I didn’t go back and read what I wrote at the end of Our Year of the Collective Dumpster Fire 2020, because it didn’t really matter. Just like it doesn’t really matter what I write about Our Year of Dystopian Hellscape 2021, because you all lived it too.

So let’s get straight into the Year End Accounting of Shit I Did This Year Even Though I Feel Like It Should Still Be April… (seriously–where 2020 was a year of Endless March, 2021 was warp speed and straight on til morning.)

My goals were heavily novel focused 2021 and like the best laid plans, well…

I didn’t hit any of my writing related goals this year, except to write two new short stories. I did accomplish that, and I did have one published. You can find my Dickensian ghost doggo story “Bark! The Harold Angels Sing” in the Home for the Howlidays anthology from Tyche Books.

Year Five of the Kindred Experiment didn’t happen for obvious reasons– while most of the area schools have been back full time in person this academic year, there’s a lot of upheaval and germs still going around so I didn’t feel like it was the right time to try another round of Kindred. It may be a permanently retired program at this point, because I have an awful lot of other things on my plate.

Like so many other people in the last two years, I started a business!

This is ridiculous on so many levels, and it’s something that I’ve said forever I would never do because it seems completely miserable, and yet, here I am. Glutton for punishment say what?

What.

If you haven’t been bombarded already with my experiments in yarn dyeing posts, please do head over to my business website, Dark Sea Yarn, and check it out. Tell your fiber friends! I haven’t done my year end accounting for the business yet, and while I’m quite sure that I’m in the red at this point, I am overall very pleased with it for something that I more or less stumbled into at the midpoint of the year. You can find my yarn in two local yarn shops, Sybil’s Yarn Shop in Milford, NY and Rabbit Row Haberdashery in Corning, NY, as well as purchase direct from my website. I even did a few outdoor festival-type events that were pretty fun. I’d love to grow the wholesale end of things, so if you know a LYS near you who might be interested, hit that contact us button on the website.

Most importantly, dyeing is super fun and I’m still obsessed with it, and that’s all I really want. If I can have enough business to pay for itself, excellent. I don’t need an empire. I don’t need to be B*zos. No one does. Fuck that guy.

I was able to get to a couple of new places this year, despite Covid restrictions and precautions. Ben and I went to Pownal Vermont for the Most Stressful Vacation Ever (don’t ask. we had to take the cat with us, it was a nightmare.) Pownal, Bennington and North Adams, MA, however, were not nightmares. We got to do some really fun stuff (like take yarn pictures at Mass MoCA!) and see a fantastic play– The Turn of the Screw, put on by Bennington’s Oldcastle Theatre Company. I also road tripped out to Corning to see my yarn and meet Barb, proprietor of Rabbit Row. What a cute town!

Last goal of 2021 accomplished is my standard read 50 books. Ashley and I did the bookstagram thing for the first half of the year and that was VERY GOOD at padding my book list. 52 Book Pick Up post will be assembled tomorrow (I still have 36 hours left to read!) and it is WELL over 50 this year. I’m considering making 2022 the Year of the Doorstop because I have a fair number of those extra large books kicking around.

And I have now rambled my way to the part where we unveil the goals for 2022:

I’d like to keep the old standbys of 50 books and going somewhere new because reading and exploring are important, but they’re also very manageable goals. I am still long fiction focused and I’d really like to accomplish more of that this year. 2021 was hard on everyone’s brain, but I think I can find a small chunks process that might work for me. And then a couple new business related goals. We’ll see how it goes.

That’s all I’ve got. Be good, stay healthy, get your goddamn shots please so we can end this thing, and check back for the book list post tomorrow.

I screenshot this off instagram awhile ago, but if ever there was an image to sum up this year, it’s this one:

On a serious note, though, I really didn’t have a bad year. Everyone has been healthy, my day to day life isn’t that much disrupted, and I was able to find some joy and make some good memories. I wish all the same for myself and you all in the coming year.

Smell you later, 2021.