I’m not sure that time really has any meaning anymore after this rona business. It still feels like the beginning of 2020 to me and I know a lot of you feel the same way. But another year has come and gone, and what a year it has been.
I know that for a lot of people 2021 has been dreadful, and it definitely wasn’t easy for me either. I feel weird saying this, but it’s pretty much been the best year of my life, which I guess goes to show that life can be good and bad at the same time. Nothing has been like I expected – which I would have thought was a bad thing, but it’s not. It’s just…different.
I usually do an elaborate end-of-the-year roundup/recap post, but that doesn’t feel right this year. Instead I’m going to share things that I’m grateful for that happened this year.
- The relative health of me and everyone in my family.
- Rona vaccines and the fact that I have been able to access them. Despite my phobia of vaccines, I am still immensely privileged to have this, and I do not take it lightly.
- My job at KnitCrate and the fact that I can work from home, which is amazing not only for the pandemic but also for my anxiety.
- I think my psychiatrist and I have finally hit upon the right cocktail of medication to treat my various mental illnesses, and as a result, I have been feeling better than I have since I was…14? It’s been so long with severe OCD. I barely remembered what it felt like to be okay, and now I feel okay more days than not.
- I married my best friend in July and it has been the best six months of my life. (Is it that long already? Time flies by with him.) He is an incredible blessing and I can’t imagine my life without him. (I also wrote The Button Jar with him – check out the “Books” tab to learn more!)
- At the beginning of the year, I had my gallbladder removed and my health has been so much better since. I’ve been having gallstone pain since 2017. While I’m still not pain-free, I no longer have gallstone attacks. And I have a diagnosis for the remainder of my stomach pain, which is abdominal migraines, and medication to treat those. In short, I have the answers I was so desperate to find over the past several years, and as such my quality of life has drastically improved.
- My husband and I adopted a cat! She’s a five-year-old tortoiseshell tabby whom we named Persephone. I think she is actually my guardian angel given earthly form, and I’m only half kidding. I will write more about her in the future because she is the greatest animal in the world.
- I signed a book deal that releases in February (The Lost Girl of Goose Creek) and had two other publications, which you can read about in my previous post. It feels so good to be advancing my career as an author one little step at a time.
- My husband and I moved into our first apartment, and I have been having an amazing time decorating! I never thought I would become such a nester, but it brings me great happiness to make our home cozy and comfortable. On a related note: I collected 14 Inkari alpacas, which you can see over on my Instagram @onceuponayarn. They bring me so much joy from their cuteness, and they are the focal point of my “office” (a corner of the living room).
- After years of not being able to go to church because of my awful religious anxiety (look up OCD scrupulosity if you’re curious), I started going back to Mass, and it’s the happiest I’ve been in a long time. Religion has been important to me since I was literally in preschool and it’s the worst thing that anxiety ever took away from me. Getting it back has been a long journey but one that I’m extremely proud of and, most of all, grateful for.
In short, I am one lucky duck. And I don’t take it for granted – not a single bit of it.
I hope that whatever the year has brought you, there were some good moments in it. And I am hopeful that 2022 will be an improvement for the whole world.
Happy New Year, readers, and thank you for being my friends.