Memes, themes, dreams … 2012

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I cannot wait to see the back of this year. Cannot wait. From its inauspicious beginning, to the never-ending sick of May to September, the drama, madness and chaos has continued relentlessly. It has featured extremely difficult parenting moments, and pseudo-parenting of the big kids, who while not my direct parental responsibility, still have a big call on my emotional resources. It also featured a seemingly endless stream of challenges.

Benedict turned three. His celebration was joyous and it made my festive season to see him dive into his cake. At least I held my promise of always doing a special celebration for him.

We all worked hard. I was often stretched paper-thin with the responsibility of holding all of us together. My social life tanked, and I only managed 2/3 of the books for book club. In spite of all this, December is closing in on us and it will soon be time to start afresh.

For those not caught in my immediate tailspin, 2012 has had a few great memes.

#destroythejoint really took off in the later half of the year. Prompted by a radio shock jock who went too far, yet again, and mouthed off about the Prime Minister, #destroythejoint became and overnight sensation on Twitter and many fantastic words were written to re-dress the balance. The Prime Minister herself, who had had enough of all the blokes, and pretty much all the women too, carping on endless about her gender, about her clothes, her hair, and all the rest of the sexist crap which passes for commentary, gave it to the leader of the opposition with both barrels. Around the world, people applauded.

For my two cents? I don’t care what she wears, what her hair looks like, or what her marital status is, I want her to run the country well, and be treated with respect. Every time someone calls her Julia, instead of Prime Minister Gillard, it denigrates the post and the woman, and all that wearing down does the office, or our country no good. Keep calm and destroy the joint. *rant over*

The 2012 US election and goings on were fun with the hilarious photos with captions of Hillary Clinton sending texts.

Hey Hil whatcha doing?

Running the world.

Grumpy cats, binders full of women, it was a choice year of vitriol and invective. In February there was Kony 2012. Don’t even talk to me about the bad dancing from Korea, Somebody That I Used to Know or the girl licking the cat, ungracious Olympians, or old Spanish ladies ruining art.

A big storm crashed into New York and we are still waiting to see if the US will go over the fiscal cliff. A royal couple got pregnant after their wedding in which the arse of a bridesmaid got more attention than anything else, and an Australian radio station exercised extremely poor judgement. Australia final achieved a seat on the United Nations. The Eurozone wobbled quite a lot and there were a protests in the streets of Greece. The Arctic sea ice shrank to its lowest recorded level. An ABC employee was murdered in Melbourne. Violence erupted in Sydney over a film. Etta James died and so did Margaret Whitlam.

Closer at hand, the mummy blogger wars continued, and the rivalous carrying on reached new heights while women finally started to earn a living from their blogs, their writing and content provision. How scandalous of them!

For myself, the themes of 2012 included not realising my writing dreams as well as I’d like, blogging every day for the month of November, trying to keep sane while I worked full time, looked after my family and pretended to have a life. I wrote some wistful posts about how I’d like my life to be different and at the top of that list is more writing time and maybe a desk. I didn’t finish my Australian Women Writers 2012 challenge. I didn’t finish the three planned reviews. I did read a lot of good books and I blogged for Book to the Future on the best of them.

This year I considered again my stance on blogging and writing in general. I wondered what I all means, this publishing into the void. I tried to be a good mum and a good partner while I stole time to take photographs, write and paint my nails. At least I could rock the dark nail polish, as I lowered my standards, then lowered them once more. Fish fingers for dinner anyone?

I drank a lot of gin and even wrote about it, quite often. I burnt myself like a candle at both ends and in the middle, and finally concluded that if I didn’t start sleeping and actually managing my stress level, I might burst something. Fortunately, nothing serious came of all my niggling aliments, and I just needed to sleep, a lot.

It wasn’t all bad of course, we went to Hong Kong, I finally used Burkina Faso and got the right answer, I was short listed to go to Varuna (and will try again), we had a party for the 39th birthday, we laughed and cried together. This holiday break couldn’t come soon enough.

I will be working on sleeping, a lot, a whole blog overhaul and re-thinking how to balance my family, my dreams and working. I will buy all the Italian soap I can afford. I will stop receiving the New Yorker by mail (not yet, but I will), and I will commence walking regularly again, again. I want to carve out more reading time. I want to take my child on adventures, I want to love and laugh and have fun.

Tell me, how was your year?

What are your resolutions?