Hubris

Buckle in kids, it’s gonna be a loooooong one! It’s taken me four different sessions just to finish it.

1. What did you do in 2022 that you’d never done before?

• Had my ass eaten for the first time. I wasted 24 years not having my ass eaten, frankly. 
• Posted completely naked photos of myself on the internet. Oh look, I’ll do it again cos I love this series of photos so much

• Caught COVID. Twice. 
• Had a semi-long-distance semi-relationship? 
• Cut my hair short (ish). Or at least as short as it’s been since I was 3.

Honestly a lot of the year was a blur with the Long COVID and the brain fog and exhaustion so it seems like most of my “new” things are in the that one dude basket, cos it was not a year of career highs or many achievements. But oh I’ll add

• Threw an amazing camp for 40+ babes

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I don’t believe I had made New Year’s Resolutions for 2022 and since I didn’t do this review for 2021 I don’t have a written record of them. But yes, I have ONE resolution this year: enter the Sunday Star Times short story contest. 

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

I… don’t think so? Wait, no, Kate B did! Yay babies! I have yet to meet him though but hopefully that’ll happen in February. And maybe Stephanie? I am actually not 100% sure whether things happened in 2021 and 2022. See: Long Covid. 

4. Did anyone close to you die?

We weren’t that close, but Cat was a super important role model for me. I wrote about that extensively in my last post. 

5. What countries did you visit?

No international travel! But my JoJoJo did come visit from Melbourne, TWICE.

But let me tell you instead about my domestic travel. 

In February I booked a weekend at an old schoolhouse in Nireaha when postponed Camp was supposed to be after I had to cancel that due to COVID levels. We ‘swam’ in the old school pool that was about a metre or less deep, marveled at how there were eight sinks in the property and at night dragged duvets and all the pillows outside to make a great big puppy pile and look at the amazingly clear night sky. There were shooting stars! It was the best! Here’s a class pic:

In July I decided to book myself a proper lux holiday as well as taking a week off work to try to recover better from COVID. I considered various places in the country, but was wary after the July floods I got stuck in back in July 2021 in Blenheim, so I thought I’d take it easy on myself and just go to Martinborough. I booked in to Parehua Resort, booked lunch at Poppies, and then it rained and rained. I drove up in the sunshine and discovered that the road from the south into Martinborough was closed due to flooding. I drove to the east as Google directed me and discovered that way into Martinborough was also closed. I drove to the west to try to get into Martinborough that way, and once again, roads were closed. All I could do at that stage was laugh, and remind myself my holiday goals were to be off social media, to get out of my house and to get some sunshine, and I was achieving all of those things in my car. Eventually after a very long round about way, I managed to get in from the north, hurrah! And it was a truly luxurious decadent stay, with a degustation dinner in the resort’s restaurant, lots of baths, much book reading and strolling to Palliser Estate through the vines – as far as I was able to walk. 

In August, I spent a weekend in Whanganui with the man. It was one of the best weekends of my life. There were supposed to be a couple more but that didn’t end up happening. Oh but I did meet a goat in Whanganui who was called Marshmallow. 

6. What would you like to have in 2023 that you lacked in 2022?

A profitable business. House of Boom did not make any money – in fact, it cost me a lot to run. Why do I have this stupid expensive hobby? I am trying to shift out of it, but that brings up a lot of issues for me about my identity, and who am I without it, etc.  

7. What date from 2020 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

July 24. I don’t think I’m ever going to forget sex in a lighthouse and a briefcase of gold coins that opened up like something from Pulp Fiction. 

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I said this in the 2020 summary too, but surviving. 2022 was HARD. Having my brain knocked out from beneath me by the Long COVID brain fog was some serious shit. 

I think that I mostly managed to take care of the people I love as well though, and that’s very important to me, though there were some lapses when I had no strength. 

And Camp Boom in the City 2022 was a moveable feast of PIVOT PIVOT PIVOT but I did it for Cat and I’m really proud it got done. 

AND it’s still a bit of a roller coaster, but my very lengthy amounts of time spent lying on the floor next to the bed upstairs throwing bits of shredded chicken at her has paid off when Katie will come inside now and ever so often allow me to pat her. What a treat! 

9. What was your biggest failure?

Surely by now I have done enough therapy to accept that many things that I view as failures are things are actually things that are outside of my control? For example: 

• Running an ethical clothing business (ie: basically a luxury for most people) at a time when the cost of living is rising ridiculously fast is not a recipe for success, especially when I do all the things that I believe it is moral to do – organising clothes swaps, calling out the media for fatphobic bullshit instead of kissing their ass to get good coverage, etc etc
• I absolutely knew I was running a huge risk falling in love with someone who’d raised a number of red flags. But do you know what’s awesome and a worthwhile thing to do? Falling in love. Oh and do you know what you actually can’t stop yourself from doing, probably? Falling in love. And I don’t think there are things that I could have done differently that would have produced a better outcome. Well, maybe not the drunk texts in December. Those weren’t helpful at all.  
• I do not think I achieved much in my day job this year, for a couple of reasons – mostly the long COVID. But I think most of my coworkers would have found me helpful when they needed me, and many of them seem to like it when I’m actually in the office, so perhaps I am not quite as much of a failure there as I sometimes feel I was

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Yes. Yes I did. 

In February, my troublesome filling had cracked open (thanks Wellington Water for the lack of fluoride in our water!) and got infected and it was an absolute misery. Here’s a photo of my swollen face. 

I had to have it removed, and now I am waiting for my parents to die so I can get it replaced. (My parents’ eventual death is absolutely my proposed solution to all my financial difficulties, but don’t worry, I am not a Menendez brother). 

The first bout of COVID absolutely fucked me up and continues to have an effect. Its latest fun thing? I’m ALLERGIC TO THE SUN NOW. Luckily it’s okay if I take an antihistamine first and after but I think that contributed to my very very bad sunburn from Russell in early January 2023. 

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Probably that expensive holiday in July, in terms of its restorative powers? But also perhaps all the time I spent on Boom in terms of what it did for others. 

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Always the answer to this will be Jo. And Sara, my right hand for Boom. Anji who lent me money so I could spend $1200 having a lump removed from Katie. Oh, you might not even know who Katie is if you don’t follow me on socials! This is Katie.

Callie, my other cat, who every night is super excited to snuggle up with me in bed and purrs and purrs and purrs like a hive of bees, although I wish she would overcome her reluctance to meet all my other friends. And sometimes I would like to be able to finish reading the paper.

But also I need to acknowledge how absolutely lucky I am to work where I do, to be able to work from home when I’m fatigued, to have taken the amount of sick leave that I have, for my workmates to understand. I guess it helps that two others now have Long Covid too – I was the pioneer! I don’t know how people in less supportive workplaces can survive it. 

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

The last time I answered this I said “COVID deniers. Right wing assholes. Centerist politics” and you know that’s going to be the answer again this year too. Watching Republicans gleefully stripping away reproductive rights and trans rights in the US is scary. TERFdom here in NZ is loud but a minority but we need to be vigilant, always. 

14. Where did most of your money go?

This has been a very very expensive year. Some standout costs:

• Refunding everyone for Camp Boom 2021 cost me a couple of thousand dollars in sunk costs for things like swag, travel to Taupō, deposits, sending people the swag they were supposed to get as part of Camp’s manakitanga. And of course because I was a dickhead and started selling tickets to Camp in the previous financial year it created a huge mess that I have yet to pay my accountant to sort out. 
• Getting my fucked up tooth that had a broken filling completely removed was EXPENSIVE. They’ve changed the sedation laws in NZ now, so whereas it used to be $80 for oral sedation (and my dentist would only charge me $40 because he knew I was getting it for my rape PTSD), it now costs $350 because they have to put you in a chair and monitor your oxygen the whole time and a whole bunch of other kerfuffle. AND it wore off halfway through too and yeah I know I bragged in my last year in review that EMDR had helped me go to the dentist – and it does – it did not help enough when I could feel them ripping the tooth out. Ugh, I’m crying just thinking about it. Anyway, that was a thousand something dollars all up and I still have a big hole (heh) – a new tooth will be like $7k and I can’t help but feel like the dude who raped me should pay for my sedation for life, frankly.  Though Stupidly Hot Dentist did just tell me that instead of paying $7k here, I should take a trip to Spain and see his friend there and get a holiday included for the price. Luckily my teeth aren’t moving and it isn’t damaging my mouth to not replace the tooth – but additional dentist checkups to ensure that continues to be the truth continues to be an expense. 
• Having COVID was expensive. Not the medical care itself – that was blessedly covered and continues to be covered under COVID Care  and I am extremely lucky that the counseling I got came under Employee Assistance Programme – but the lifestyle expenses that mount up when you have isolation periods and then extreme fatigue. A supermarket trip would wipe me out for days so I’ve switched to online delivery mostly, I rely on paying someone to clean my house, more meals delivered etc. And then once you get used to something, it’s hard to give it up. 
• My car needed $2000 of repairs when I went for a warrant. I’m told that a rusting thingie holding the engine in is like a once in ten years repair, and I really hope that’s the truth. 
• Tower, who my house was insured with through our bodycorp of two decided that they didn’t want to insure bodycorps anymore. My house and the other half of it with the best neighbours in the world wrap around each other in complicated ways, so if something affects one of us, it will fuck up the other too (case in point, my dishwasher leak flooded their house more than mine – I am very relieved it was a loose fitting rather than my hot water cylinder dying though my plumber has warned me to start saving up for that), so we ended up going with Vero who said they could handle us not having a literal firewall as long as we both got policies with them) and now I pay $3600+ a year in insurance (including contents and third party car) and yet my body corp dues haven’t gone down? I should look into that I guess.  
• As I have already mentioned, in August, after darting into the house at night to eat whenever she thought I was asleep, Katie started sleeping on a blanket inside, and let me crawl up to her and pat her and cuddle her for a couple of nights in a row, which is how i discovered she had a huge lump on her leg that felt like an unpoppable abscess. The vet drew fluid out of it and said it wasn’t an abscess, so it had to be removed and tested. Luckily it turned out to be benign, but that whole thing cost me probably around $1500. The best part of it was that afterwards I had to keep her in a crate for a couple of weeks in a cone of shame, during which my friends would visit her and pat her and she’d purr and purr. I thought that’d be the turning point in our relationship, but when I moved around big stacks of boxes and other supplies for Camp Boom in the City 2022, she got spooked and that combined with the warmer weather drove her outside again. 

• Then the other big expense was Camp Boom 2022, of course. I spent $200 on Fimo for one session? I decided a photobooth was essential for the experience, so bought a new printer (partly because my old one was the fucking DEVIL) and then the wifi at the venue needed a web page gateway to log into and we couldn’t even print from the photobooth anyway. I am reckless with money, but also didn’t sell as many tickets as I had hoped, and had to refund some people with COVID, and there are a couple of speakers who were supposed to pay for half of their tickets and didn’t, and ugh, it’s awkward. And of course I created too many scholarships because there were too many worthy people, and that’s why I’m still really angry about the person who got the media scholarship and didn’t bother to show up and didn’t do anything about letting me know so I could reassign it. GRRRR. 

Look, I make a good salary. I live a good life by many measures. I am very lucky. But bills bills bills! I don’t know how people afford to have kids. 

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

I mean, I feel that this entire formatting of questions has already led us all to the answer of GETTING MY ASS EATEN. Though, if y’all actually know me as a person who prepares for things and actually that was out of the blue, I guess we are going to have to put in a bullet point list of things I got excited for: 

• Jo coming over after all the COVID keeping us apart, and how ironic it was that I got COVID right before and basically ruined our time together (this is not how she would describe it but she is a better human than I). And then me getting very very excited that I got to have dinner with her in December too and I DIDN’T CRY THEN!!! 
• YELLOWJACKETS!!!!! Omg like I love some other TV shows (Evil, White Lotus, Industry, Taskmaster, Shortland Street even though they don’t have any fat characters 
• Of course I’m going to say Camp Boom. 
• And Sajoween! This year was the sixth Halloween party that Saj & I threw together, and the theme was Horror Prom. Ya’ll, I was VOTED PROM QUEEN!!! But I didn’t get to slow dance with anyone.

But I think we all know that what I was most excited about was that there was someone who seemed to be so into me, who called me multiple times a day, who made me feel so fucking amazing and. Well. Yeah. 

16. What song will always remind you of 2020?

There’s two songs. There’s hope

 and determination: 

Do you see how it’s fucking goddamn 2023 and I’m embedding a PLACEBO song? Like oh yes remember how in 1999 I went to a Placebo concert with Thomas and afterwards he asked me to be his girlfriend? I know. I KNOW. Stupid hetrosexuality flashbacks! I would have a lot more of an issue of it if it wasn’t for the amazing 100% positive influence of Nors in my life who had a Placebo tattoo – which is part of why we hooked up – so it’s not ALWAYS bad. 

But also, the Mavis song has been a favourite of mine since I heard it spin up at Monterey in the olden days, but I’ve never felt it so much as when all my thoughts were consumed by someone 194km away, especially when they – or I – wasn’t doing so great. 

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

I’m fatter, possibly quite a lot more but my only measures are my clothes. I can tell you that COVID destroyed all my pretensions towards moving my body but did not affect my appetite in the long term so you bet I am fatter. I should keep track of it – but only because I am the body model for my clothing label. If I have started doing a size 5 – because inclusion is important – but maybe I have taken a shirt in a size 5 rather than my usual 4, I am actually responsible to reporting that to people.

I am poorer because I got a very generous amount of money from my mother for Xmas 2021, and I used that to pay for Camp debts and trying to keep Boom going.

I don’t know if I am happier or sadder. There’s been a lot of things happen but maybe I am better equipped to deal with them? So we’ll call it the same.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

I think every year I say dancing and swimming, but if I was to write the answers every year I would also say FUCKING.

So you know, all of those things. Also in a post COVID world, I wish I had been ABLE to spend more time walking and carrying things, and also dancing. 

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

 Waiting on replies from that boy who was never going to be able to answer me properly. 

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

For Xmas we spent it at my parents’ place, going over in the afternoon. Sometime in November I had called out my absolute brokenness and warned people that I absolutely could not afford to spend the usual amount on them, and had suggested at $25 price limit and a focus on handmade gifts. 

In theory, I intended this to be a chilling out of things. Hello, hi, have you met me? So I ended up making rosemary & lemon-infused salt for everyone, 

So, as has become the tradition for the past couple fo years, I spent a couple of hours on Xmas Day making Mum a Spekkoek – the cake Oma used to make that’s a huge part of hers – and my – childhood – that now I am basically trapped into making forever. But an op shop trip yielded me more than that. I bought Saj antiquey champagne flutes cos I know she doesn’t actually have that much of her own kitchenware – and her rented house has less than that (you want me to drink bubbles out of a white wine glass like som SAVAGE?). For my father I made the melting moments kind of biscuits that Granny used to make, getting Mum to find me the exact kind of old timey cotton reel to press into the top like Granny did that we used to nibble around – but of course they melted too much because while I am a great cook, I am not a great baker. Anji & Karen got truffles that looked like poops.  Bambi got peanut butter miso chocolate chip cookies and Tom got parmesan rosemary shortbread. But also. Because Tom loves going for walks, I spent a good number of hours planning out an urban ramble route for him, taking in mind places for drinks to stop by, asking him trivia questions along the way and everything. I made him gorgeous documents laying out every clue along the way that took a long time to prepare. And the point? Well I think it speaks for itself

21. Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?

That boy. Frequent facetime sessions. Jo I mostly messaged all day long on and off every day. For example she knows right now I am watching Gossip Girl the reboot so I can send her messages like “DOROTA!!!” all caps and she’ll know what I mean without any other context. 

I also have a groupchat with Saj & Sara that keeps me grounded too. 

22. Did you fall in love in 2022?

Yes. Very much so. 

More wholesomely, Callie Cat and I have consolidated our snuggles and it’s lovely. 

23. How many one-night stands?

None. I did have a quick pash with a babe as they were leaving Rachel’s hens’ do but I don’t even know their name. 

Oh but here’s the slightly weird thing. So you know how I had many feelings about a boy? We actually only spent four nights together, ish, and every one of them was in a different bed. 

24. What was your favorite TV program?

Yellowjackets! And then White Lotus s2. Either way, both were THE BEST to repeatedly message Jo about. 

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

The February occupation of Parliament that fucked up so many people’s lives made it real hard to feel kind of neutral about antivaxxers eh

26. What was the best book you read?

Greta and Valdim! Please give me a sequel ASAP. SUCH A GOOD BOOK OMG

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Heartbreak High, the very queer very lovely reboot was full of great music that I shazamed to add to my playlists. I also watched some of Glastonbury and added things like Wet Leg and Wolf Alice from that. I don’t think I listened to many whole new albums, apart from Bey. 

28. What did you want and get?

Laid. 

29. What did you want and not get?

To hold Camp Boom in Taupō delayed from 2021. A truly domesticated Katie cat who’d come to me for snuggles. 

30. What was your favorite film of this year?

I do not remember any movies that I watched, to be honest. 

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 42, so I threw a Purple Reign party, based loosely on the idea that Elvis died when he was 42 but I’m coming into my power.

On my actual birthday my family and I went to eat asardo (ha, I started writing that assado) at Nikau and it was very very bad service, I do not recommend.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

If I had rolled down the window of my Uber when the driver was wearing her mask under her nose and coughing – or even better just got the fuck out – so that I wouldn’t have caught COVID-19 and had to deal with Long Covid. 

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2022?

I have lived in my JoJo JimJams with all the sickness and working from home. 

34. Who kept you sane?

I’m not sure that I was sane? I mean, if you read my last journal entry you’ll know there was suicidal ideation and a lot of counselling and many breakdowns. But definitely Jo was there for me, like the time I ate too many pot brownies to deal with period/back pain and got very very very paranoid about all the ways I was potentially being racist in my Camp planning (It ranged from “I’m giving people bowls with koru curls on them made by my mother, a Pākehā woman” to “Oh no am I ghettoising speakers by having a panel discussion on the indigenous experience of fatness?”) . 

I would see Saj & Sara basically every week too, and they were my real world hugs and kindness and hair brushing. 

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I don’t think there was someone? I could be wrong though. Perhaps just some fat babes on instagram. 

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

Once again, fat liberation. 

37. Who did you miss?

E. I’m gonna miss him for a long time. 

38. Who was the best new person you met?

I’m not one hundred on the dates but I think I met Taina (and therefore Peta) for the first time at the start of 2022 when they came to a pop-up and from there Taina became a Boomette and now I plan to go to their wedding in two weeks – and Sara and I gave them their wedding present tonight at a group dinner so they wouldn’t have to open it in front of their family 😉 

But look, obviously I have to say E, even though yes, fair call we met in 2009, though I got to know literally nothing about him at the time except how he made me knees weak when we kissed. And yeah, I’m still not 100% sure about what stories were absolutely true or not, but I will always remember how he made me feel. And fucking hoooo boy by golly omg. I mean, it was nice and stuff. And actually I don’t even mean just sexually. I have never felt as seen. 

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2022

As much as I would like to, I can’t control others. All I can control is my own responses. 

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

“Open up this is a raid. 

I wanna get it through to you; 

You’re not alone”