You know, when I started trying to blog again in January, I didn’t realize I would be going through an insanely pivotal year of many changes that would make it nearly impossible to keep up. Hm… Well, I guess here’s a recap?

Goals / Bucket List
I crossed out a few items from my never-ending, always shifting bucket list this year: trying a Viennetta (it was okay), climbing on a climbing wall (addictive and I want to do this again asap! It’s just expensive in the US), going through the Chunnel (actually kinda boring, but hey, it’s done!), karaoke (kinda, with some friends in a private room, not sure if it counts?). In my 2025 goals, I completed all of my big travel goals but no extras, all of my writing goals and extras, all the tattoos I had planned plus a small extra one, 50% of my art goals, and a big chunk of my misc goals. Not quite all, but goal-wise, it was a pretty good year. Which is insane, given the circumstances.

Travel
I had four trips planned for the year, which thankfully worked out despite circumstances. In February, I went to Germany to visit my partner Rainstorm. It was the first time we’d met in person since we started dating, and was a very lovely and memorable week. In April, the two of us met in Barcelona for a week. That was an insane trip. It only happened because I had airline credit to use up and it was their birthday week. Then I got food poisoning. On their birthday. You learn very quickly how close you are when you have food poisoning while sharing a hotel room… Not to mention that my soon-to-be ex-husband decided to announce – on the ride home from the airport, after I’d been flying for 24 hours and was super jet-lagged – that he was filing for divorce, had frozen our credit cards, and taken a big chunk of the money in our accounts. Fun? Anyway, that was Travel #2. Then I spent two months in Germany/London this summer, including some amazing side trips while there: Pride in both Cologne and Berlin, The IneffableCon, afternoon tea that Ritz… And lastly, I flew to Barcelona for a reunion transatlantic cruise with the folks I met in 2023. It was brilliant and exhausting and I loved every second of it. Throughout the year, I got to meet multiple friends in person for the first time, in Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK. Very little about travel fell into the negative category for 2025, so that’s good!

Romance / Divorce
Rainstorm and I have now been dating for almost 14 months. We lived together for two months this summer and I cannot wait until I see them again. It has been really freeing to realize and admit that I was never actually bi/pan, but a lesbian stuck in comphet. I feel safe with another person for the first time in decades.

Meanwhile, I’m in the middle of a contentious divorce. Divorce is shitty, especially when it involves unpacking a lot of baggage that you hid from for a long time, and when you discover a number of things that were being done to you behind the scenes. I can’t say much about it, what with legalities going on, but I want to address something that people probably wonder about (which is why I put these two subjects under the same heading). There was no cheating on my part in this divorce. I’m not going to address J’s side because I can only speak about my own actions for legal reasons. But long before I began dating anyone, J and I designated our marriage as a platonic life partnership. After that, we were both free to date. It took me quite some time before I was ready to do so, but once I did, it was never a secret. I have never hidden my actions from J, our kids, or anyone else. Rainstorm and I have been open and honest about our relationship from the start.

Tattoos / Hair
My hair went through quite the journey this year, from pink to purple to blue to campfire sunset to blond to the colors of a lesbian flag to the boring brown-red that it is now because I’m looking for a job. When I cut it in 2023, I didn’t expect it to stay short, but I love it this way. I’m finally embracing a more nonbinary, queer look, and this is part of it. In tattoos, I’ve acquired five this year. There was 1) the matching Good-Omens-coded ghosts with Rainstorm in February; 2) the linked tattoos with my friend Stephanie in later February (a raccoon (her) and possum (me) in the poses of The Creation of Adam); 3) the broken mirror Eight of Swords tarot tattoo on my thigh; 4) the portrait for my cat Gherkin, and 5) the portrait of my late cat Christabel. Eventually, I’ll write more on tattoos, but this made up tattoos 16-20.

Health
Not much to say on this for 2025. Turns out that when I no longer had to live with J, I started losing weight pretty slowly and steadily – less stress! Then during the two months in Europe, I lost like 15 lbs without trying because of better food quality. Then I gained some of it back after I came back to Texas and felt sick and in pain all the time again. Of course. Whatever. I’m looking forward to being in Europe full time.

Writing
When I went into 2025, I was midway through two novels. Since then, I’ve finished both of those novels, written another, plus I’ve written multiple short stories. Altogether, I wote somewhere between 170k and 175k, which to put in standard book terms is about 350-ish pages. Not bad for a year that had a lot of travel and upheaval! Recently, one of my longer short stories was turned into a podfic, which is amazing. And in the upcoming year, I hope to return to some original fiction.

Education / Career
There has been almost no movement on anything resembling a career. The job market is so, so, so saturated right now, and with twenty years of “homemaker/parent” on my resume and no degree, I’m basically fucked. In other words, I’ve applied for hundreds of jobs, heard back from less than a dozen of them, and haven’t made it far enough into the process even to get an interview. Sigh. In the meantime, I’ve been focusing a lot of my time on learning German. The more I can learn before I move and try to get a language-learning visa, the further I can get in the year-long language course. That will help prepare me better for school or an apprenticeship. Hopefully, after I move, I’ll never need to come back to the US again!

Things I’ve missed out on this year
There are a few things that I neglected this year. The first is art. I did some artwork, sure, but very little compared to previous years. I just didn’t have time. The same re: photography. Cameras are bulky and often on my travel, I found myself just using my phone. So I want to correct both things in the new year.

That is a very sloppy wrap-up, but it’s gonna have to do. I’m not even going to go back to reread for edits and typos. It’s just gonna have to be enough. Some of those things above, I might talk more about in later posts (especially travel and tattoos) but for now, that’s what I’ve got left in the tank after an entire week of multiple holiday celebrations. Happy holidays to you all! (You know, the five of you reading this, hahahaha)