End of the Year Quiz 2019!
It's time, it's time! Jesus the font on lj is small
You can find my previous year-end surveys here: 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. (omfg the .html URLs, lj you precious little relic)
1. What did you do in 2019 that you'd never done before?
well uh, since the 2018 one mentioned seeing Billie Piper, I'll go ahead and mention that I met David Goddamn Tennant and Catherine Fucking Tate this year right up front in question one! only for a photo op though, so for like ten seconds, but it was glorious and they're both just... Like That. oh but yeah in that vein... went to a con! and we might as well go ahead and get the other Big Thing out of the way which is kissed a girrrrrrrl oh I forgot about Suzie in that bar in 2018, so let's say uh. more than kissed a girl. oh, and listened to a podcast and played DnD lmao
2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
last year I spent a lot of time hashing over what I had done on this question and didn't... make any resolutions... or did I? I swear I resolved to cut down on single-use plastic (done) and become a volunteer usher (done) and date more (literally done with that lol, deleted my okc and her profiles a couple months ago cause this relationship is a Good Thing). For 2020 resolutions, see the last question, but also I want to cut even MORE down on plastic.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
from last year: listen.................. all my friends are gay............
4. Did anyone close to you die?
I just found out the other day that Helen, my favorite person from my job in NYC, has recently passed away. I loved her so much that one of the characters in my time-traveling baroness trilogy that I'm never going to finish has her last name. My uncle Peter has been declining really rapidly this year with Parkinson's and at least one form of cancer, and as of a week ago my Grandmom's 91-year-old husband (they married two years ago at the old folks' home) seems to be on the way out, so it's not a death but god the last few months have been hell on my mom's wonderful family.
5. What countries did you visit?
no countries, but I went to the beach with a group of my gay pals and we stayed in my parents' RV, and I went to Atlanta with my gf (recent gf at the time!) to be introduced to the concept of the McElroys in person and eat duck eggs at a swanky airBnB, and did an Asheville weekend with my gay pals, and.... is that it for road trips? yeah I think so. Right now I'm just gonna yell THE BIGFOOT MUSEUM IN NORTHERN GEORGIA CHANGED MY LIFE (edit: I did also very much go to NYC with my mom in.. March? I think? which I realize later down the page)
6. What would you like to have in 2020 that you lacked in 2019?
I said money last year and boy did I fuck that one up.. temporarily I hope though! 2020 might be too soon to hope, but GOD I just wanna make enough money that I can put my bills on direct deposit and not cry all the time
7. What dates from 2019 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
August 3rd was the day that Bailey very nervously asked me if we should consider being more than just weirdly-close friends via fb messenger, and also today (12/30) she sneaked into my condo while I was at work and left me a card with our first I Love You in it that I'm definitely not crying about (but in a different way than my usual financial crying)
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I was gonna say Bailey (lmao) but I have to mention here that after some Interpersonal Strife at the job I'd held for two years, I quit the shitty insurance biz, took out another student loan (RIFP me) and did a four-month full-stack coding boot camp so I could actually know something that wasn't proprietary to MetLife or Brighthouse and have a great big career change! I was very proud of my first few websites and I can write javascript in my sleep now... unfortunately with no previous experience in the field the first job offer I got (which I had to take after living on savings and a credit card for five months) pays $17/hr and I was previously up to $22/hr at my horrible Brighthouse job.
9. What was your biggest failure?
what with the huge career change, none of the DIY stuff I hoped to do this year got done, which has been stressy. I guess finances? but that wasn't really a personal failing? like it's not my fault I'm making less money when I've crash-landed in a new career after like sixteen weeks of training, that's just life. this is definitely a better career path, it's just gonna be rocky for a little while.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
nothing serious! I have the end-of-year sniffles right now, but I'm 100% sure it's been brought on by stress. I just agreed to take a second job TA'ing the same class I took but nights and weekends, and I'm extremely worried I won't be able to maintain that + my actual job + all the shit I do at the UU + all the fun stuff I do with my friends + seeing my gf like every day without going nuts.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
either going in with four of my friends on a photo op with David Tennant and Catherine Tate, or the life-sized cardboard cutout of the Tenth Doctor I saw at a random candy shop uptown during Pride weekend that I impulse-purchased and then nicknamed Davey and began to treat like a son. We buckled him into the back seat of Bailey's car and took him with us on road trips to Atlanta and to Asheville, and I even decorated him for Christmas. He's standing right behind me right now with that judgy look on my face... what a good cardboard sonsband he is. Our photo with him wearing a cape and me in my sas-crotch shorts out front of the Bigfoot Museum is iconic and the hardest I can ever remember laughing.
12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Bailey OBVIOUSLY whom the hell else!
13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Tuchis the raggedy mean old cat is still a problem - for the last few months his thing has been leaving giant shits in the middle of my living room floor, and since I'm home by 4 and the renter (his mamá) gets home at like 9:30.... am I gonna sit there and smell cat shit all afternoon or just clean HER CAT'S SHIT OFF MY FLOOR.... again, I know she loves her boy but I cannot wait until Satan comes and gets his cat
14. Where did most of your money go?
bills during the six-ish months of unemployment... also I forgot I was on a income-only for six months repayment plan on my new boot camp student loan, so next month it jumps from charging me $77 a month to $350 a month! and i! dont! have that much money! thus the second job rifp
15. What were you really, really, really excited about?
I mean, Bailey, but I'm not gonna have her be the answer to everything. Last year my answer was "CAT" so I'm gonna amend that and say "CATS (2019)" which I have been baffled by for at least one calendar year and which i was DELIGHTED to finally witness two days ago and to discover that it was just as horrible as I hoped it would be...... iconique and blessed........ Ian Mckellan's meows......... Judi Dench gazing directly into my soul................ the Victoria one's THIGHS............... I cannot wait to own this monstrosity on DVD
Oh and meeting David Tennant. Did I say yet that Bailey and I saw Good Omens and we both imprinted on the two main dudes to an unhealthy degree and then spent every Friday night for the next couple weeks working on cosplays at her place until literally 6am until we had pulled together Aziraphale (me duh) and Crowley (her) costumes to wear to Supercon/Galaxycon in Raleigh? and that's the circumstances under which we met DT? we fell in love (!!) via shared infatuation with a David Tennant-based TV show which is valid
16. What song will always remind you of 2019?
gotta be John Barrowman's cover of A Thousand Years (the Twilight song)... I started trolling Bailey with the original version over the summer and got to calling it Our Song, and then she found an old-ass vid on her phone of JB in a sparkly TARDIS dress singing it at some con she'd been to, I discovered his KICK-ASS cover on youtube, and then I hid about eight copies of it on her playlist under the guise of being different ABBA songs that don't actually exist before our Atlanta road trip
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) Happier or sadder? Happier for sure, but I'm fuckin exhausted which isn't great. Bailey and I see each other almost every day, our amazing friend group (GAYme Night) meets up a few times a month for adventures or DnD or movie screenings or whatever, and now I'm about to start this second job? idk. but GOD I love my friends and my big soft good cute gf
b) Bigger or smaller? probably the same bud
c) Richer or poorer? fuck man im so goddamn poor
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
uh.. sleeping? idk........ like I feel like I did my best this year. eating vegetables maybe?
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
worrying and crying I guess? idk, according to Bailey I seem to very clearly have undiagnosed ADHD which explains a lot of unfinished projects around the house and stuff, and explains why I sometimes can't Do Things unless there's a video or podcast playing in the background, but yeah I worry a lot, especially lately
20. How did you spend Christmas?
worked from home since I don't have vacation days at my new job yet except mostly I tried to finish my Christmas Task List, and then everything took longer than I thought so I had readjust my plan a billion times, but finally I went to my first ever Christmas Eve service at the UU (god it was so GOOD, we sang traditional songs and the service was about the value in taking joy in tradition even if you don't know if your beliefs align with them in a literal sense) then left straight from there to zoom the two hours up to my hometown where I arrived just in time to attend the 11pm service at the old Lutheran church... which was a little bit of a shitshow... as soon as I arrived some dude who's known me since I was born made a shitty comment about my outfit (fuck you im gay i can wear as many patterns as i want?) and then there were like only fifty people in the building including the ones leading the service and the pastor accidentally read the wrong passage with SO MUCH ENTHUSIASM but never even noticed he was reading the same thing the last reader did (....) and they only sang weird songs no one had heard of instead of Christmas Classics. but at the end they did Silent Night and distant cousins of mine sang the descant my mom loves and she was so happy she cried, and then after that my dad took it upon himself to ring the bell in the steeple at midnight and they both enjoyed those two things so much that it canceled out the other bad shit. Then it was a normal Christmas day and my mom's house, and after we loaded my parents' old couch into a borrowed truck (to give to Bailey on Boxing Day) I drove back to Charlotte.
21. How many one-night stands?
this is a dumb question.... Bailey and I were Inseparable Gal Pals for like uhhhhh... well I fuckin mentioned her in my This Quiz from last year as a Great New Friend I had made, and I told you about the cosplay thing, and then I mentioned August???? we finally realized we should be dating???? and we didn't hold hands till our second date and it took us a week to kiss so this question is dumb. (tbh I was just terrified I would find out I was lying to myself and wasn't into girls after all but. that is. not the case)
22. Did you fall in love in 2019?
YEAH
23. What was your favourite TV programme?
Good Omens I guess, cause the cosplay and the gf and everything, even though once we started dating we both 100% forgot like everything about the show that had previously dominated all our waking thoughts......... it's like....... maybe we were just using it to express something....... we were both feeling............. that we saw in Aziraphale and Crowley...........
24. How will you see in the New Year?
it's shindig year! every other year my NYE plans get canceled or I'm too grumpy to coordinate anything, but this year is an On year so I'm having the pals over for a pajama/ugly sweater party that will include DnD, cheese AND chocolate fondue (provided by Babeley), and idk what else...... ABBA obviously
25. Do you hate / dislike anyone now that you didn't hate / dislike this time last year?
um, there are some people in the friend group that I love less than others... I shouldn't say this lol it's judgy. I love my mom so much but she's been harder to talk to since I came out to her, but that also could just be down to stress over her entire family being so sick cause those things happened around the same time
26. What was the best book you read?
did I read a book this year? yeah! I did yeah, I read Good Omens but didn't really like it (too much casual misogyny for me GOD im sick of male authors) but then was also talked into reading the Monstrous Regiment one which I did enjoy! and I started reading one with a weird name... like Bells! Bells! or something? it has exclamation marks... but it's just.... about dudes... I really don't care about dudes......... the only women in the whole thing are like casually mentioned sex workers without names or roles in the story except as decoration.... so I haven't gotten very far even though I like the writing style.
27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
besides John goddamn Barrowman singing A Thousand Years (THE KEY CHANGE!) I guess uhhh.. oh damn did I even listen to anything new this year? wait... is this the year I went to NYC with my mom to see Cher? YEAH holy shit I totally forgot! Yeah I saw Cher in Charlotte last January and loved it so much and my mom expressed regret she missed it, so we got tickets to see her when she stopped in Brooklyn in... March?... and then we went to NYC and saw Cher on a Thursday, then Come From Away on Friday and Waitress and the Pretty Woman musical on the Saturday! I forgot that was this year omg. So yeah sorry so the answer is Cher's new CD "Dancing Queen" that's just her doing ABBA covers.
28. What did you want and get?
jeef. and I became a Blumenthal usher so I got to see Aladdin like four times, plus the Cats lady whose name I can't remember right now in Hello Dolly, plus Once on this Island, plus a bunch of other more regional shows all for free! oh damn I also forgot this is the year I had to replace my 36 yo air conditioner... add that to the list of things I'm paying monthly and yeah no wonder getting a pay decrease sucked
29. What did you want and not get?
a job that pays more than $40K
30. What was your favourite film of this year?
I mean probably that gay-ass Charlie's Angels reboot with Kristen Stewart, but also CATS bc it was so fuckin wild I cannot BELIEVE... Jennifer Hudson just awkwardly crawling down that alley on all fours.... Idris Elba poofing someone invisible and then going "Ma-ca-vi-TYYYYYYYY"
31. What did you do on your birthday?
omg was this the year I threw the shindig at mine? yeah! yeah and our new bud Tom did balloon animals for everyone, and I finally successfully made macarons! god this has been a long year
32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
edited from last year: a different Senate
33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2019?
my closet is EXCLUSIVELY patterned button-downs now, which I no longer have to wear partially-unbuttoned bc they all fit. I'm not allowed to wear jeans at my new job, so having to buy non-jean pants that DON'T have a print on them is very difficult bc I LOVE PRINTS, but I have to keep my clashing prints at home and at the UU I guess. and most of my shoes came from the dude section - I have a couple pairs of oxfords, some REALLY comfy brown sneakers that look like leather but probs arent bc they're from walmart, and those pink chucks... also sweaters. AND BAILEY GAVE ME A RAINBOW FANNY PACK FOR CHRISTMAS WITH BIGFOOT SILKSCREENED ON IT
34. What kept you sane?
the UU as always, and Bailey's secondhand therapy... she's so wise and good
35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I mean it's gotta be Davey Tennant right? Billie Piper was supposed to be in our big group photo too but she backed out of the con, which was honestly a relief bc seeing Tennant and Catherine Tate was A LOT. I'm gonna interpret "fancy" as "talk about" lol. If we have to think of it romantically, I mean... I can't stop thinking about Victoria the cat's thighs.......
36. What political issue stirred you the most?
I'm pretty depressed over the fucking concentration camps we're running at the border for Mexican refugees, and the fact that it was over 70 degrees today on December 30th
37. Who did you miss?
it might be preemptive but I miss how hilarious and wise and silly and dry my uncle Peter was before he got so sick.
38. Who was the best new person you met?
preserving this from last year bc THIS IS MY GF:
this might be jumping the gun but my most recent okc date was with someone who had the EXACT SAME SENSE OF HUMOR AS ME and knew almost all of the random shows and movies and youtube videos as I did. I can't wait to hang with her again. we went to an advance screening of Aquaman and stood in the parking lot laughing our asses off at whatever we had just witnessed for nearly two hours afterward
other than that........... I'm not sure. this was mostly a year of getting to know new friends better
39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2019.
plan affordable, wacky excursions as often as possible. also, almost everyone I know has ADHD apparently
40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
"ONE... STEP... CLOOO....SERRR...... (key change) ONNNNNE! STEEEEEEPPP! CLOOOOOO! SEEEEEE! AHHHHhhhhHHHHH"
41. What was your favourite moment of the year?
I mean probably when I put on those headphones at the Bigfoot museum and a voice said something like "this is a sound that no human could have made, that MUST have been made by a sasquatch" and then the dumbest fucking sound I've ever heard in my life played like "AUUGHHAHAHAHAHHGCKKKKKKughhhh" and I sat there laughing until I just started sobbing
42. What was your least favourite moment of the year?
like... this past week? just the sick people stress and everything. but also in the spring when everybody at my last job kept reporting me to HR for making references to being gay (it made the Uncomfortable) and then when Jeff, who had been my friend for two years, got mad at me for something else and retaliated by telling HR a fake story about me that they then told me meant I was on my "final warning" so I basically had no choice but to quit... that wasn't Great
43. Where were you when 2019 began?
I think I was pouting and playing Stardew Valley because I wanted my college friends to log on and do the co-op with me but they flaked out... like why did I expect anything else from those well-intentioned but unreliable people
44. Who were you with?
what's the one from the beach? the writer with the long hair? I had this whole arc planned out where I would re-enact my closeted days by marrying him, but then I would divorce him and marry my One True Stardew Valley Love Leah, but then I moved on from my Stardew Valley fixation before I actually got that far along
45. Where will you be when 2019 ends?
right here, inflicting Happy New Year by ABBA on whatever friends haven't gotten overstimulated and gone home yet, and then smooching my cute gf probably
46. Who will you be with when 2019 ends?
Babeley, her sibling who's in town for the holidays, our DM Ele (maybe), Ele's sibling (who I'm 100% sure will need to go home before midnight will take this whole faction with them), Ele's sibling's SO I think?, Ele's mom, our good pal Tom the balloon artist, good ol' reliable Cate, and of course my cardboard cutout of David Tennant and my screamy baby cat son Brad
47. What was your favourite month of 2019?
well being with Bailey gets better and better, but I think August when we started dating and went to Atlanta (we saw the Mick Elroys, the aquarium, the zoo, and had a cursed Lyft ride from a cursed Mellow Mushroom lmao) and the Sasquatch Museum, and then found out about a BIGFOOT FESTIVAL that was only a couple hours away so we went to that shortly therafter and it was BUCKWILD... actually that might have been September, which I think is also the month we went to the balloon festival, and that kicked ass. so maybe September? except that was the month the coding boot camp ended and I just applied for jobs and cried for three solid weeks and that sucked
48. Did you drink a lot of alcohol in 2019?
okay LISTEN......... we discovered that Aldi sells CHOCOLATE WINE......... it tastes like.... idk, hot chocolate maybe? but cold? and it's SO alcoholic yall that is NOT wine........ anyway THAT! that's my SHIT
49. Did you do a lot of drugs in 2019?
no don't be dumb. Bailey gave me some spare Vyvanse on two occasions, once bc I was going insane trying to figure out how to plan everything for Christmas (last week) and once just to see what would happen (what happened was I finished two projects in two days), but it was bc she's pretty sure that as soon as I have health insurance again and start going to a therapist I will be prescribed that or something similar for the ADHD that I probably have
50. How many people did you sleep with in 2019?
one very good person
51. Did you do anything you are ashamed of this year?
uhmmm I mean probably, right? like just in general probably. but nothing's coming to mind as particularly egregious
52. What was the worst lie someone told you in 2019?
idk if I get lied to very often... my renter tells some batshit stories that probably aren't true, but who cares
53. Did you treat somebody badly in 2019?
I can't think of anything... I'm always a little snippy with two of my friends whom I adore but who really do get on my nerves in some situations, so I could probably do better about that, but they're used to it by now and they know I mean well
54. Did somebody treat you badly in 2019?
the folks at Brighthouse sure did fuck up my life, huh?
56. How much money did you spend in 2019?
well the damn coding boot camp was $11K and I loaded about $4K in living expenses on a credit card during that time, plus drained about the same amount from my savings... and the new HVAC system was uhhhh... about $5K I think? I had to finance it obviously.......... again yeah, this bish needs that second job but pray for me
57. If you could go back in time to any moment of 2019 and change what?
I wouldn't mind re-playing all our previous DnD sessions and injecting more creativity into them now that I've listened to almost every episode of The Adventure Zone over the course of like a month lmao. My current character (don't tell my friends but Bailey and the DM and I are conspiring to kill her off soon) is The Right Honorable Dread Pirate Honeypot J. Macdougall (the J stands for Jorts) and she's a real pain in the ass which is a lot of fun to play as a new player, but I could have done a lot more with it.
58. What are your plans for 2020?
Have two jobs through April when the class I'm TA'ing for ends. Will I then need to TA another whole-ass class to make ends meet? God I hope not. Pay off the credit card before August, when interest will start accumulating. Finish up the app I'm working on at my new job and hope the income the company makes from it translates into a raise. Smooch Bailey a lot and watch all the stuff on our to-watch list together. Cross off at least half the projects on my procrastination station whiteboard.