2007

~
the year, that is. Something about New Year's Eve seems to call for that kind of thing (and for me to play The Children of the Revolution loudly) so here goes, in no particular order:

The Good:

The Postdoc
The 5 weeks in London
Coming to India
Wandering around India
Family
Time to think
Research
The Beyond the Books conference
Spending two months doing nothing in Toronto
Discovering the Harry Potter books (and reading the first 6 the week before book 7 came out)
New Music I've loved : Junoon, DeVotchka, In Flight Safety and Joan Osborne
Surviving Dal
Chocolate, red wine, G & T
Can-lit: I devoured a lot of it this summer (thanks to my house/cat sitting gig!)
Reading fiction for fun
My wonderful housemates
Jane, my Ipod (thank you, Apple!)
Bollywood can be fun
The Tata Indicom "Walky" which lets me log onto the 'net from some remarkable places
My peeps, new and old (I don't know what I'd have done without you -- you know who you are! -- this year)
Moving back to Toronto
Missing the Canadian winter
Colour
Cats
Rediscovering Chinatown
Wonderful academic mothers
The joys of mail, MSN and letter/ postcard writing

Not so good:

Coming to India
(too much) Time to think
Family
My delicate stomach
The last few months at Dal
Leaving Toronto (again)
Cancer (two more people I care about were diagnosed this year)
Not finishing the book yet
Roaches on trains (don't ask! shudder)
Too much teaching
The winter of discontent in Halifax
Time spent reading crappy fiction
Missing my peeps (again, you know who you are!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So girls and boys and cats, I've learnt that some of the things that made me the happiest this year also have the power to crush me or frustrate me beyond words. I suppose realizing that is something, right? Now if I can just figure out what to do with this knowledge.....
Also, also, and really, I know this and I'm grateful -- the Good outweighs the Not-so-Good by so much that I'm humbled by how lucky, how privileged, how healthy and how happy I should be, and generally, am. When I think about how far I've come this year -- I can't for the life of me even remember where I was last New Year's (I know, that's a deplorable memory) -- I'm rendered wordless.

So I'll just wish y'all all the happiness you want for the new year and go now.