2018 - Retrospective

2018 - Retrospective

This is what I posted on Facebook:
This has been a strange year. It's been a year of a lot of professional growth, but also a year filled with a lot of creative struggles. It has been a year of returning to a lot of struggles with managing my energy and endeavors, and questioning how I support and am supported by others.

It's been a year filled with re-learning how to communicate, and then having been hit with setbacks and trials. It's been a few months of staring in a mirror and trying to figure out what's staring back at me.

It's a year of, for once being healthy enough to feel like I'm back to where I was before I got sick.

This has also been a year of finding better ways to exercise my voice, on both my behalf and those less privileged than me, in various capacities.

I don't know what my next year looks like, but I don't know that I've ever known, going into New Year's Eve. For over a decade, life continues to be a wild adventure, I don't know what's around the bend and I accept that my role is to be prepared for it.

Let's go adventuring. 2019, you're on.

The rest of this post is about what I'm writing here. And only here.




2018.

Pros:
I made line producer, and lead designer this year. It's a career growth moment for me. I didn't have anyone to really celebrate it with. I've been learning on my feet all year, reading, researching, studying up. But it's all been unguided, I've been applying so much of what I learned in University and after about HOW I learn, and how I develop soft skills. It has been deeply satisfying.

I have learned a tremendous amount about causes I support and how to be a better ally. I've also been tested more directly this year about allyship than ever before. I have a lot of thoughts about how the nature of empathy being asked of us has changed in these last few years, and about walking the line of sympathy and militancy is unraveling and rebuilding our societal bonds.

I made a bunch of new friends, which was sort of a first for the last few years. I've been feeling that games are a lot more lonely than theatre/film, the number of people you meet, the kinds of people you meet are very different. I'm pretty pleased to have been proven a bit wrong this year. Made some great new friends, that I hope to continue to carry through.

My internet friends and I are becoming a lot better at supporting each other. There were some years ago, when at the height of a group of us playing together every day, I remember one friend saying "Well yeah, we play together every day, but we're not...friends. I mean not really." But I don't think that's true anymore. We are a part of each other's lives, we're a group of people that have 'picked' each other. In a vast internet and world of individuals, the choosing matters. This is a group of friends who have stuck with me, who we argue with, who we get perspective with, who we support. Also, some of them have come visiting!

I hit a bunch of financial goals for once. When I was doing theatre, one of my greatest worries was that something dire would happen, and I wouldn't have enough money in my bank account to make it home. It was a weight, an albatross around my neck for a long time. I no longer have that worry, I have enough set aside to handle that situation and I feel so free for it.

My fitness has taken more of a forefront. For one of the first times since getting sick, I feel like I'm getting back in line with where I want to be. I don't think about myself in terms of weight or look, but in terms of capability and how I want to feel. Our FitBit group has been a lot of that, the encouragement, the subtle ribbing, and the goal setting each week. Having something to compete and strive for has changed my outlook on activity and how I want to feel.

The group I play tabletop with are all my best friends in the world. We talk about it constantly, we message about it, we think about it. We're supporting each other in a process of storytelling that is one part creative outlet, one part therapy. The community and bonds we've formed are kind of amazing, and I'm always in awe of how they've come together. I also have started to really enjoy the more widespread and mainstream communities, even though I'm not really a part of them, I appreciate that they exist and enjoy listening to them.

A friend of mine started streaming and asked me pointedly and honestly for some help and support. I have wholeheartedly backed him in his effort and am continually gratified to be part of the community of generosity, gratefulness, and honesty that he seeks to create. I hope his success is a bellwether indicator of a better internet culture in general.

One of my best friends also moved across the world. I was really afraid about how the nature of our friendship was going to change. But instead, we've found better, weirdly consistent ways to communicate. Our friendship has grown a lot stronger for being apart, I look forward to the changes that 2019 are going to bring her, but I'm also so happy to say that I'll be able to help her face them when they happen.

I have had a lot of time this year to continue experimenting with my own culinary work and style. I have my friends to thank for being such great guinea pigs to test on.

One of my friends took a step in our friendship and opened a question needing advice. It was a step I never thought he'd do unprompted. I'm so proud of him for that.


Cons:
I feel creatively adrift. I put a lot of time and effort into tabletop RPGs, an inordinate amount of writing, development, and creative work. But in the scale of Ikagi, I don't know if that work has the same meaning as a lot of the creative work I've done in the past. It feels selfish. The world doesn't need my fantasy and sci-fi stories. The format they are in...is just for my friends. It lacks a feeling of tangibility. I think my career is taking so much of my time and energy and I need to rebalance myself with my own work. But I don't know how.

The world is a miserable place. I feel like I've spent more time this year than ever before trying to learn to protect myself from it. As much as we spend time trying to heal it, there is so much ugliness and misery. The profound schism of empathy has rattled not only my own but many people's perceptions of the human condition.

2018 was a trash fire politically. As much as the rallying cries have gone up over things we need to fight for (or against) have been gratifying, in my private moments, I wonder if we're fighting a kind of losing war.

I miss my Edmonton friends, even though I know I'm looking back at that time with very rose-colored glasses, it's impossible not to somewhat yearn for those days.

There is something pulling at me. A compulsion. I haven't been sleeping well for weeks and weeks now. Something that is being left undone and it's slowly tearing at me. I don't know what it is. I've been functioning on sometimes as little as 3 hours of sleep. It's not insomnia, I've had that before, but there is something whispering at me that needs doing. But I don't know what it is.

My best friend and I have driven a wedge into our friendship and become complacent about it. It makes me angry, but I don't think either of us know how to fix it. And worse yet, I wonder if he even wants to.

I barely traveled at all in 2018. I need to change that.

A friend, a classmate, a peer...committed suicide. It has made me feel a sense of powerlessness and guilt that I haven't felt in years. This is literally the first I am talking about it.


The other stuff:

My girlfriend and I broke up after almost 2 years. It was amicable and understandable, but it has really, honestly messed me up. It's hard to look objectively back at the relationship, there are points we were really happy, I can honestly say I was in love. Maybe I still am. There are countless pictures of our adventures, and small pieces of us as memories and things we shared with one another.

I stepped back after we broke up and said I wanted space. She sent me a message-less box with a key in it two weeks later. We haven't spoken since. I don't have any ill will, I just need to sort myself out. The break up has made me face up to how I communicate, and my own perceptions of what it means to be a good or supportive partner. Or if I am at all. It's brought to the fore a confrontation of whether I am a good ally, a good feminist, a good human. I don't have answers for that.

My friends can't really help. The relationship was long distance. They don't have a perspective on what we were like together. We were very private that way. I have no real physical pattern to shake, but an emotional one. It has made me feel lonely and weak. I don't want to talk about it with most people, but the people I most want to talk about it with, don't really want to ask. There's a painful dichotomy there about how I try to portray being independent and self-sufficient, but need help and don't know how to ask for it. I also don't know know what kind of help I need, and it leaves me feeling frustrated and angry.

It has also made me retreat away from human contact or the possibility of new meaningful relationships. At a time where I was and am keenly aware that I crave certain physical touches and interaction, it's made me very confused about any gesture. And the people most equipped to help me through feeling this aren't physically in Vancouver. The breakup has been a trial.


In all, 2018 has been confusing. There are good things, but there are bad things too. I'm getting older, and the nature of my work is changing. I have good friends, but I also need to find time and space for myself.

I'm ready for 2019 one way or another. I'm ready to get back to it. I have some plans in motion for creative projects. and I also am making plans to travel.

But I just need to sort myself out. Some day.

But that's the same as it's always been.