sholio | 2016: definitely a year that happened

I realize it's been a total trash fire of a year overall, but for me on a purely personal level, it's actually been a very good year.

- I have a writing career! I made more this year than I did when I worked at my last full-time regular job. (I've been self-employed since 2009, alternately going to school and scraping by on graphic design work, short-term teaching gigs, and -- let's be honest here -- mainly on my spouse's salary.) But now I have a job! I love my job! It's rewarding and fun. I have been doing year-end accountability/creative-goal posts at my realname LJ since 2006, and this year I posted the very last one, because I don't need them anymore - I still make to-do lists, but they're a different sort of to-do list. It used to be things like "finish a novel" or "establish a regular writing schedule", and now I take for granted that I will be able to do those things; my goals are more like "finish X and Y novels in $ESTABLISHED_SERIES", which are very useful goals, but the year-end accountability thing isn't something that's helpful for me anymore. It worked so well I don't have to do it anymore!

- My total amount of words written this year was higher than it's ever been since I started keeping track of it in 2009 - a little short of a mind-boggling 800,000 words, counting fanfic and original writing together. Plus, I finally did a Kickstarter for the first Kismet graphic novel, which I've been shuffling from one to-do list to another since 2006. It feels better than words can express to have THAT done.

- I got to meet lovely people I've known for ages online, who are just as lovely in person - in particular, I got to meet

frith_in_thorns and her wife E,

leesa_perrie (one of the first people I got to know in SGA fandom, I think, wayyyy back in the day), and

jimandblair, also from ye olde SGA days, along with a few other more recently-met people from online fandom. They are all wonderful and I'm sad I live an ocean away so I can't go back anytime I want. I also met/friended a number of new people online.

- I have had a really wonderful year for fandom/fanfic, which started off with season two of Agent Carter being everything I hoped it would be and so much more, and ended with a swan dive into the DC TV universe, which has been giving me tremendous amounts of delight. In between, I've finally learned how to "do" fandom on Tumblr, after getting involved with the chatty and welcoming Agent Carter fandom there. I've actually gotten the hang of writing promptfic from reader-submitted prompts, which I've always wanted to be able to do and never quite could get the hang of in the pre-Tumblr days, and I've had an amazing time talking with

sheron about All The Jack Feels and nurturing our exponentially increasing herd of plot bunnies. Plus, the inaugural year of the Agent Carter fic exchange went so well that I'm really looking forward to doing it again in 2017.

- I've had a great time doing craft shows with

ellenmillion, and just generally hanging out and doing art and geek-type stuff. It's really awesome to have someone locally who will watch Agent Carter and Flash with me!

So yeah, while the world has been going to hell in a handbasket, I have been having a wonderful, creative, inspiring year. The first half of the year was better than the second half, emotionally -- I got off track, for various reasons, and I'm still coping with hardcore bouts of post-election anger, fear, and doubt about the state of my country and the world. So there's that. But, by any objective measure, I've had a pretty amazing year, and if 2016 is a year that definitely happened, 2017 is a year that hasn't happened yet, so there's no way to know what it's going to be like.*

*preliminary signs point to "more dumpster fire, now with extra flame", but one never really knows.