The bookends thing also appeals to me because I am nothing if not a purveyor of shlocky dramatic flourishes and well-worn narratives. Thus, I love that this has been a year of milestones: I reached 50 plays; I graduated; I started my first full-time job; I left my first full-time job; I moved country (again); I started my first skilled job; I finally won 2048. 2015 is gonna have to try pretty hard to beat that in terms of sheer character development.
It feels funny that this time last year, I was sitting in the exact same room that I am now, with almost the exact same people, but feeling so much more nervous about the future- at that time, I was still faced with the threat of failing my exams and impending joblessness. In actual fact, I achieved a reasonable grade in my degree, and I spent only two months (January and September) of this year unemployed and am in fact currently the only one in my family to have a job, which makes me feel very important. Of course, my contract runs out in April, and then unemployment looms once more, but I'm less concerned about it than I was last year, knowing that I have been able to find a job once and will hopefully replicate that trick soon.
In terms of jobs, I think I'm going to look for more TEFL positions once my job in Laon finishes- I've actually quite enjoyed teaching. The students are slightly unpredictable, but it's great when you really feel you've been able to impart something to them:
ME: What did you do over the weekend?
STUDENT: Nothing.
ME: Well, then, lie; it's allowed.
STUDENT: I killed a lion.
ME: Cruel.
--------*TWENTY MINUTES LATER*--------
ME: What are you writing?
STUDENT: What you just said.
ME: It doesn't look like what I just said.
STUDENT: Well, you told me to lie to you.
ME: Aww, my baby's all grown up.I'm very glad they couldn't understand the last line, but that was a high point for me.
Although it was quite a busy year, I am struggling to find things to write about and I've just realised why, and it's another milestone that I forgot to include above and am too lazy to go back and insert and, besides, it now gets a paragraph to itself: this is also the year which I have most consistently historiographed on this blog. This blog, The Devil's Ink Pots, is now my longest lasting web log, having surpassed The Wizard in Oz by 158 days as of now. You may wish to count Criticisms and Witticisms, which I also started in Australia and some would say is still technically going, but, much like Amelia Earhart, the Green Lantern sequel and my career as a telemarketer, it may never have officially been given up upon by pretty much everyone knows it's dead.
I don't know how long this blog will last, but I certainly intend to keep it going for at least another while longer; I like having a record of all the stuff that happens to me, especially in a year like 2014, when a tonne-o-stuff went down. I think I'm also going to take a page from the book of my absolutely favourite blogger, Jenny Trout, and do a resolutions post and then have an accountability recap at the end of the year to see how I do. Maybe knowing that I'll have to pubically acknowledge my failure to do what I said I will will motivate me to do those things, like political campaigns always do. Expect a Resolutions post very soon.
I've also just realised that this was the year when I moved the most: eight times, in total. Which seems absurd. And I ended up spending the best part of a month living with Jari, all in all. I hate moving, and it was annoying having to rebox and unpack and then unbox and then repack all my stuff, over and over again, but I also lived in some brilliant flats with some lovely people (and heard the best quote of the year from Jo Shaw while sharing a kitchen with him).
Truth be told, I'm a little nervous about 2015, cos this year has been so monumental and, all in all, a resounding success: obviously, I wasn't manically happy all the time and not everything to which I turned my hand spouted gold, but I still got where I needed to at least 80% of the time and, really, most importantly, I had an awful lot of fun. Let's try and keep that up, shall we, Rory?
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