finally being able to get back on the ACA next week is huge. This week started with an incident that will result in her getting her driver's license pulled - fortunately, no one was hurt, my friends and the police officer who came to see what was going on went above and beyond and were awesome and I'm very relieved that it wasn't worse. But it amps up the amount of caregiving that I will have to provide by quite a bit. It will impact everything from my weekly schedule to travel to things I haven't even considered yet - I'll be figuring this out for a while. And asking for help, which I am terrible at. So...
I'm ending the year with that and this same week, got an invite to teach a workshop for Clarion Online, about which more when we get things sorted, got asked back to the Novel in Progress Book Camp, got an invite to teach at a prestigious art festival in 2023 (about which more later) and got my first Author GOH invite (Marscon in Minneapolis, March, 2022) last month. I joined my neighborhood Buy Nothing Group and started working on paring down our stuff and building some new community. I've managed some amazing quality time with friends either in person or online and seen some great online music, plays and readings. In addition, I got invited to do a ton of great interviews by wonderful people, a ton of friends and complete strangers have supported my Patreon, bought Jana's work, bought QoSP books, did minibenefits (thanks, Elise!) for me, fed us and did a bunch of things to help us stay afloat and I am so, so grateful. Thank you all! I'm hoping that 2022 is a less tumultuous year than the last 2 and that we all get so see some good things coming our way!.
I lost a good friend to cancer, several acquaintances to other illnesses and saw my friends and social networks lose an enormous number of people and pets to all kinds of things. Minneapolis is still struggling to recover, unsurprisingly, and that process is very fraught. The environment and social issues, the attempted coup, the refugee crisis and on and on, overlaid with COVID and its impacts, made for an incredibly hard year.
We spent most of the year on stopgap insurance because I wasn't sure how long I'd be out of work. Jana's health issues are definitely getting worse, so finally being able to get back on the ACA next week is huge. This week started with an incident that will result in her getting her driver's license pulled - fortunately, no one was hurt, my friends and the police officer who came to see what was going on went above and beyond and were awesome and I'm very relieved that it wasn't worse. But it amps up the amount of caregiving that I will have to provide by quite a bit. It will impact everything from my weekly schedule to travel to things I haven't even considered yet - I'll be figuring this out for a while. And asking for help, which I am terrible at. So...
I'm ending the year with that and this same week, got an invite to teach a workshop for Clarion Online, about which more when we get things sorted, got asked back to the Novel in Progress Book Camp, got an invite to teach at a prestigious art festival in 2023 (about which more later) and got my first Author GOH invite (Marscon in Minneapolis, March, 2022) last month. I joined my neighborhood Buy Nothing Group and started working on paring down our stuff and building some new community. I've managed some amazing quality time with friends either in person or online and seen some great online music, plays and readings. In addition, I got invited to do a ton of great interviews by wonderful people, a ton of friends and complete strangers have supported my Patreon, bought Jana's work, bought QoSP books, did minibenefits (thanks, Elise!) for me, fed us and did a bunch of things to help us stay afloat and I am so, so grateful. Thank you all! I'm hoping that 2022 is a less tumultuous year than the last 2 and that we all get so see some good things coming our way!.
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