Hello, friends and enemies. Another year is coming to an end and the new year is once again upon us. I wrote quite a lot on the blog this year. WordPress keeps track for me, so I know that I published 32 posts consisting of about 79,000 words (not including this post). That’s basically a novel’s worth of words! I looked through the year’s posts and saw that I spilled a lot of ink on current events. I’m sure four voter guide posts (English and Spanish for the primaries and general election) added a notable chunk to the word count. I never set out to make this a blog about the wider world, but I am unfortunately cursed with a need to make my opinions public and, in the case of the voter guides, I am cursed by popular demand. I’m not trying to be an essayist, but it is starting to seem like the essay life may have chosen me. We are living in an era with plenty to discuss (derogatory). I am of course planning to continue writing next year and I like my every-other-week schedule; more frequently was too stressful and less frequently means the posts will feel way too long to write. Maybe I’ll get really wild and develop an essay collection. Who knows.
I am continuing the beloved tradition of creating an annual mood board. Here are the vibes going in to 2025. We are keeping it fabulous, reveling in the company of our loved ones, and raging. Life hard, but I’m harder.
Books and Other Words
I will post my books of the year list (the 17th annual!) soon. When I do, I’ll add a link here.
One of my goals in 2024 was to read at least a page of a book every day. There were some days that I did literally read one page, just enough to keep the streak going all year! I’m on day 378 right now because I started in mid-December 2023. I’m really proud of this. I read a lot but in the past I’ve gone a few days in a row without touching a book because I’m tired or annoyed or whatever. Having the daily reading goal was helpful in getting me to stop scrolling and read, and it wasn’t annoying or stressful like I was worried it might be. I’m definitely planning to keep my reading streak going into 2025.
My new reading goal this year is to read more in Spanish. I’m not committing to every day but I am aiming for most days. I am going to set a lower reading goal (this year’s goal was 30,000 pages and I’m probably going to make it to around 25,000, so a lower goal is something like 20,000 words) to allow for being a slower reader in Spanish than English. I just want to get good and fluent and confident and I know the way to do this is read more. I’ve been testing this plan for the last week or two and it’s going well so far. I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes and how my Spanish feels after a year of focusing on reading.
Doing Stuff
I managed to do quite a lot of things this year! I feel like I’m always in my house (and I like it that way) but I do actually get out. In February I went to New Jersey to visit Lito and we spent a day in New York. I also visited my sister in southern California during the summer. We had season tickets to the Sacramento Ballet again this year, plus Abby and I saw a flamenco performance, and I went to see Vision Video in concert with Lemon. This year, Lemon and I revived a version of our cookbook club and hosted themed food parties like the souper bowl. So, I am doing a lot of things I want to do. I wish I could see my friends more but work and energy levels are limiting factors. Here’s to more cultural outings and friend visits in 2025.
Languages
It was definitely a big year for language studying. I got really into translating Wikipedia and I have no plans to stop. I reached 100 edits on English Wikipedia in March and I’m now over 700. It’s not all from translating—there’s a lot of copy editing too—but translating is the part I’m enjoying the most. I’ve been translating articles from Spanish to English without supervision and I am very proud of the articles I translated on LGBT literature in Argentina and Mexico, respectively. I translated some English articles into Spanish and Ana and I spent quite a long time on the 2000 Supreme Court case, Bush v. Gore article. In Icelandic, Robert and I worked through something like 60 short articles that I translated from Icelandic into English. The translation itself is a bit of work but I think I am getting at least as much practice from tracking down citations since Icelandic Wikipedia is impoverished in references ([heimild vantar] is [citation needed])! This stuff honestly brings me a lot of joy and feels really fun and satisfying to do. For next year, I want to keep working through translating some of the queer literature articles from Spanish to English. In Icelandic, I just want to finish my self-imposed quest of translating all the articles about the Skagafjörður region. Although I am sure once we finish, I’m going to pick a new region of Iceland. Hopefully by then I can do some of these on my own without help.
Aside from the Wikipedia quest, I’m planning to read more in Spanish, as previously mentioned. Otherwise, I don’t think I’m going to set any very specific goals for my language learning. Letting myself be curious and get hyperfixated on Wikipedia has been fun and educational, so I’m going to let my whims dictate my learning process like I’m a kid in a Montessori school. It seems to be working for me.
Corporeal Form
I feel like this year I spent the most time just dealing with the physical tasks of existence and various health issues. I got diagnosed with fatty liver at the very end of last year, and this year had to talk to the doctor about it a lot and get a biopsy (my liver is not that bad, per the biopsy). This lead to working with a dietician and eventually learning that eating raw produce causes me stomach issues. I spent a month of my life feeling sick before figuring it out. I sprained my fucking ankle and it took months to heal. In fact, it seems that I’ve only recently gotten it back to being fully functional. I found out I am hypermobile and probably have dysautonomia of some form (these issues often appear together). My carpal tunnel started becoming a real issue. Oh, and I almost forgot that devil perimenopause. I got my first hot flash in May and my body temperature has been utterly whack all year. All this to say: I’m tired. Each of these problems requires some kind of adjustment or exercise or preventative thing. I end up reading up on everything myself because the doctors are not always very helpful or don’t connect multiple issues or want me to do something that is “good” for whatever condition but is bad for me specifically. It’s a lot. It’s taken a lot of my time this year and I don’t see this requiring any less of my time and effort in the future. It feels hard to have so much to manage at only 38 years old (but maybe it’s not and I’m just louder about it than other 38-year-olds?). This list isn’t even all of my ongoing health stuff, it’s just the issues that came up or escalated this year. We only get one life and one body, so I gotta work with it and make this one count.
In the coming year, I am going to try to adjust my outlook on my health and how I manage it. I think I have to treat it as almost like a hobby (or a part-time job, but I’d rather think of it as a hobby) in terms of time and knowledge and planning required to take care of everything. Doing my hand exercises and my ankle exercises, drinking my electrolytes, making sure I have food I can eat and that is what I need for my health, staying active but not getting so worn out from holding my body up that I can’t do anything the next day! I have to accept that this level of work is just how it is going to be for me and figure out how to spread it out so I can deal with everything and not feel like it’s preventing me from doing stuff I want to do. Taking care of myself is what enables me to do what I want! It’s just lot of work and I wish I could fecklessly go through life without worrying about this shit.
Knitting and Crafts
I was able to answer for myself the question of “Why aren’t I knitting?” Fucking carpal tunnel. My hand goes numb after about five minutes, which is not enough time to do much of anything. This year, I have almost knit one whole, very tiny shawl. I have been working hard on figuring out how to knit ergonomically and taking care of my carpal tunnel, so I am hoping I will be able to knit a little more in 2025.
Moving It
For 2024, I set myself the goal of learning to do a consistent pirouette in ballet and to lift weights twice a week. The ankle sprain situation really derailed me, but I think I did get a lot better at turning, even though I am not yet a master of the single pirouette. I did, however, improve my jazz turn a lot (it’s a little easier because it’s not turned out). I ended up with a few solo classes this year when other students didn’t show up, and I asked to work on turns every time. So, I got a lot of tips and perspective from different teachers. Perhaps in 2025 I will finally figure out the pirouette! As for lifting weights, I am just planning to get out and lift when I can. Once a week would be nice, but I know once it gets hot in the summer, I’m really at the mercy of the temperature. I was kind of beating myself up about not lifting much this year because I was thinking I’d wasted a bunch of money setting up a garage gym and barely using it. However, Kirk pointed out that it’s paid for itself because if I had been paying for a gym membership all this time, I’d have nothing to show for it. At least I have my own equipment and I can work out when the mood takes me and the energy is available.
Kitchen Witchery
Looking back through my posts and photos, I mostly made just regular food this year. I didn’t get into anything complex or fancy, but I did add some really good meals to my regular rotation like pasta e fagioli, peanut butter chicken, and corn and asparagus pasta with ricotta. I spent a lot of kitchen energy on figuring out how to implement my dietician’s suggestions. I’m trying to get more omega-3 through flax, more vegetables, more whole grains, and less red meat (not that I was eating so much, but still). I’m always torn with wanting to do the most in the kitchen because I find the process enjoyable versus wanting to do very little because I am increasingly tired with the act of bustling around for long periods of time. For 2025, I am going to keep working on figuring out how to enjoy cooking with the level of energy currently available to me. I am trying not to overcomplicate things and make sure I eat the stuff I’m supposed to eat. I also want to cook some fun stuff and try new breads and pastries and, of course, new bean recipes to keep up with my subscription.
Here are some of my favorites from this year.
Cat Therapy
It was very hard to lose Huey cat this year. Between losing her and her sister Viola a few years ago, it feels like an era of my life is gone. I adopted them in 2008 when I was still in college and I had them with me through some difficult years. Fortunately, Fritz is still with us and he seems to revel in being an only child. Huey and Viola live on in our hearts (and blog posts). I also got to see my feline nephews and niece this year, visiting my sister and her cat Neo, and Lito and his cats Riff and Maggie. We can only hope that 2025 brings more opportunities to pet all the cats.
Finally, here are some my favorite cat photos from the last year for your nerves.
