So, 2011 turned into a rather more interesting year than I’d anticipated. The original plan was to spend the first five months consulting, then quit that forever and kick off the Realtor thing, with a trip to Argentina thrown in as a reward for being a good girl and making money. That’s not quite how it went.
Instead I wound up taking off most of March, when I was supposed to be consulting, to occupy the capitol and otherwise get actively involved in on-the-ground politics for the first time in a decade. Then I went back to consulting for a bit, but despite several attempts, haven’t quite managed to quit and, in fact, probably have consulting work lined up all the way through 2012. I didn’t go to Argentina because leaving the country while fiddling with politics didn’t seem like a good idea, but I did go to Disney World and New Orleans. And I got the Realtor thing kicked off, but my business plan and marketing strategies are rather, well, quirky, and involve a lot of, “Oooh, that looks like fun. When people ask me what I do I’ll say I’m a Realtor and then it’s networking!” This is actually working better than it has any right to.
I cooked a lot. Working from home means it’s easy to take a break by getting up to putter in the kitchen a bit, then go back to work. In fact, working from home means I get to do things pretty much however I like. July, my first month home, involved rather a bit more flailing around than was really efficient, but by August I had a routine figured out that made sure I got things done without leaving too much dead time where I was hanging out somewhere because I ought to be, not because I needed to be there.
I built a bookshelf all by myself. (Still standing! No sign of sagging! I kick ass!) Progress was made on the “learn to draw” front. I wrote 1.8 books and did heavy revisions on a third. I drafted around 20 short stories, brought about six to submission status and sold two. I had non-fiction published in two venues not my blog. I joined a second crit group and won a free box of books for a piece of flash. The curse keeping me away from WisCon was finally broken and I’ve met a ton of cool geeky/writerly/computery people in part from that and in part from the Realtor networking schemes.
I helped my sister pick out her wedding dress.
My cat was thoroughly spoiled, and I finally worked out a system that simultaneously keeps my floor from getting covered in dirty laundry and makes sure I actually put away my clean laundry before I need the basket for something else. Also, the neighbors didn’t even try to complain about our landscaping this year. Either it’s finally grown in enough that they’ve figured out it looks good, or I have worn them down into utter submission.
Four years after moving to Wisconsin, I finally got around to learning the local political scene. I went to several not-riots, have spent a mind-numbing number of hours talking to strangers on the phone, and started getting recognized as the girl who keeps asking about why we’re excluding Republicans. I wished for a tent city and got an entire Occupy movement. I wished for a new governor and got a recall.
I figured out how to get enough of the right sleep. Pretend I listed this one twice.
I joined Facebook, OKcupid, goodreads, google+, groupon, livingsocial and, indirectly, twitter. Relatedly, I developed a who new foldering system for my various email inboxes. I’ve missed dozens of opportunities to help wealthy Nigerian princes invest in commercial Real Estate and my girlfriend is still telling strangers on the internet that my penis is too small to pleasure her properly.
The beginning of December marked the 2-year anniversary of leaving the corporate hell job that brought me to Madison. Most of 2010 was spent realizing how really awful that job had been and how very unsuited I am for coping functionally with 9-5 type work. Okay, I already knew 9-5 work was inherently soul-crushing for me but I figured out that there might be other ways to avoid poverty. This year was all about putting that theory to the test and I’d consider it a pretty big success.
In summary, I had a lot of fun. Okay, 2012, let’s do it some more.
Anaea Lay 