![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenI spent the last hours of the decade[1] in the Turf with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shimgray, at a corner table with cushions, drinking mulled wine and whisky, and at midnight there was someone conveniently placed to kiss. It was just what I wanted.
(Speaking of which, Shim brought me down a Christmas present his grandmother had forgotten to give me before I left Edinburgh. "Oh," I said, picking up the soft, flat parcel, "I hope it's another linguistics-of-Scotland tea-towel, I lost mine when I moved."
...it was. I now own another tea-towel detailing choice phrases in Scots. It was just what I wanted.)
Some memes, and whatnot.
2000. I saw the millennium in in Delhi, something which I only remember dimly; I remember eating a slice of cake on a rooftop in the Bengali colony, I remember leaving the party to watch the fireworks over the water. I turned thirteen three weeks after that.
2001. School, quite vile; I'd had a major bust-up with my best friend of the time, and although we tried to make up so many times, it never worked out again. Watched a Channel 4 movie one winter afternoon, with James Spader. It's called Stargate, you may have heard of it. Fandom happened - not to be melodramatic, it changed my life.hathy_col and I began exchanging the first what would be more than seven hundred emails over two years.
2002. School still quite vile; butbalthaser, lilka and emerald_embers started emerging to make it better. I was wearing a lot of black, hanging around Quiggins, staying up too late and watching M*A*S*H reruns in the small hours. Started posting to the Yahoo! list, not really knowing that it was going to be an enormous force for good in my life. Started keeping this journal in July; in October, shipperkitten and I did the convention thing, for the first time, hathy_col and I met in person and, shall we say, hit it off. Spectacularly.
2003. GCSEs. Eight A*s, one A, one B, still bitter. Bought the Goo Goo Dolls' album Gutterflower for £2 and played it into oblivion, spent afternoon after afternoon lying in the sun on the pierhead doing nothing but writing Sirius/Remus. Picked out five A-levels on basis of what I wanted to do with my life; my mother said No, You Must Be A Doctor. We fought over breakfast, over dinner, over lunchtime, on fields and on the beaches, in holiday time, in schooltime, in whispers, in shouts, in perpetuity.
2004. In perpetuity. She changed my A-level choices behind my back. In the summer, two weeks in Rhyd-y-creuau, getting rained on and lichened-on and raw-sewaged-on, and lost. It was wonderful fun. In November, my first kiss; in December, I was admitted by Balliol College, Oxford to read PPE.
2005. Hard but brightly-lit winter, full of promise, and school friends who liked me, who thought I was nice and funny and smart, it was refreshing. In the spring the school library committee rigged the vote to give me the chair. I loved it and I loved them and when I stood down they gave me fourteen Terry's Chocolate Oranges as thank-you. Five As at A-level, pictures in three local newspapers.
In October I went to Oxford, and metjacinthsong and apotropaios for the first time; my first term was complicated and tiring, but ultimately a joy.
2006. Essays, and stress, and for the most part I was failing at economics, then came Prelims. Realised I had firsts in philosophy and politics in time to come back to ethics and political theory. By late in the yearjacinthsong and I had made the transition from casual acquaintances to terrifying, all-encompassing co-dependency. Things were good.
2007. Worked for the BBC in the spring and on Hillary Clinton's campaign in the following winter; a different, darker year, but good beneath it all. Decided I was going to be a lawyer. In Trinity term I joined OULES, played a corpse in Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Inanimate Body,apotropaios dropped me on the garden and then on the chapel floor, the summer was hot and beautiful, I was writing essays on philosophy of mind and the politics of India, it was the best eight weeks of my entire life.
2008.apotropaios and I wrote, directed and produced Virgil's Aeneid. Despite every possible preliminary disaster, it was a ridiculous success. After that I spectacularly failed at most things. Lead-up to Finals pretty bad but post-Finals infinitely worse; started the Graduate Diploma in Law and did well to begin with, started failing at that too, then started failing at getting out of bed. But only most things, and not all: there was Shim.
2009. Things get worse before they get better. A lot worse. Realised it was all killing me around April; packed up, moved back in with my parents for five months, and it was the best idea I'd ever had. I took the Diploma with a commendation in the end. Summer was full of light - went to Amsterdam, went to Hong Kong, dreaded returning in September to Oxford but it turned out to be wonderful. There were friends, there was a lot to do, the LPC started off well. Decided in December to apply for a Masters in the US; within two weeks of deciding that, I had a training contract.
2010 looks bright, right now. I hope for great things.
And the year itself. I'm sorry, I don't do a lot of memes, but I think these are useful for trying to sort out what was really quite a messy year and messy decade - not that I would have wanted the decade between thirteen and twenty-three to be anything other than messy, exciting and changing, but nevertheless, it's good to make sense of things. And as for the year, I am very pleased to be doing this meme - to be, finally, in a place where I can be looking back because it really has gone.
Other people are too grown up to quote a song lyric that sums up their year; sorry, those people, I plan to be quoting song lyrics in 2061. (For some reason I am sure I will live to 2061. I'm waiting to see Halley's Comet.)
My year in review, a meme:
1. What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before?
Had a breakdown, pretty much. Moved back in with my parents by choice. Came actually, genuinely close to failing an exam. Graduated. Twice. Started the LPC. Got a training contract.
2. Did you keep your New Years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
My resolution for this year was to read more, actual books, not about law, because I love fiction, love love love it, and I've just stopped reading since I went to university. Well, last year I read maybe five, six, possibly as many as ten novels, and this year I read eighty-five. WIN.
3. How will you be spending New Year's Eve?
I spent it with my beloved, in a pub, with mulled wine.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
No, thank god.
5. What countries did you visit?
France, the Netherlands, the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong. And I went to Scotland twice, which I note with the usual lack of comment as to whether Scotland is a different country.
6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
An even keel. A lot of this year was very bad, and some of it was very good. How 'bout contentment, this time.
7. What date from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
June 15th, which is the day I finished the GDL and drew a line beneath the whole horror that was that academic year; December 1st, when I found out about the training contract.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Hole have an album, see. Courtney Love in one of her more excessive phases. It's a good album. It is called "Live Through This". That. And I was pretty proud of the commendation, too.
9. What was your biggest failure?
the whole year I didn't fail at anything this year. The whole year was pretty fail, but things got better.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yes. Until about July, I had bad depression and anxiety, and then in October I had a lovely ten days of swine flu.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
An amazing contraption from Bodum, which is this sort of solid acrylic travelling mug complete with plunger, so you can put in a spoonful of ground coffee and have, well, coffee. In a mug. And the sides are transparent so you can put pictures inside. And the whole thing seals up so you can take it to school with you, and have, you know, coffee. It's fabulous.
12. Where did most of your money go?
Rent. It's always rent.
13. What song will always remind you of 2009?
"Louder Than Words", from tick tick... BOOM!
14. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Writing, being happy.
15. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Not writing, being unhappy.
16. What was your favorite TV program?
Deep Space Nine. Yes, yes, I'm discovering it fifteen years after everyone else, but it's so great.
17. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
No, no. I dislike a few people, but I rarely have that much energy.
Actually, because I got that lovely Anastasia Krupnik story for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
yuletide, I was inspired to re-read Anastasia's Chosen Career, having discovered it in the corner of the room, and there's this:
"I once knew a girl with a boy's name," her mother said. She had spread the meringue over the pie and was putting in the oven. "I think her real name was probably Stephanie, but she liked to be called Stevie."
"I know a girl called Nicky at nursery school," said Sam, "but I hate her."
"Don't say 'hate', sweetie," said Mrs. Krupnik. "It's okay to say you don't much care for her, but 'hate' isn't a nice word."
Sam scowled. "I know a girl called Nicky at nursery school," he repeated, "and I don't care for her so much I would like to run over her with a very big truck."
Mrs Krupnik adjusted the temperature of the oven. "Well," she said, "that's a slightly better way of putting it, I guess."
(Sam is three at this point. I love Lois Lowry very much.)
18. Did you fall in love in 2009?
Yes. Admittedly I started in early 2008, but it's a long, long fall.
19. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Hmmm. This was a lack, I think - there are lots of songs I've discovered, but no artist that I've really fallen for. The musical highlight of the year was seeing Dar Williams at Borderline in November.
20. What was your favorite film of this year?
Star Trek!
21. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I was twenty-two, andhathy_col came to stay, and lots of my friends came to the pub. And lots of my friends MADE A COMMUNITY OF LOVE JUST FOR ME. grimandancient! It was so awesome I still can't quite talk about it coherently.
22. What kept you sane?
jacinthsong, shimgray and forthwritten, and a lot of pink wine and loud music.
23. Who did you miss?
Oh, my friends. My lovely friends I was at Oxford with, who are now being grown-up and beautiful all round the country. I'm glad they are all finding their wings, but I wish we all lived in the same place, still.
24. Who was the best new person you met?
It was only this year I metteh_elb and dr_biscuit, which I can't quite believe. They are very awesome people and I'm so glad to have met them.
25. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
sail your sea meet your storm / all I want is to be your harbour
-Vienna Teng, "Harbor"
I'm going to make another post about those eighty-five novels I read during the year, and what I plan to read next year, but well, not here. So long, 2009. Don't let the door hit you on the arse on your way out.
[1[] yeah, I know, I know. There's a time and place for accuracy.
shimgray, at a corner table with cushions, drinking mulled wine and whisky, and at midnight there was someone conveniently placed to kiss. It was just what I wanted.(Speaking of which, Shim brought me down a Christmas present his grandmother had forgotten to give me before I left Edinburgh. "Oh," I said, picking up the soft, flat parcel, "I hope it's another linguistics-of-Scotland tea-towel, I lost mine when I moved."
...it was. I now own another tea-towel detailing choice phrases in Scots. It was just what I wanted.)
Some memes, and whatnot.
2000. I saw the millennium in in Delhi, something which I only remember dimly; I remember eating a slice of cake on a rooftop in the Bengali colony, I remember leaving the party to watch the fireworks over the water. I turned thirteen three weeks after that.
2001. School, quite vile; I'd had a major bust-up with my best friend of the time, and although we tried to make up so many times, it never worked out again. Watched a Channel 4 movie one winter afternoon, with James Spader. It's called Stargate, you may have heard of it. Fandom happened - not to be melodramatic, it changed my life.
hathy_col and I began exchanging the first what would be more than seven hundred emails over two years. 2002. School still quite vile; but
balthaser, lilka and emerald_embers started emerging to make it better. I was wearing a lot of black, hanging around Quiggins, staying up too late and watching M*A*S*H reruns in the small hours. Started posting to the Yahoo! list, not really knowing that it was going to be an enormous force for good in my life. Started keeping this journal in July; in October, shipperkitten and I did the convention thing, for the first time, hathy_col and I met in person and, shall we say, hit it off. Spectacularly.2003. GCSEs. Eight A*s, one A, one B, still bitter. Bought the Goo Goo Dolls' album Gutterflower for £2 and played it into oblivion, spent afternoon after afternoon lying in the sun on the pierhead doing nothing but writing Sirius/Remus. Picked out five A-levels on basis of what I wanted to do with my life; my mother said No, You Must Be A Doctor. We fought over breakfast, over dinner, over lunchtime, on fields and on the beaches, in holiday time, in schooltime, in whispers, in shouts, in perpetuity.
2004. In perpetuity. She changed my A-level choices behind my back. In the summer, two weeks in Rhyd-y-creuau, getting rained on and lichened-on and raw-sewaged-on, and lost. It was wonderful fun. In November, my first kiss; in December, I was admitted by Balliol College, Oxford to read PPE.
2005. Hard but brightly-lit winter, full of promise, and school friends who liked me, who thought I was nice and funny and smart, it was refreshing. In the spring the school library committee rigged the vote to give me the chair. I loved it and I loved them and when I stood down they gave me fourteen Terry's Chocolate Oranges as thank-you. Five As at A-level, pictures in three local newspapers.
In October I went to Oxford, and met
jacinthsong and apotropaios for the first time; my first term was complicated and tiring, but ultimately a joy.2006. Essays, and stress, and for the most part I was failing at economics, then came Prelims. Realised I had firsts in philosophy and politics in time to come back to ethics and political theory. By late in the year
jacinthsong and I had made the transition from casual acquaintances to terrifying, all-encompassing co-dependency. Things were good.2007. Worked for the BBC in the spring and on Hillary Clinton's campaign in the following winter; a different, darker year, but good beneath it all. Decided I was going to be a lawyer. In Trinity term I joined OULES, played a corpse in Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Inanimate Body,
apotropaios dropped me on the garden and then on the chapel floor, the summer was hot and beautiful, I was writing essays on philosophy of mind and the politics of India, it was the best eight weeks of my entire life. 2008.
apotropaios and I wrote, directed and produced Virgil's Aeneid. Despite every possible preliminary disaster, it was a ridiculous success. After that I spectacularly failed at most things. Lead-up to Finals pretty bad but post-Finals infinitely worse; started the Graduate Diploma in Law and did well to begin with, started failing at that too, then started failing at getting out of bed. But only most things, and not all: there was Shim.2009. Things get worse before they get better. A lot worse. Realised it was all killing me around April; packed up, moved back in with my parents for five months, and it was the best idea I'd ever had. I took the Diploma with a commendation in the end. Summer was full of light - went to Amsterdam, went to Hong Kong, dreaded returning in September to Oxford but it turned out to be wonderful. There were friends, there was a lot to do, the LPC started off well. Decided in December to apply for a Masters in the US; within two weeks of deciding that, I had a training contract.
2010 looks bright, right now. I hope for great things.
And the year itself. I'm sorry, I don't do a lot of memes, but I think these are useful for trying to sort out what was really quite a messy year and messy decade - not that I would have wanted the decade between thirteen and twenty-three to be anything other than messy, exciting and changing, but nevertheless, it's good to make sense of things. And as for the year, I am very pleased to be doing this meme - to be, finally, in a place where I can be looking back because it really has gone.
Other people are too grown up to quote a song lyric that sums up their year; sorry, those people, I plan to be quoting song lyrics in 2061. (For some reason I am sure I will live to 2061. I'm waiting to see Halley's Comet.)
My year in review, a meme:
1. What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before?
Had a breakdown, pretty much. Moved back in with my parents by choice. Came actually, genuinely close to failing an exam. Graduated. Twice. Started the LPC. Got a training contract.
2. Did you keep your New Years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
My resolution for this year was to read more, actual books, not about law, because I love fiction, love love love it, and I've just stopped reading since I went to university. Well, last year I read maybe five, six, possibly as many as ten novels, and this year I read eighty-five. WIN.
3. How will you be spending New Year's Eve?
I spent it with my beloved, in a pub, with mulled wine.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
No, thank god.
5. What countries did you visit?
France, the Netherlands, the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong. And I went to Scotland twice, which I note with the usual lack of comment as to whether Scotland is a different country.
6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
An even keel. A lot of this year was very bad, and some of it was very good. How 'bout contentment, this time.
7. What date from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
June 15th, which is the day I finished the GDL and drew a line beneath the whole horror that was that academic year; December 1st, when I found out about the training contract.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Hole have an album, see. Courtney Love in one of her more excessive phases. It's a good album. It is called "Live Through This". That. And I was pretty proud of the commendation, too.
9. What was your biggest failure?
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yes. Until about July, I had bad depression and anxiety, and then in October I had a lovely ten days of swine flu.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
An amazing contraption from Bodum, which is this sort of solid acrylic travelling mug complete with plunger, so you can put in a spoonful of ground coffee and have, well, coffee. In a mug. And the sides are transparent so you can put pictures inside. And the whole thing seals up so you can take it to school with you, and have, you know, coffee. It's fabulous.
12. Where did most of your money go?
Rent. It's always rent.
13. What song will always remind you of 2009?
"Louder Than Words", from tick tick... BOOM!
14. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Writing, being happy.
15. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Not writing, being unhappy.
16. What was your favorite TV program?
Deep Space Nine. Yes, yes, I'm discovering it fifteen years after everyone else, but it's so great.
17. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
No, no. I dislike a few people, but I rarely have that much energy.
Actually, because I got that lovely Anastasia Krupnik story for
yuletide, I was inspired to re-read Anastasia's Chosen Career, having discovered it in the corner of the room, and there's this:"I once knew a girl with a boy's name," her mother said. She had spread the meringue over the pie and was putting in the oven. "I think her real name was probably Stephanie, but she liked to be called Stevie."
"I know a girl called Nicky at nursery school," said Sam, "but I hate her."
"Don't say 'hate', sweetie," said Mrs. Krupnik. "It's okay to say you don't much care for her, but 'hate' isn't a nice word."
Sam scowled. "I know a girl called Nicky at nursery school," he repeated, "and I don't care for her so much I would like to run over her with a very big truck."
Mrs Krupnik adjusted the temperature of the oven. "Well," she said, "that's a slightly better way of putting it, I guess."
(Sam is three at this point. I love Lois Lowry very much.)
18. Did you fall in love in 2009?
Yes. Admittedly I started in early 2008, but it's a long, long fall.
19. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Hmmm. This was a lack, I think - there are lots of songs I've discovered, but no artist that I've really fallen for. The musical highlight of the year was seeing Dar Williams at Borderline in November.
20. What was your favorite film of this year?
Star Trek!
21. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I was twenty-two, and
hathy_col came to stay, and lots of my friends came to the pub. And lots of my friends MADE A COMMUNITY OF LOVE JUST FOR ME. grimandancient! It was so awesome I still can't quite talk about it coherently.22. What kept you sane?
jacinthsong, shimgray and forthwritten, and a lot of pink wine and loud music.23. Who did you miss?
Oh, my friends. My lovely friends I was at Oxford with, who are now being grown-up and beautiful all round the country. I'm glad they are all finding their wings, but I wish we all lived in the same place, still.
24. Who was the best new person you met?
It was only this year I met
teh_elb and dr_biscuit, which I can't quite believe. They are very awesome people and I'm so glad to have met them.25. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
sail your sea meet your storm / all I want is to be your harbour
-Vienna Teng, "Harbor"
I'm going to make another post about those eighty-five novels I read during the year, and what I plan to read next year, but well, not here. So long, 2009. Don't let the door hit you on the arse on your way out.
[1[] yeah, I know, I know. There's a time and place for accuracy.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2010-01-02 09:39 pm (UTC)Eighty-five books, yay! I'm glad I kept track; it's a very nice little record.