Prezzies! Thank you, Lisa!

[link]

A Neko Atsume figure of Billy the Kitten, kitty socks (I was just thinking I needed socks for sleeping in, adorable Japanese design sticky line markers, a beautiful Dia de La Muerte ceramic ornament, and a perfectly exquisite embroidered and beaded Dia de La Muerto pouch. I actually said "Oh my god" when I unwrapped it. Pics above!

Yay!!! Hope you enjoy, Connie! Was a fun package to put together!

I keep trying to find some place to prop up that pouch so I can look at it all the time. It's so gorgeous!

2017 has been a tough year for me - mostly financially. I have been working on paring down expenses and trying to actually live within my means. I have been working with a social worker and have figured out that I can possibly live on my pension if I am very very careful. If I can find a part time job: even better.

I am digging myself out of debt and depression. I didn't realize how stressed out I was from my job until I no longer had it— blessing in disguise, right?

I am hoping to be generally more together in 2018.

I don't love that my main access to you guys is via my phone- but my laptop is now well & truly freaked and U am not sure when I'll ever be able to replace it.

Anyway, 2017 was tough on so many fronts - I hope that 2018 is better.

I hope so too, Sumi.

Aw, Amy. MWAH!

2017 has been a shit show in most ways, but I'm really glad for the successes and triumphs that others have shared here.

May things fall into place in 2018, sumi. It sounds like you are on the right track.

I keep waiting for things to resolve enough for me to write up 2017, but still have tons of things up in the air. That pretty much sums up the year too. I should know better at this age than to wish the year to speed up and be over, and yet.

hippocampus, THANK YOU for the perfect book and notebook and novella and game! They were lovely to come home too.

My secret buffista gift got mailed today. It's only part 1.

Emily, thank you for the ornaments! (C'ville heart [link] ) They're lovely, and for a good cause!

I had a milestone birthday in 2017, and I celebrated in the BEST WAY, visiting Buffistas in Baltimore, North Carolina, Cincinnati, Dallas, and San Francisco. THANK YOU to Lisa, Amy, Flea, and Msbelle, who very generously put me up in their homes, and THANK YOU to all the Buffistas who came out to help me celebrate. Thank you also to everyone who looked me up when they visited NYC this year.

Therapy, as always, remains a struggle for me. I think I'm making very slight progress, but I keep banging my head against a wall trying to process my childhood trauma; much of which I still have trouble remembering, and was horrible in a way that I don't really want to admit to myself. In my personal life I am haunted by my past; I have been plagued by stretches of extreme loneliness; I am stuck in a career in IT that I am thoroughly burned out on; yet I am too afraid to make the changes I need to. Yet at the same time, I think I might be afraid of trying and succeeding? I'm somehow afraid of being happy? It's something that I have difficulty wrapping my head around.

All the while, I'm being bombarded by current events that make everything even more difficult for me. It constantly makes me feel like I'm trying to swim upstream in therapy.

Mostly, I guess, as a way of avoiding current events, I immersed myself into my photography in a big way this year. I'm shooting film almost 100% these days, and it has been fruitful for me in a big way. For the first time I feel like I have a clear vision, and that I am executing on it. It is extremely satisfying to snap an exposure and know that you got something amazing, and then to get the negative back from the lab, scan it, and have the results confirm your expectations.

However, I need to increase the visibility of my work, and I've completely failed at that. I've had some vague opportunities to exhibit my work that I should have pursued more, but didn't. I have the same troubles putting my work out there that I have putting myself out there in other aspects of my life. I'm afraid of rejection, but at the same time, also afraid of success. I'm not the failure my father repeatedly told me I was growing up, yet I still want to cling to that idea, decades later.

My apologies for posting about it a couple of days after I should have, but Msbelle is THE BEST. I got an awesome package of goodies, including art supplies, an adorable Christmas ornament, cute AND useful kitchen gadgets, a Wonder Woman water bottle, pecan honey butter and some deee-licious green chili jam (so good on pork).

Thank you so much, Msbelle. You are the nicest!

As for write-ups on 2017, I'm not sure if I'm going to or not. What I can say is that 2018 has a very low bar to get over in order to be an improvement.