I think my New Year's Resolution each year for the past few years has been to keep better records -- a planner, a journal, a budget. Anything, really. And yet again this year I am attempting to journal. We'll see how it goes. Feelings don't really belong here, in public, where people might read them, but longer updates and things can be fun to write, so I shall try to keep better track of them.

For the record, today is January 3rd, 2013, I haven't posted since July, I finished my undergraduate career several weeks ago, and I am attempting to stave off boredom, now that the holidays are over and there is still another week minimum before I will start working. In the last week, I attended several performances of the Reno Chamber Orchestra's annual Nevada Chamber Music Festical with EB, finished Rose Macaulay's "The Towers of Trebizond" and Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter's "The Long Earth", and didn't mail off thank you cards or finish very belated Christmas presents for my sisters and EB. I should maybe work on that...

I think I've really enjoyed the holidays this year, although there has been the looming worry of un/underemployment hanging over my head since about October. That's when things started to unravel, as my dad was avoiding me after coming out, midterms were picking up, EB was getting sick, and all I wanted to do was sleep. I ended up quitting rugby after spraining my ankle on Halloween at practice, and I'm still glad and sorry that I did so -- I was starting to make friends, and now I will have to start all over again with another group. But that's okay, since that's one of my Resolutions!

By Thanksgiving, I was practically in a panic -- sister the younger was having issues at home with my dad and in danger of failing some classes, and I was stressing about possibly moving her up here for her last semester and never being able to go home again. My dad still wasn't speaking to me, so the plan to go home for the long weekend to dogsit and keep him company while sister 2 and my mom were at a soccer tournament was scrapped, as was going back to the seed company, since I wouldn't have any place to live while I got settled. I ended up sleeping most of it and eating some of EB's family's Thanksgiving dinner leftovers. I don't know how she handles not being out to them and their apparent craziness. My family does some infuriating things sometimes, but I couldn't handle them not loving me for who I was. Even my dad's silent treatment was more him trying to process things, and the rest of my family has been incredibly supportive. I knew that graduating would be a surefire way to prove that I am still who I have always been and to make him proud, and I did barely scrape this semester together with straight Ds, and he did start calling again and everyone but sister 1 who is stuck in New York came up for graduation and went out to lunch and met EB and now I feel like I have a family again for sure.

Maybe that's why Christmas at home was such a relief.

And there I go, calling it home again, when it's not really. I only spent 4 days there, and yet I was itching to be back in Reno, where I belong, before we even got Christmas dinner on the table. I missed the quiet of my apartment and curling up with EB and all of the little things that I've become to used to. I left her my keys, since my roommates were out of town with their families so she could sleep somewhere safe and quiet and warm between overtime shifts, and she was there when I returned on the 26th, and that was like coming home. She then spent the best part of the last week staying at my apartment, and it felt so right. She found a house in midtown that we're going to look at soon. Together. To live in. The both of us. Together. I am so excited I could about burst!

The last few years have been nervewracking, and I don't really expect 2013 to be a walk in the park, but the first few hours of the New Year were some of the best of my life, and I think that makes for a really auspicious start! Here's to a new home, new friends, and a new job in the New Year!