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[annarti]

2025

...Real mixed bag, was 2025. The highs were awesome and among the best moments of my life; the lows have been hands down the worst. They did not even out. It's just been a rollercoaster year.

Fitness has finally come together for me this year, but I kinda want to wait until I've fully achieved everything before I properly talk to that, hopefully in March. I'm up to day 289 of a 365 day streak of doing 10,000 steps a day, tracking along very well to hit many goals in March, so yes, I'll come back to that, but suffice to say that's been a big, long-sustained high. I cracked a 30 minute 5km run in November (down from about 42 minutes at the beginning of the year), and can do 10km in about an hour and 3 minutes (down from an hour 25), so yeah! Super proud of myself for how that's going.

A lot of travel, but local travel, happened. Amanda and I went to Sydney to see Critical Role, during which she got a hug from Taliesin Jaffe and it ws a truly beautiful moment. We went to Melbourne to see Green Day for the 20th anniversary of American Idiot and the 30th anniversary of Dookie, at the same venue I went to see them last, 20 years ago. Amazing and awesome and nostalgic and baby's first mosh and it was fabulous. We also went to the Cranbourne Botanic Gardens, which I've been wanting to go to since I heard about it. Need to do again when we have more time and also it's not raining.

Last travel for the year was to the Clare Valley for my 40th birthday! Beautiful food, fun little CABN with fire pit, great weekend X)

I had my friend, Alex, over for a week in November, reconnected with my old school friend, Jess, through a running club, and have been participating more in group things like said running club, Cassie's friend group on Discord and the Adelaide Wayward Wordsmiths (formerly NaNo).

I have a new niece, Oakah, who is a squirmy little worm who really seems to have two modes of happy beaming smiles and giggles or bawling. I still don't know how to baby, but Fletcher and Airlie love me so I know I'll be the cool auntie to Oakah, too. They are SO active and just everywhere but they're adorable and wonderful and I love them all.

With Amanda, I feel like we're getting more and more insync, which feels really awesome. I love making carbonara: I do the pasta and she makes the sauce and it feels like a real partnership and it's so delicious. Any cooking together stuff is fun. Trying to fit everything into my weenie little unit is still challenging, but everything at least now has a home, just a matter of convincing it to live there XD Cocktail hours on Friday after work are a continuing tradition, and we've started doing more bushwalking on the weekends, and taking sketching materials to do some plein air arting in the bush. She's also been instrumental in me maintaining the previously mentioned daily steps streak. Been to many a footy and cricket match through the year, interstate travelling has gone smoothly af, and things are generally cosy and comfortable and happy. Love my girl 💚

I saw Garbage, my favourite band since The World Is Not Enough, live in November. They even came to Adelaide! It's the first time I've ever seen them live and I genuinely never thought it would ever happen. At their height, back in the early noughties, I was out of the country when they were touring here. The last time the came was a decade ago, and that was just for a music festival, so like a half-hour set within a day of other stuff I wasn't interested in, so I didn't go to that. FINALLY saw them live, and it was everything I ever wanted. Shirley was amazing, and she was right there like three metres from me. Incredible. Life highlight 🤩

So, the ups, very up! Upward trajectories on these things are continuing!

Bad things: absolute dogshit!

I tried really hard from the beginning of the year to find joy in writing for myself, by myself, because nobody was reading my stuff nor did it seem like anyone was ever going to. I tried writing for competitions, which was a fun challenge for the first couple of months, but quickly became stressful having deadlines and felt like a chore setting up the world on every single story. I am proud of the stories that came out of them, tho, even of none of them won anything. Anyway, downward spiral in writing confidence continued until April, when I decided to just flock everything for the Yrae Chronicles, boot everyone from the Dreamwidth community and then I wouldn't have any hope anymore of anyone ever reading it, because I'd been the one to cut it off, so my dumb brain would stop blaming people for not reading it. Silent Harmony, my life's work of 20+ years, dead and buried because nobody was reading it anymore.

First of three.

A couple of weeks, maybe a month later, something started to tickle. When I say it was dead and buried, I mean it. I had zero intention or desire to ever open that Word doc ever again. And yet, after I'd cut of all sense of responsibility to it, no requirement to write it for anyone... I felt like writing again. Silently, by myself, not telling anyone I'd done anything because I didn't want to break that extremely fragile and tiny little spark of joy. I wanted to hold onto it for me, because writing for people who weren't going to read it wasn't a thought I was ready to entertain.

I wrote a page. I thought maybe, when I finish this chapter all on my own, I might tell everyone and they'll be proud of me for finding my joy in it again. I wrote a second page. And then Sallie, my longest friendship, my closest friend, she who I've never felt any stress or tension with ever before, decided I'd asked once too many to read SH. She delivered a many-thousand-word gut-punch, bringing up things which came truly out of nowhere for me, told me plenty of things I need to work on or apologise for or any other form of things wrong with me, then blocked me on Discord and left me in silence. That was in June, and I've not had a single point of contact since. I've emailed an apology, a message re the third of three (that'll come in a sec), a happy birthday, a plan to treat others how I want to be treated message (ie like a friend) and so started sending Tumblr posts and Insta shares and such that I would do if she were still in contact.

Nothing. Absolute silence. I slowly came to the realisation through November-ish that this was not the way you treat a friend. You don't deliver a gut-punch, tell someone every way in which they suck (sorry; need to improve) and then piss off into silence, giving them no chance to either apologise or show improvement or do literally anything to fix what they never knew was broken. It's sure as shit not the last thing you say to someone you've known and loved for 25 years. You don't do that to a friend; Sallie is not my friend. I sent a Merry Christmas and goodbye, and... yeah. That's it. I have no idea how things got so bad, but I have reached out and reached out and had nothing in response. Nothing ever in my life has hurt more, and I had a month earlier given up on my life's work.

Second of three.

The day we got back from the Clare Valley from my awesome 40th birthday weekend (and two months into Sallie's silence), I got a text from Dad asking me up after work to discuss medical things. The medical thing was blood cancer, with which he'd been diagnosed the week before we left. Skip through until now, because that's what's relevant, he's baaaasically cancer-free as much as you can be with blood cancer. It's going to keep coming back a bit stronger each time, but for the moment, treatment has beaten it into submission. It's terminal on a technicality, in that eventually (in five, ten, twenty years) it'll stop responding to treatment and that time will kill him. But like, he's 73, so that sort of time frame is a pretty solid life expectancy anyway, it's just he knows (probably) what he's gonna die of. First round of treatment left him tired but, from the sounds of things, otherwise pretty fine. I'm sure that'll get worse with time but so far, so good.

Third of three.

So yeah! Rollercoaster of a year! And in the same way of a rollercoaster, it does not even out! I gave up on Silent Harmony; fitness finally clicked; went to Sydney for Critical Role and also saw Alex; saw Green Day in Melbourne; lost my best friend; reconnected with old friend; turned 40; Dad got cancer; saw Garbage. BIG highs. SHIT lows. idk man. 2025 was a year. I'll remember the highs for the rest of my life, and just learn to live with the lows, cos none of them are going anywhere. Dad's still got cancer. Sallie's still silent. Nothing I can do about them. I have at least been writing, though, so that's something I can fix.

Speaking of!

2026

I'd like to aim for a chapter a month, but if it doesn't happen that's okay. Mostly this year I just want to find joy in writing for myself again, properly, with no pressure to finish anything for people nor to keep trying to find people to read it, because that's just not going to happen. Just write for me, and be happy with that. That's the goal, rediscover joy in writing.

In fitness, as mentioned, the 10,000 steps a day streak will be up to day 365 in March, at which point I also plan to hit 75kg and break 27 minutes for a 5k run. Mostly the second, because the 75kg is going to happen this year just as a side-effect of the running targets. I'm planning on 25 minute 5k by the end of the year, and breaking an hour for a 10k. ALSO: Don't Get Injured. I bunged my ankle early this year (trod in someone's footprint on the beach and twisted it) and am just today getting over a bung glute (did a run three days in a row, when you shouldn't do more than two, then went to Garbage the day after and stood up for a long period, and finally a long run the day after that which fully bunged said glute) so yes. Don't Get Injured. In order to do that I'll take up yoga and/or pilates after I hit day 365. It's nice to shake things up, and I tell you what, maintaining the streak over winter was hard D:

Definitely dropping the streak as soon as I hit that 365 days goal. I want to do more bushwalking, that kinda fell by the wayside around November due to just everything happening, as it tends to from November up to Christmas. Also, the Garmin app connected to my watch has some fitness sets to do, so I'll give them a shot and see if it's worth keeping up with.

Family and friends both, I want to make a better effort at keeping up contact, especially with those interstate. Try and schedule weekly catchups with Alex over Discord, text other people more often, see brother-and-family maybe monthly. Adjacent to that, I want to do present shopping waaaay earlier. Like, for Christmas, I always plan to do so in November, but then literally every weekend gets filled up with parties and activities and meetups and sportsball and then suddenly it's Christmas. So I wanna do that in, like, September. Also gives time for online orders to rock up on time. Ditto birthday presents, just so I feel more prepared there. Everyone has stupid-busy lives that make it hard to sync up timetables, but if I reach out more, it'll be more likely to happen. So. Yeah :D

Also, and this is kinda more 2027, but prep for Machu Piccu and everything surrounding that. Research things to do, probably book the hike itself because the little research I've done so far seems that books out pretty far in advance. I wanna do a flight over the Nazca Lines, aaall of the food things (which will be probably where a lot of research happens), and something in the Amazon. I believe they have active volcanos in Peru, so that would be awesome, too.

So yeah. Awesome has happened; shit has happened. Technically a lot of the shit continues to happen and there's nothing I can do about it, so I'll just keep plodding on, doing my positive thing and working on changing and fixing the things I can. I can continue to work on fitness so I can make middle- and old-age more physically comfortable and prevent my body from breaking. I can continue writing, still with the ultimate long goal of getting published, but learning how to be happy in myself and crafting the story I want to read. I can continue to reach out to those I love, embrace those who reach back and let go of those who don't. Hopefully this year I won't have to let go of anyone else. Hopefully, instead, I'll strengthen the friendships, the relationships I have.