As I sit here on the couch, rain pouring outside, wrapped up in my new tortilla blanket that my husband gifted me for Christmas, I’ve realized something, I’m ending the year the exact way that I began it –

Sick.

Last year I went to bed right after the countdown and went to work the next day and made it a couple hours before I begged to come home and I ended up at home for ten days. This year, I got sick the day after Christmas, tested positive for Covid and have been glued to my bed or the couch. So my year started and ending with me being super sick and, I don’t know, that feels sort of the way this year was.

This year…this year was simultaneously the best and hardest year I’ve ever had to go through. So many good things and so many hard things.

This year has been really good for work and my job! I started off the year so broke and struggling for hours, mostly because I was so sick. But I quickly was given a full time position at the company, which I was so excited for, but I had to leave The Little Mermaid and the Pier for Carsland, which I was not so excited for. But it all ended up working out so well.

This year, I transferred to Luigi’s Rollicking Roadsters and I’ve never been happier. I love that little attraction so much. I love the people that I work with and I love showing up to work every day. The best thing happened when I got full time and got to transfer there because I am truly so happy over there. Another great part of the year – I applied for trainer at Luigi’s and I got it! I haven’t officially made it yet because this year has been chaos haha but I love it there and I’m happy to be there and I’m excited to help other cast members love it too. I also learned another attraction – WEB Slingers – and I was so unsure about it because of how much I love Luigi’s but I’ve grown to really love WEB as well. Work has been truly great for me this year. I’m happy where I’m at and I can’t wait for more of that.

A lot of the things that I hadn’t been able to do during the pandemic came back. WonderCon and Comic Con. Lots of sunny afternoons on the Trader Sam’s patio. I went to baseball games and hockey games and saw the Winnie the Pooh musical. I got a couple of tattoos and ran a couple of cast member 5Ks. Rum festivals and new tiki bars and concerts to see Andrew McMahon and Panic! at the Disco. Lots of food and friends and family and drinks and fun.

The big thing for this blog – it turned ten years old! Isn’t that insane?! Isn’t that just…I can hardly believe it. Even though I’m not nearly as prolific on this blog as I used to be, I still try and keep it going and I still keep my social media going and I still try to keep the essence of What A Nerd Girl Says alive all the time and, my god. It’s been ten years. TEN YEARS. Ten years might be the longest I’ve stuck with anything and so that means a lot to me. It meant a lot to celebrate that. This blog has changed my life in so many ways and brought some of my best and closest friends into my life. It gave me confidence when I had none and it gave me the motivation to become the author and writer I am today. I’m not famous. I’m not an influencer. I’m not  making any money off of it. But I never intended that. This blog was always intended as a place where I could come and speak my mind and it remains that and so it remains my happy place and it remains something I’m very very proud of.

Crazily enough, it also means…I’ve been out for ten years. I didn’t talk about it all on the anniversary; my mind was in other places at the time but I definitely thought about it. I thought about how different I am from the girl who came out as bisexual ten years ago. At the time, I was dating someone else, someone that I don’t think particularly liked that I was coming out and I really tried to impress upon people that me coming out didn’t change anything but when I look at it now, it changed everything and I’m so glad. Coming out as bisexual felt like such freedom to be exactly who I am. It made me more confident in who I am. Coming out in 2012, I didn’t want it to change my life but being out in 2022, I am so proud of being bisexual and it is such a large, large part of my identity. It’s not something small, it’s a huge part of who I am. Regardless of the gender of my partner, I am still bisexual and I wear it proudly. And to me, it shows that it was never a phase – though I never thought it was – and it was never simply for attention, I was never confused. Ten years on…I am still so so confident in my bisexuality and I love my identity and I love sharing my identity with everyone.

I lost people this year though and, well, it did me in for sure. I’ve been lucky enough to not have been much loss in my life. I lost my grandfather when I was 14. I lost my dog, Scout, four years ago and I was devastated. But this year, it felt like more. Felt like loss in a way that I’d never experienced before. In August, I lost my grandma, my moms mom. It was really hard because I hadn’t seen her in Quite a few years. We’d been close when I was a kid and a preteen but I’d cut contact as I got older. We didn’t agree on a lot of things, which was hard to deal with, and she just stopped caring about taking care of herself, which was impossible to deal with and so I stepped away. I still loved her, always have and always will, and so her loss wasn’t just hurtful but confusing too. It’s been a lot to deal with, the good and the bad memories, while just dealing with her being gone.

But not long after that, at the end of September, I lost my Nana as well. The thing is, it feels like I should’ve been prepared. She was nearly 96 years old and the last few months of her life were rough for her, physically. But she was always so mentally THERE. She was so smart, so witty, so aware. You would never guess she was as old as 95 and so it felt wrong that it was her time. Despite the fact that I should’ve been ready, I was not. Nana was part of my life in a huge way. I lived either a few doors down or in the same house as her for majority of my life. She was a mother to me. She helped to raise my siblings and me. She was the best cook, she was so funny, had the best stories. She was everything to me and saying goodbye to her was the hardest part of this year. It’s been three months and I’m still dealing with it and I know I’ll be dealing with it for a long long time.

But also…this year, the best thing ever happened and that thing is that I GOT MARRIED!

I got married this year to my best friend and the love of my life. After meeting Daniel in 2010 in a western civilizations class, dating in December of 2016, making it official in April of 2017, getting engaged in December of 2020…we finally tied the knot on April 9th of 2022. And it was just the absolute best and worth all the chaos leading up to it. We literally canceled all the plans we’d made up to January and completely started over with three months to go. We had to ask for so much help and we did things on a shoestring budget and it all worked out so well. We got married on the beach at Centennial Park on Coronado Island, with the view of downtown San Diego in the background, followed by a delicious dinner reception at our favorite old towne San Diego restaurant, Cafe Coyote. The entire weekend was perfect and we honestly owe a lot to our families and our friends for doing so much to make it so great.

We also got to do so much that month to celebrate our wedding. We had a mini honeymoon at Disneyland and California Adventure, where we celebrated and ate and drank and randomly ran into David Tennant, who graciously took a selfie with me. We also got to do a photo shoot with our originally booked photographer, Tess Alexander, who we had to cancel for the actual wedding but who was awesome and said we could use our deposit for a smaller shoot. We ended up doing a post wedding shoot at California Adventure and it was absolutely epic and ended up being some of my absolute favorite photos from the entire celebration.

We also got to do a once in a lifetime celebration at Club 33 a couple of weeks after our wedding, as a gift from a friend. I’d been about six months before with that friend but Daniel had never been and it was such an amazing experience. The food and drinks were delicious and it was something we’ll never forget about.

This year was…a lot, a lot of food and a lot of bad, in a lot of ways. I always sit here at the end of each year, reminiscing on all that has happened, and just try and feel grateful for it all, grateful that I got to have it all, from beginning to end. It’s hard to know what each year will bring but I’m constantly grateful that I get to keep experiencing life and I keep getting to make such great memories each year.

So here’s to saying goodbye to 2022 and all the good and bad behind us and saying hello to 2023 and all the possibilities ahead of us.