2021. That was a year.

Well. We just had.....a year. That was indeed twelve months. Or fifty-two and a bit weeks. Or 365 days. Somehow. 

This year has continued to be strange, sometimes in the same ways as last year, other ways not so much. 

I mean, Covid has of course very much still been A Thing. Here in Sydney we had a lockdown from mid-June to aroundabout August I think? Or September? And that was......hard. Delta and Omicron have both been doing their darndest to ruin as much as they can, and fairly successfully. I still had work through all of it, thank goodness. Speaking of which, I guess let's go on to the other difficult things before we get to the good things? 

Work has been harder this year. Partly because a lot of it has been in lockdown, so work looked very different. I'm not good at doing work from home. Self-motivation is fucking hard. (Thanks, ADHD.) When we were able to come back to work, there was quite a while when we couldn't do shows at all. As a reminder, my job is basically putting on shows for kids in a museum. Without those shows..... my job basically becomes, look after the space. Pick up rubbish. Make sure people aren't breaking rules and such. That's it. Yay. 

And then, just when we were starting to bring shows back - Omicron comes along. Yaaaaay. Also, our space closes and our contracts end at the end of January, and we still haven't heard what's happening for us after that 😅 So that's somewhat shit. 

Continuing on with difficult things - in about April of this year, I separated from my partner at the time and moved into a new place. Now, there were a lot of good things involved in that transition, and I'll talk about those in a bit; but it was fucking hard having to almost immediately go through a lockdown, and this time without a partner, and me very much loving physical touch and hugs and snuggles and the like. I've slowly been able to get more bits and pieces of that as we've come out of lockdown, but not nearly as much as my brain seems to be demanding. So that's caused my emotions and energy and such to be all over the place and often down.

But. Moving on to better things.

This year is the year that a lot changed for me. I figured out a lot of it near the end of last year, but the doing of it all really happened in this year. Coming out as queer and polyamorous, separating from my partner, finding new communities to be a part of, moving into queer-affirming spaces and churches - that's all been this year. I've met so many new people, and really affirming and encouraging and accepting people, built some really lovely relationships. So many queer folks, neurodivergent folks, polyamorous folks, it's been really wonderful and amazing. I can't quite express how much people have been incredibly helpful for me this year, in so many different ways. 

And while work has had its stresses - it's certainly had its joys as well. I've loved the shows that we've done, particularly piloting Winny (a life-size Muttaburrasaurus puppet), puppet shows, and being able to do one of my own songs during song time. And now, teaching those songs to other new folks joining the team - feels pretty awesome. 

I don't really have a clue what this coming year is going to look like - as I mentioned before, work stuff is all just a bit up in the air at the moment, we don't know what's happening there yet. 

But I'm starting this year hopeful. And really, really grateful for how far I've already been able to come. I know I still have so much to learn. But I've learned a lot, from so many, in just this year. So I'm looking forward to learning more. And even more so - putting that into practice. Hopefully, Covid doesn't mess that up too much. But I guess we'll see.