2023 Resolutions In Review

2023 Resolutions In Review

it's new year's resolution season, and for me, that means looking back as much as looking forward. yesterday i wrote about all that i accomplished this year, and today, i want to look at the resolutions i wrote for 2023. i got so much done that, surely, i knocked those out of the park… right?

so as the year draws to a close, i’m not making any resolutions about what i’ll accomplish online, because i know that i’ll be drawn to it no matter what happens. no, my resolution for 2023 is to improve my IRL, so that this year is not as miserable as the past two have been.

uh. Shit

okay, so… i definitely neglected my IRL this year, in favor of creativity. i'll freely admit that some of it was escapism, throwing myself into the act of creation so that i could get away from how i felt about my life. but other parts of it were to get something off my plate, so that i could handle my IRL with more grace and less stress. so it wasn't all bad!

but this quote especially hits like a truck:

then, once i’ve bolstered my IRL with stronger foundations, more joy, new inspirations, less stress… online stuff will naturally follow. i will always want to create. resolutions are for putting in the work.

the sad truth is that i did not get the stronger foundations that i wanted; most of my year was spent in survival mode until i could get home and create again. i want to create out of joy, not escapism! to be clear, there's nothing wrong with the latter – but only i have the tools to get out of survival mode, and i did not accomplish that this year.

i did, however, put a dent in the mountain of stress. here's some things i tackled IRL:

my partner and i put a LOT of effort into improving her mental and physical health this year, getting her to new appointments and treatment and professional help that she did not have last year. i consider this our biggest IRL accomplishment of 2023!

with good budgeting, my partner and i were able to upgrade our computers, phones, and consoles. every single device i just listed was 5-10 years old and falling apart at the seams, so these were very necessary upgrades! all of them have contributed to us getting more creative work done this year, like my upgraded computer allowing me to stream more often – as well as getting more rest.

we also got out of the house more, picking random nights to go shopping, go to the park, or just get food. it's nice to be able to do that again, after the pandemic locked us in the house for so long… but we're just natural couch potatoes anyway lol

i have a psychiatrist and a therapist now! i don't get to see them often due to my health insurance, but it's a good start and something i may be able to invest more into in 2024.

speaking of which, i got to try ADHD meds this year. they didn't work out… but i did try, and it was worth the effort of trying. i would like to try again next year, though i am not making it a resolution.

i wouldn't call this an accomplishment… but we lost two cats this year, and while we'll miss them dearly, it does mean a lot less cleaning and chores to take care of our remaining two cats. having four cats was a commitment we did not choose in the first place, and it was a sore spot for many reasons – but we did our best to care for them anyway.

it's a lot for one year! and i did accomplish my goal of being less miserable than last year… it's just not everything i hoped for, resolved for. i've allegorically polished up my house, but the house itself is still built on shaky ground.

i would say something like, "oh well, there's always next year!" and in truth, there are a lot of opportunities on the horizon that could very well bring the stronger foundations i'm looking for. but i am not going to make the same resolution again… because, quite frankly, i don't know what it takes to get out of survival mode! and i can't possibly predict how a year will go, or what the whims of my ADHD will decide to focus on. i'd rather play it by ear, and just… try to be cognizant of how much i'm leaning on escapism.

so here ends this resolution… but 2024 brings new possibilities, and maybe they'll lead me to where i was already headed.

i've been trans for 3 years now and i've been putting off hormones due to big medical anxiety problems... but it's something i want and i'm tired of being afraid! it's time to pursue my dreams

keeping my new years resolutions simple this year. in 2024:

🏳️‍⚧️ i'm finally gonna start hormones! 🏳️‍⚧️

A Special Bond

this one's extra hard to write.

we lost a second cat this year: our beloved Lily, the last of her family after her brother Smokey passed away in August. she died of kidney failure, a cat's equivalent of old age, on the day before Thanksgiving. much like with her brother, we loved her dearly and gave her the best care we could – no regrets.

Lily had a more serious demeanor compared to the rest of her family. born the runt of the litter with three brothers to fend off, she wasn't much interested in playing. instead, she preferred the thrill of a real hunt – catching all manner of bugs, mice, and birds to bring to our doorstep.

then she would proudly curl up in someone's lap and purr louder than anyone else in the house, leaning into every pet, asking for chin and tummy rubs. this is where she most showed her silly side, as she would clean herself and then forget to put her tongue away, sporting a big ol blep 💖

Lily started life as a very skittish and anxious cat, but mellowed out as she got older, growing more comfortable with being around other humans. but the one human she was never scared of… was me.

see, one day when i was a kid, a tuxedo tomcat showed up at my family's doorstep. you know the story – sometimes, a cat decides to adopt a human family, rather than the other way around. we named him Oscar, and when he grew more comfortable with us, he brought his girlfriend along; we named her Butterscotch.

by comparison, Butterscotch was less friendly, more wild. she would hide under our house, only coming out when we fed her, rarely but cautiously allowing us to pet her.

before we could afford to have them fixed, they had kids. and when they did, a miracle occurred.

we rushed outside when we heard the sound of Butterscotch giving birth. and when we did… she brought us each of her four kittens, one by one. despite her cautious nature, she trusted us!

my brother and i each grew attached to one of the kittens, and got to name them. he bonded with Smokey. i bonded with Lily. and our lives were changed forever.

we loved the other cats too, named them and took care of them. Butterscotch taught them how to hunt, Oscar taught them how to be friendly with humans. we had a big family of six wonderful cats!

but most of them didn't survive when we moved. two of them ran each other off before we moved, one ran away after we moved… and our new house had no space underneath, so Butterscotch was not happy with her new home, passing after a year or so.

the only two that survived, stayed with us through multiple moves, lived past 7 years old… were Smokey and Lily, who each lived to 16.

and now, in less than a year, both are gone.

it's hard, you know? these two cats defined my childhood. when i needed comfort before bed, they were there to cuddle. when i visited home from high school and college, they were happy to see me again. when i struggled with my parents' divorce, they were still my family. when my partner moved in with me, they treated her as family too.

we still have two other cats, both unrelated to the original family. but the house is so much emptier now.

now that Lily's gone, the weight of both of their deaths is fully sinking in. i know grief is a part of life… but i'm not sure i've ever had to carry so much grief at once. this is new to me.

and it's more than just the cats. this is symbolic. my entire family has moved on; my parents have divorced, my brother lives across the country. everything i knew from my childhood is now just a memory, and my memory isn't very good anymore. that's why i write things down.

i'm finally in a place where i can reckon with all of this loss… for so much of the last 10 years i've had to be in go, go, go mode to survive. here i finally am, with all these losses behind me, and i'm only now able to process it. all at once, my childhood has faded, and it's my turn to move on.

…so i want to build a new adulthood to be proud of. for how much they helped me grow, i think Lily and Smokey would be happy to see that.

since i write a lot of series of the blog, i'm toying with the idea of adding a list of Collections that link to each of those series – like the retrush dev commentaries, the design retrospective that's still in the pipeline, the "catching up posts" from 2019...

problem is that i don't know how to add it easily just yet? i can't think of a place it'd fit into the existing site layout, and there's no support for it in tumblr outside of tags – so i'd have to manually curate the list of collections somehow. tumblr labs did suggest they might be working on something like post collections, but who knows when or if that will come to fruition...

in the meantime i might make a pinned post for collections? that way it's all in one place and easy to access on mobile. hopefully that won't be too hard to organize! plus it can be replaced rather easily, if tumblr labs ends up pulling through. sounds like a good first project for 2024!

i really did not expect that i would be competing for dumbest thing i've made this year, but we're at 3 in a row and no signs of stopping

keeping my new years resolutions simple this year. in 2024:

🏳️‍⚧️ i'm finally gonna start hormones! 🏳️‍⚧️