2022: A Summary

Hello!

I hope you all had a good Christmas! I know I did!

As it happens, I've had a good year - when writing my first draft, I found that I had written the word 'fun' 16 times! I hope everyone else has had a good year as well!

January

One highlight of January, for me, was...well, I'm not sure I had a specific highlight. Certainly, I enjoyed spending time with my friends.

One lowlight of January was cutting my thumb open with a cheese slicer. (Although I had a new and exciting opportunity to visit A&E!)

My dad, Granny and Tessa (I wasn't there at the time, sadly...)

February

One highlight of February was meeting up with Karys for doughnuts - it was nice to catch up with her. 

One lowlight of February was the difficulties with finding accommodation. It was very stressful, not to mention saddening to realise that I was already making preparations to move out of my current house.

No parents within 50 miles, as my parents noted in their newsletter!

March

One highlight of March was reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, which was very good. The highlight, in my opinion, is just how...weird the protagonists, the Buendias, get. For instance, there's a bit where the family matriarch walks in on two family members (aunt and nephew) trying to hook up and, thankfully, stops them. Later, the nephew joins a rebellion against the government, and one of the soldiers reassures him that the rebellion is fighting the government specifically so that people can marry their aunts. (Can't say I've ever wanted to, though...)

I also enjoyed going to stay with Granny - it was good to spend time with her.

One lowlight of March was missing out on going to Kenya with my parents. I would have liked to go, as I've never been to Kenya (following my birth, anyway). Unfortunately, it fell in the middle of term.

A very happy Tessa

April

One highlight of April was Kylie coming to stay. It was really great to spend time with her!

One lowlight, however, was catching Covid, surprisingly enough. Not nearly as fun.

Word Alive, woohoo!

May

One highlight of May was Josh's birthday party. It was very nice to do something together with my housemates, especially as one of us moved out a few days later.

One lowlight of May was doing exams. I did reasonably well, but they were very stressful.

Poor Pippin's getting old...

June

One highlight of June was spending time with my remaining housemates. As our workloads eased off, we were all less busy, so we had more time to spend together.

Correspondingly, one lowlight was having to say goodbye, especially as the two housemates who are away this year don't come back until after I've graduated.

A very good boy

July

One highlight of July was going to Budapest - it was very fun! I particularly enjoyed walking around, seeing the sights and sampling the local cuisine.
One lowlight was that I had a pretty serious falling-out with a close friend, and events conspired so that we couldn't easily patch things up. So I spent most of the middle of July feeling very stressed and sad.

Budapest!!

August

One highlight of August was going to Sheringham with my family - it was great! It was especially nice to see Pippin be so energetic - as he's gotten older, he's gotten calmer as well.

One lowlight, comparatively, was Forum. Forum was definitely loads of fun, but I did feel out of place, as nearly everyone else there had a leadership role in the CU.

FORUM!

September

One highlight of September was the fact that various friends got engaged and married - it's extremely exciting!

One lowlight, though, is that I had to get a new phone. And during the course of installing the SIM card...it broke. So replacing my phone turned out to be a major hassle. The new one's nice, though.

Holidays in Sheringham

October

One highlight of October was my cousin Huw's birthday party! It was very nice to see my cousins! 

One lowlight, however, was the death of a family friend. She was like an honorary grandmother to me. She died expecting another blog from me, which she never got to read - which makes me feel quite guilty for the delays in writing.

SEBWA!!

November

One highlight of November was going clubbing for the first time! It was part of the History society social - it was very fun! I didn't drink much, but I did do a lot of dancing, which I enjoyed more than I thought I would. Although I did also realise that it's not technically the first time. I did a reasonable amount of clubbing back in Sixth Form, if you count the Sixth Form socials as basically clubbing-lite. (Having been to both, I certainly would.) It adds perspective to the whole fear-of-missing-out thing - you might feel like you're missing out from your perspective, but in reality not be missing out at all. (Also, as a very wise friend said when I told her about it, it's still not missing out even if you haven't done that sort of thing before, because everyone has different life experiences.)

Ironically, several friends from the CU went to a Christian event that weekend, while I was out clubbing.

Another highlight was getting to celebrate my birthday with friends and family.

Actually, I'm not sure there were any lowlights!

Neve and Huw ready to go to Hogwarts!

December

One highlight of December was getting to spend time with Granny, Tessa, and my great-aunts. It was very nice to see them all!

At the same time, one lowlight was the huge pile of work I've had to do, which has been quite stressful.

Throwback to a previous social

It's been an interesting year. Even though life goes on, the past still haunts us. It's been two years now since the pandemic. Despite the fact that social distancing has pretty much ended, society still bears the marks of Covid - one of the main ones being that it hasn't really gone away. We've just learned to live with it. There's still recommendations to isolate if you have symptoms, you still need to wear masks in some places. We all (probably) know someone who's had Covid, probably nearly all of us have had it ourselves (including yours truly...)

I've found something similar with my personal life. The scars from the bullying remain, even as I try to escape them. I still have nightmares about my bully, sometimes. March 1st always sticks out to me as the anniversary of one of the worse incidents; something I realised earlier in the year is that next March marks the 5-year anniversary of the event. Next year also marks the 10-year anniversary of the start of the civil war in CAR. It's strange to me that two significant events in my life happened within 5 years of each other.

In some ways, I feel...haunted by the past. I've found that mistakes I made in the past persist as echoes, to my shame. I also find that, when I come home for the holidays, it's like coming home to a village of ghosts. All my old friends have moved away, all my new friends are elsewhere. What's left is memories of isolation. It makes old scars ache (if you'll forgive the melodrama).

Sometimes, I think I'll always carry those scars, to a degree. It's a case of learning to live with them. And life does go on - I've found that the present is as fleeting as the past is lingering. The past few years, I've found truly brilliant friends. People that I'm honoured to know and be friends with. People who I know will go on to do amazing things. I don't feel like I've had nearly enough time with them. But times end, because they must - university's coming to an end. Who knows if we'll still be in contact in a year or in ten? I hope we will be. But I'm worried we won't be.

Similarly, Tessa's getting old, now. She had a stroke back in May/June. She's mostly better now, but she still bears the after-effects. She limps more, and moves slower now, and if she moves too fast, it hurts her (though this might just be arthritis). She's also...somewhat...incontinent; often, she goes to the toilet in the house. (The poos, fortunately for everyone, are at least normal consistency...) She's only got a matter of years left. Death is an unavoidable, tragic part of life, sadly.

The truth is, writing these blogs, looking to the future...it's always difficult to put a positive spin on things, because I dread that all I have in my future is more loneliness and isolation. But at the same time, the Thirteenth Doctor's last words stick with me. As I mentioned in a previous blog, her tenure started when I was going through a very difficult time. Jodie Whittaker has been a consistent part of the last 4 years of change, for me. That constant's now gone, and it's time for my life to change again. The last thing the Thirteenth Doctor says is that she wants to see what comes next (well, that and a quip...) I'm scared of what the future holds. But at the same time, several friends are getting married, settling down. Other friends are pursuing even higher levels of education than Bachelor's degrees. People (including myself) are finding jobs, moving out of home and university. It's scary...but it's also very exciting. I don't know what the future holds, but I do know that I want to find out what happens next.

Random stats:

Dog walks walked over Christmas: 8

Essays written: 1 (3,000 words!)

Fun fact: John Lewis Gaddis and Orlando Figes are Cold War historians. I have now made use of both historians in at least one essay every year of my university degree.

Christmas cards done: 20-30

Current books being read: Rereading Goblet of Fire and Revolutionary Russia (Orlando Figes), just finished The Locked Tomb (Tamsyn Muir), started The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive book 1, by Brandon Sanderson)

New Year's Resolutions:

1. I will try to have higher expectations of what I can offer to a conversation and to a friendship, and behave accordingly (chatting instead of reading in social situations)

2. I will be nicer to myself and be more trusting of my friends.

3. I will treat my friends and family with the respect that they deserve.

Progress on dissertation: 1,348 or so words. (I've been taking a break to focus on other work...)

I leave you with two thoughts:

The first is the First Ideal of the Knights Radiant - Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination. To me, it's a promise to consciously choose life, even when it gets difficult. Choosing to remain strong in the face of hardship. Focusing on living life to the fullest rather than achieving goals, or worrying about where you'll be in the future. 

(The Knights Radiant are an organisation of warriors from Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive - they have powers, which they gain by swearing oaths, also called Ideals.)

The second is a childhood tradition my parents did. At the end of every year, we ate a meal of sweet and sour chicken, and we discussed one good thing and one bad thing that happened in the year. One good thing that's happened to me this year is that I've had a lot of opportunities to make new friends and spend time with older friends. However, one bad thing that's happened is Tessa having a stroke - it's a sign that she's getting older, and I'm worried that it will happen again.

In celebration of the New Year, I encourage all my readers to reflect on these thoughts. What does the First Ideal mean to you, and how might you go about putting it into practice? And what good and bad things have happened to you this year?