The year that was... (2016)
Reading over my end-of-year reflections, I notice a pattern.
Change is constant. It comes ^^^ and goes ^^^ in waves ^^^ How would one cope otherwise?
In 2013, I moved to Canberra and broke up for the first time, twice.
The following year, I travelled to New York and inched towards coming to terms with my decision to break up with a man I cared deeply for. I was happy for the time we had together yet sad I would never meet someone like him again. 2014 taught me to: Regret less. Forgive more.
2015 was a year of extreme highs and extreme lows. Boy, oh boy, did I rock the boat... perhaps a little too violently. Lauren Elkin describes in Flâneuse this desire to live on the edge:
Change is constant. It comes ^^^ and goes ^^^ in waves ^^^ How would one cope otherwise?
In 2013, I moved to Canberra and broke up for the first time, twice.
The following year, I travelled to New York and inched towards coming to terms with my decision to break up with a man I cared deeply for. I was happy for the time we had together yet sad I would never meet someone like him again. 2014 taught me to: Regret less. Forgive more.
2015 was a year of extreme highs and extreme lows. Boy, oh boy, did I rock the boat... perhaps a little too violently. Lauren Elkin describes in Flâneuse this desire to live on the edge:
The students identified with Sasha's plight [in Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys], just as I once did, on the basis of their own unhappiness, native to the twenty-year-old who has not yet learned to ask for what she wants, or may hardly know it herself. Twenty-year-olds – the kind who wander the streets of Paris looking for meaning – are hungry for experience, but they haven't yet learned self-protection. They run headlong into despair, just to know how it feels, maybe to find out how strong they are.
I changed jobs again, still in the public service. Voiceworks taught me to edit the work of others.
Noted came and went. I wrote a blog post here and a piece for The Writers Bloc here which went on to be selected as a Bloc highlight. Check out the Best of the Bloc 2016 here.
Winter brought with it Emerging Writers' Festival (and my debut panel!), a new home and writing. Spring, National Young Writers' Festival (1 | 2 | 3) and you guessed it, more writing.
Summer began with a dear friend's wedding xo I was shortlisted for the Anne Edgeworth Fellowship. I wasn't successful but still, an achievement and incredibly validating. Too often we gloss over 'failure' and 'rejection', both are important to growing as an artist and a person.
In short, 2016 was a busy year. But to what end... I suspect busy-ness for the sake of being busy.
What flaw, what problem, what discontentment are you hiding?
As the year drew to its end, I wrote to a dear friend: 'I'd like a break from writing. I don't want to become a lopsided person.' Writing is part of who I am but only a part. I want to nurture old and new friendships, to read widely, to have fun, to experiment with photography, fiction and poetry.
Ah, but does the writer ever rest? I submitted my first piece for 2017 today and have another due in early February. I have a fresh set of goals in my new diary but the question, as always, is why.
Join me in finding out? xo
