It's the last day of our winter holiday and I was thinking to myself that I ought to have done a Year Notes, like all the cool kids, but I just couldn't be bothered. Much like weeknotes, I've lost the joy of making little updates recently, so I've decided not to push it.

Quick recap, though:

• Omicron arrived, and I count myself forever lucky to have a good, local, group of friends who immediately decided to cut out all the indoor restaurant and bar trips and all the fun stuff, and return to only gathering inside if everyone tested first, within our little social bubble. Consequently, I was able to have Christmas Eve at our house with a couple folks, and Christmas dinner at someone else's and be at a very small NYE gathering.
• Still haven't caught COVID!
• Monica invited me to an event a few weeks back - a popup at a friend of hers' bar where a few local makers were selling their wares, one of whom ended up being me. First time selling art in person! What I learned is: Framed prints sell best, people will be really sweet and nice and I won't know how to react in any way except with a lot of self-deprecation, and selling originals is much more psychologically challenging than anticipated.
• A couple of original paintings at the pop-up went to friends, so I know roughly where they are in the world, but I sold an original watercolour of a crow to a stranger and I actually feel a weird sense of loss about it. Like, it's gone and I'll never see it again? Completely unexpected emotional attachment to a thing I made explicitly for the purpose of selling.
• Finished another semester of Japanese and am putting that down for a little while, but ikebana is still going well (grade 6 now!) and I've got enough paid contract work to keep me off the streets.
• Not much else to note. I think I'm probably done with week notes for a while. I got back into them at the start of 2020 thinking it would be a way to pass the year of corona, but it feels like too much drudgery wrapping up a second year in this state. Maybe I'll switch to monthly notes for a bit. Anyway - I make it 553 weeks of my life living in this place they definitely misnamed the United States of America! Who knew it would be so long.