Best of 2021 | End-of-Year Survey

Happy Monday, friends! I am off work this week, so it is an especially happy Monday over here. 🙂 I have big plans for this week: writing lots of “Best of 2021” blog posts, doing a complete reorganization of my kitchen, and seeing some friends who are also off work. It should be a great last week of 2021, indeed.

Today, I’m going through one of my favorite traditions: the end-of-year survey! I can’t remember where I found this survey, but it used to be much longer. I have removed a lot of questions to bring it down to a cool 27 questions. Let’s dive in!

1) What did you do in 2021 that you’ve never done before? 

• Had my first queer relationship
• Visited Chicago and met Kim!
• Bought a brand-new car
• Went to a tea party

2) Did anyone close to you give birth? Nobody close to me gave birth, but my little fur-sister was born in March! What a friggin delight she is.

3) Did anyone close to you die? Nope. What a gift.

4) What places did you visit? Only Chicago. But it was such a fun vacation!

5) What would you like to have in 2022 that you didn’t have in 2021? A serious, long-term relationship. I’ll also settle for going on a cruise.

6) What dates from 2021 will be etched in your memory forever? June 26, which is the date my cousin married the love of her life! And July 17, which is the date Olive got to “ring the bell” signaling the end of her cancer treatment.

7) What was your biggest achievement this year? I had a lot of forward movement in my career this year, lots of new responsibilities that I crushed—so much so that I’m beginning 2022 with a nice big promotion to manager. I’m excited about this new chapter in my life!

8) What was your biggest failure? I probably could have done a better job with overall healthy living. I am working really hard on fat acceptance and loving my fat body as it is, but I also know that the last time I had blood work done, there were some troubling numbers (for example, being on the cusp of pre-diabetes). While I don’t want to diet or use any calorie-counting system ever again, I want to find ways to lower my sugar intake, drink more water, and eat more fresh fruits and veggies. But I want to do so in a way that’s not punishing and in which success is not measured by how much weight I lose.

9) Did you suffer from illness or injury? I injured my toe in January, got bronchitis in October, and dealt with sciatica off and on throughout the year.

10) What was the best thing you bought? My new car! Her name is Gladys and she’s exceptional.

Other great things bought this year: my beautiful, comfy sectional, my spin bike, and my TV.

11) Where did most of your money go? Where it always goes: to food! I feel like Ubereats should do an end-of-year wrap-up similar to Spotify, haha. But maybe that would be more depressing. (“You ordered from McDonald’s 20 times in 2021.”)

12) What did you get really, really excited about? I was really excited about the relationship I started over the summer. We clicked so naturally, had such easy chemistry, and I was hoping I had found something lasting. While the ending of the relationship broke me, I can’t regret the happiness and excitement and joy the relationship brought me.

13) What authors did you discover in 2021? There were so many good ones! For romance, some of the new authors I found were Rosie Danan, Cat Sebastian, and Olivia Waite. Jason Reynolds, Alan Gratz, and TJ Klune gave me some wonderful YA stories that I’m still thinking about today. And I read my first V.E. Schwab book this year (The Invisible Life of Addie Larue) and I’m hoping to read more of her backlist!

14) What do you wish you had done more of? Peloton workouts, long walks, therapy sessions, connecting with friends I’ve fallen away from, fiction writing, dating, reaching out to friends just to send an “I love you and am thinking of you” text.

15) What do you wish you had done less of? Worrying, anxiety spiraling, feeling FOMO, wasting so much money on Ubereats orders, complaining, being jealous.

16) How did your spend Christmas? It was such a lovely day! I woke up around 9, had a slow morning of puttering around my apartment and getting ready for the day. Around 11:30, I left for my mom’s and spent some time snuggling with the dogs. At 1:30, my brother and his family arrived! We ate Christmas dinner before tearing into our presents. (Dominic, my 6-year-old nephew, was so cute, saying, “Thank you!” directly to the person who gave him the present before he even opened it.) I was very spoiled this year, receiving many of the things on my Christmas wish list, including an air fryer, a weighted blanket, an earring organizer, white tennies, a world map canvas print, and personalized cat ornaments.

I left my mom’s house around 4:30, took a short nap on the couch, and then spent the night reading, unpacking all of my goodies, and watching episodes of The Baby-Sitters Club on Netflix. A good Christmas indeed!

17) What was your favorite TV program? BRIDGERTON! I had such an emotional hangover after watching that show.

18) What did you want and get? I wanted Olive to make it through cancer treatment, and that girl most certainly did. It was a really scary time; at one point, when Mikaela and her husband couldn’t find a surgeon willing to do her surgery to remove the tumor, I didn’t know if she would make it. But they found a surgeon, her surgery was successful, and she got through all of her rounds of chemo like a boss. And now she just gets to be a normal kid who will hopefully not remember this time in her life!

19) What did you want and not get? I wanted to feel more connected within my friend group, and this year was still a bit of a struggle with that. We returned to our monthly book clubs, which was nice, but then two friends got Covid, which led to things kind of falling apart for a bit as they recovered (and the rest of us made sure we weren’t positive!) Things started coming back together in December, though, and we already have our January book club meeting planned, so hopefully 2022 is the year things get back to where they used to be.

20) What was your favorite film of 2021? Booksmart! Okay, so it was one of, like, three movies I watched this year. It’s not hard to pick a favorite when I watch so few movies every year!

21) What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I turned 34 this year, and I had a very low-key birthday. I slept in, read my book on the couch, and then went over to my mom’s to watch football for most of the day. It was a really lovely way to spend my birthday!

22) What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? If Covid had gotten under control. There have been so many ups and downs this year with the pandemic: everyone getting their vaccines (good!), the Delta variant sweeping the globe (bad!), cases and deaths going down and booster shots available (good!), the Omicron variant showing up (bad!). It seems like we’re never going to get this virus under control, and it’s so defeating—especially when I hear about all of these fun events being canceled, kids maybe having to go back to virtual school for a bit, so many exposure scares. I don’t know what 2022 is going to look like, but it really feels like another pandemic year.

23) Who kept you sane? My mom always keeps me sane, but I also want to shout out two friends who were truly there for me during my depressive episode this fall, Mikaela and Amber. They checked in on me constantly and helped me feel less alone in my spiraling thoughts. These are two ladies who understand mental health struggles more than anyone, and I am so grateful they were there for me. <3

24) Who did you miss? The usual suspects: Dutch, my grandparents, my dad, etc.

25) Who was the best new person you met? Gosh, can I say Lucy? I just love that little girl with all of my heart and soul! She is the sweetest little baby who brings me so much joy every day.

I also met a lot of new people through blogging this year and that has been such a delight! Even though most of these people are in vastly different life stages from me (married, mothers, etc), we still find our own ways to connect and relate to one another. That feels so good!

26) Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2021. There is nothing more freeing than living your true, authentic life. For so long, I have hidden my queerness from friends, family, and even this blog because I was scared that people would look at me differently. Telling my mom, especially, was the hardest thing I think I’ve ever had to do—not because I thought she would disown me or anything like that, but I did worry that it would change our relationship. To accept myself as a bi woman, I’ve had to do a lot of unlearning regarding my faith. When you’re told over and over again that to be anything but straight is a sin and unacceptable to God, you internalize that. I internalized it, for sure. It’s why I spent so many years trying to put this part of me in a little box, shoved deep into the recesses of my mind. But it made me so, so unhappy and so, so unfulfilled (especially in terms of dating). But now I’m living my actual truth, it has not changed my relationship with my mom in any way, and I am so much happier, more confident, and more fulfilled. There’s nothing better than that.

27) Show us one of your favorite photos from the year. I love this photo of my mom and me after we got our second Covid shot in April. I am so very grateful that I didn’t have to convince her to get vaccinated (though she’s much better about getting her annual flu shot than I am, so I shouldn’t have been worried!) And it was a great experience we had together. (Not so great was both of us feeling yucky the next day, ha.)

What was your biggest achievement this year? What was the best thing you bought? And tell me your favorite TV show and movie you watched this year!