Recovery: it looked a lot like this, but without the cute animals.

It’s January of 2014, officially that time of year where we decide to switch our calendars and spend two months forgetting we’ve done so. I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions, but I do reflect on what the past year has brought me.

In 2013 I…:

– wrote quite a lot, got my own blog, and then wrote quite a bit less. I am proud of this, and also quite sure that the latter half is not how it’s supposed to work.

– worked at Fabulous Unspecified Internship, decided what I wanted to do with at least the next ten or so years of my life, and then began applying to grad schools.

– moved to Columbus, interned for the Secular Student Alliance, moved back to Chicago, and then kept working for them.

– spent the whole of 2013 working on recovery, which included leaving therapy, going back to therapy, getting a new therapist, being far less troubled by body delusions (I can see myself accurately in mirrors a lot of the time now!)

– owned a pet rat, and 10/10 would repeat.

– visited the Creation Museum for a women’s conference and went to the NYC Solstice. I’ll leave it to the reader to guess which one I liked more.

– maintained close relationships with people who moved. This is a big deal. I’ve actually never been good at keeping in touch with…well, anyone. No ‘friendship permanence’ as it were. Except this year, I did. For the first time, I don’t live in a city with close friends–they live all over the continental US. And we keep in touch. We visit each other and skype and call and text and it’s working.

2013 Posts I Wrote and Liked the Most:

Falling in Love With People

Training Therapists: We’re Doing It Wrong

How Not To Be a Jerk to the Future of Your Movement

Forward Thinking: What Would You Tell Teens About Sex?

Posts I’d Like to Write:

Adoption! A general post about the stuff we keep getting wrong about how adoption works. I’ve actually written this post twice, but dammit WordPress stop deleting my drafts.

Some sort of reflection on my time at Northwestern. Both because this is The Traditional Thing To Do, and because I didn’t particularly enjoy the college part of being in college. I learned a lot of things, I made a lot of friends, I fell in and out of love, and all of that sort of thing, but very little of that was on campus, near campus, or as a result of being at Northwestern specifically.

How I’d Like To See Psychology Taught: I have feelings about this.

Deterioration effects and other ways we could measure the harm of talk therapies. (I wrote a fairly long and detailed paper on Lilienfeld last quarter and would like to be less hamstrung by “focus on the things that will make this an acceptable final paper and also it’s due soon”.)

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So! Onwards! To new places and visiting old friends and reading long books!