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.

I'm not done processing 2017 yet.

This was the first full year in our house in the suburbs. I still don't know how to make adult friends. My best friends who moved with us from Brooklyn moved away (forced relocation for a job), and I haven't met anyone new. I love our house, I love the schools, but I'm pretty lonely. And I feel like I'm failing as a parent because I don't know enough other parents to give my daughter a decent birthday party (she wants it to be at the rec center pool, but I literally don't know enough of her classmates' parents to invite that many people).

This was the year my ambivalence about working in the tech industry turned into a full-fledged midlife crisis, the end result of which is that I will be out of work at the end of February, with a generous severance package and no idea at all what the hell to do next. I'm applying for some graduate programs in food science and human nutrition, and also applying for jobs that I think might not make me miserable. Criteria 1 - they can't be any more than 25 miles from my house. (My current commute is 45 miles each way.) I think maybe giving up my current job will ruin us financially, but I also think that not giving it up will ruin me mentally and emotionally.

So, life goals for the year I turn 40 are: figure out what I want to be when I grow up and learn how to make friends.

I received a couple of beautiful ornaments from Kate P. THANK YOU! They are amazing. My name means lily of the valley and one of them is a beautiful red with lily of the valley all over it.

Politically 2017 was a dumpster fire; personally 2017 was a bit of a mixed bag. I had health issues in the spring (sinus infection and bronchitis, then a C. diff. infection due to the antibiotics for them). I had hoped to find a job back in the midwest before last summer, but that didn't happen, so I was stuck in a place where I hated to be outside for three months straight.

On the other hand, I'm finally taking some advantage of the local music offerings and attending more classical concerts—three last summer, a couple in the fall, and several pre-paid for 2018. And I'm attending these with friends, so that's good, too. Having amyth as a neighbor continues to be a delight, and I'm finding myself enjoying my family's company more with every visit. It's great when relatives you knew as infants grow into adults with whom you like to talk.

We're undergoing some restructuring at work. That's always worrisome, but the higher-ups have arranged for me to go to a major conference in March, so presumably they expect me to be around for at least another few months. That said, I'm still hoping to move back to MI as soon as I can find a job in my field there, so here's hoping. (Chicago or western NY would also be good.) So if anyone knows of a university or college in those regions that needs someone to work on their online courses, I'd love to hear about them.

Secret Santa gift should go in the mail, tomorrow. I've had everything for about a week, but haven't made the push to get it to the post office. That will change, tomorrow, as I made an appointment to get my picture taken and apply for a passport!

Folks may know my father passed away a little over a year ago, which made this year a bit of a melancholy affair, learning new routines/roles in the family to compensate for his loss. While it's been sad, it's also brought the few of us remaining that much closer. We actually do more things together and there's more of a feeling of support between everyone. So we take the good with the bad and hope for better as time goes on.

One of the consequences of Dad's passing is the distribution of his estate, which my brother is taking his own sweet time about. It's a bit annoying, but I'm in no financial difficulties at the moment, so I'm waiting patiently for whatever comes out of it. The only thing that has paid out so far was his remaining state pension, which since J. had to notify the state so they'd quit sending his pension check, it triggered the payout of that. It's been just enough to treat myself to a few nice things and paying off some debts (credit card, student loan!)

The major nice thing is that I'm able to use a portion of it on a trip to Milan next March for the World Figure Skating Championships, hence, the passport. It's the first real vacation I've taken in 6-7 years and the first time I've been able to get overseas since I got out of the Navy in 1993. I'm so grateful to be able to do this that it brings me to tears knowing that the only reason I can do this is because Dad died. It's joyful and bittersweet at the same time.

The header to this thread made me laugh, not just because it's hilarious in its nonsense, but because I just finished off a stollen full of marzipan. Sometimes, the Buffy!Bot got it at least partially right.

ANNOUNCEMENT: I am ever so slightly slack in my elfishness! I have things ready to go but won't be able to get to the post office during normal hours until Tuesday. My apologies, dear recipient!

Now, as for 2017:

Unfortunately, as you probably already know, Donald Trump.

On a more personal note, it was a mixy year. I used all my vacation time for the first time EVER -- New York for my dad's 75th birthday plus Hamilton; New Orleans for our anniversary and a chance to see smonster's favorite dive bar; a restorative week on the Outer Banks in the off season (I've never really enjoyed beach vacations because I hate the crowds and the sitting around on a hot beach. turns out that going halloween week fixes both problems.)

I made a point of making things -- art things, craft things, food things -- and did a lot of reflecting on what it means to practice and to do stuff that's resolutely in the physical world.

I took up the guitar because a switch flipped in my head that said "I wanna rock and roll". Three whole weeks ago, so oy do I suck. But I'm in love with playing every day. That's good enough for now.

I finished my 2017 reading challenge without counting any books by white men (other than the one I was halfway through at the beginning of the year). I ate my vegetables. Mostly. We had work done on the house, which both improved things greatly and also threw us into chaos for longer than I liked.

We were adopted by a second cat. The first cat is still not altogether thrilled, but they've more or less reached detente, and are sleeping about 6 feet away from each other as I write this.

I came thiiiiiiiis close to walking away from my job, but then switched to a different team within the company, which relieved the immediate frustrations. The tech world is absolutely a fucking trashfire, but my company remains better than most, and I'm grateful for that.

Anne - Yay glad you got everything.

aurelia, did I send two ornaments? Well, that clears up some confusion. Ornaments aren't all that useful after Christmas -- sorry! There should be two more things coming for you.