Plaidophile

The year began just hours after my grandmother died.

I had my usual ups and downs with respect to my job and satisfaction thereof; in June I ended up accepting a job with a startup which I started (and ended) in August, and went straight back to Sony, where I am feeling a lot better now that I've briefly grazed on the grass on the other side of the fence, which looks tasty but is poison.

Music-wise I got another album done, which was satisfying although sales haven't been nearly enough to justify the expenses incurred. As usual I went to Song Fight! Live in NYC, and both made peace with the city and had a lot of fun.

I upgraded my recording equipment (again), and my cellphone (twice), and also got another new phone of a different sort.

In June I cut as much reliance on Google as possible, and haven't looked back. I still use some of their services, of course, but it feels liberating nonetheless. Meanwhile I've grown increasingly annoyed with Apple's Apple-ness, and have started to evaluate switching back to Linux as my full-time operating system.

I also pretty much entirely gave up on social networking, again. Except Twitter.

Comic-wise I finished one series, ended up not doing comics for a while due to depression, and then used the depression to bootstrap me into something new, which I was able to keep up for much longer than I was expecting (or beyond its initial benefit to me).

The daily comics did help me to cope with the sudden death of my boyfriend of two years in October. I am still having anxiety attacks and general depression over that and the difficult circumstances surrounding it, though, and many of the issues have compounded into other general health issues, but I'm working through them (although the medical bills were getting pretty daunting at one point).

I refinanced my house and started remodeling the kitchen. I also got the vast majority of a printed version of Unity together, and even got other people to preorder and otherwise fund it, which fills me with dread for fears of disappointing them. But it's been a fun project anyway.

I stopped worrying about the negatives and finally restarted on taking care of a long-standing issue, and in 2012 I should finally be able to take care of something that's been gnawing at me for the last 20 years.

Although much of it was due to external and unpleasant factors, I ended up losing about 15 pounds over the course of the year, and am back down to my grad school weight. Hopefully I can keep it off and maybe even lose some more while I'm at it.

Next year I hope to continue to do comics and make music and be successful at my job, and hopefully re-find some of the happiness that I lost along with Chris.