New Year's Meme

(Sixth [!] in a series. See also New Year's Day 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012.)

1. What did you do in 2012 that you'd never done before?
*Got tenure
*Spent more than a month living abroad independently (i.e., not with a host family)
*Gave up on even the pretense of pseudonymity
*Got a second positive reader's report on my book MS

2. Did you keep your 2012 resolutions, and will you make more this year?
This meme is apparently what I now do instead of making resolutions.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes: a college friend had her third (!), and two of my colleagues each had their first.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
My spouse's beloved aunt, whom I wish I'd had a chance to know better.

5. What countries did you visit?
Italy, The Netherlands, and Canada

6. What would you like to have in 2013 that you lacked in 2012?
I'd like finally to be done with this book. I'd also like to live full-time with my spouse (at least for the second half of the year).

7. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
The obvious one to cite would be getting tenure--though the process wasn't especially fraught or difficult. Instead, I think that starting to come to terms with really being an adult--an established professional, a bourgeois, and approaching middle-age--is the year's greatest achievement, albeit one that's still very much in process.

8. What was your biggest failure?
Not getting a book contract with the press I'd been working with for two years. That's not my failure, exactly, but at the time it felt that way.

9. Did you suffer illness or injury?
No, though the migraines I mentioned last year are making slightly more frequent appearances, much to my displeasure.

10. What was the best thing you bought?
Our five weeks in Rome

11. Whose behavior merited celebration?
My spouse's. He's now in his second year of commuting back and forth to our home every weekend. It's not my place to talk about how hard that is on him, but it's hard.

12. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Dude, 2012 was an election year. Pretty much everyone in public life--elected officials, would-be elected officials, pundits, random bloggers--pissed me off at one point or another.

13. Where did most of your money go?
Books, clothes, travel, theater, booze

14. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?
a) Happier (tenure will do that to a girl!)
b) Maybe three pounds heavier (enough to notice in some clothes, not enough to do anything about)
c) Slightly richer (now that my car is finally paid off and I got a modest raise with tenure).

15. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Worked on my Shakespeare article; made headway on my edition

16. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Fucked around on the internet

17. Did you fall in love in 2012?
Every day

18. What was the best new book you read?
In 2012 I started to get my leisure-reading mojo back, and I read several good ones. But the best was Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl.

19. What was your favorite film of the year?
Early: The Artist
Late: The Master.

20. What kept you sane?
My spouse, my cats, my colleagues, my students

21. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2012.
Life's hard on everyone, and usually more than outsiders know. So be kind.

Happy 2013, all!