Fuck Off 2013. I've Had Enough of Your Shit.

No, seriously.

With the exception of only one or two actual bright spots, the past twelve months have been crap; a festering, pus-filled boil that is finally being lanced and drained with the arrival of the New Year.

It started out with my dad's passing, followed immediately by the arrival of Ben's mother into our home. Her domicile was intended to be only a temporary situation, lasting four to six months.

But yet she's still here.

While the apartment hasn't been completely trashed (I'd seen what she'd done to every previous place she's lived and this is the reason for my reluctance to agree to this in the first place), she has still very much left her mark upon it. (How exactly does one break a toilet seat, or stain black granite countertops?) The woman has far outstayed her welcome and both Ben and I are ready for her to get the fuck out. We delivered her eviction notice just prior to Thanksgiving and endured several days of sub-zero temperatures as a result, confirming my suspicion that she had gotten far too comfortable with the situation and had completely forgotten that this was intended to be only temporary.

No matter. She's on notice and knows in no uncertain terms that her time is up; that she will be out of this apartment by the end of January.

In late summer, after returning from an awesome vacation to Arkansas where we met up with Erik, his husband, and my longtime friend John (who I'd known for years but had never actually met in person), I quit the job I'd held at Stupid Central^© for the previous two years. It was very spur-of-the-moment and done without having anything else lined up beforehand. Yes, my own fault that this contributed to the suck-fest of 2013 and looking back, this may not have been the wisest course of action at the time (at least in such a dramatic and spontaneous fashion), but I've long maintained that if you're miserable at your job, quit and find another one.

By the time mid September rolled around with still no work in sight, Ben and I both wanted—nay, needed—something good from 2013. As our five year anniversary was coming up and coinciding somewhat with a family wedding occurring in Santa Fe, he suggested we pile into his brand new Kia Soul and drive down to the wedding and while there take advantage of New Mexico's recent rulings on same sex marriage to get hitched ourselves.

That was the best part of this entire fucking year.

At the end of October, after having completely drained my savings, maxed out my credit cards, and suffered through nearly three months of depression, anxiety, and horrible, horrible job interviews—I finally started working again, landing a contracting gig for a large Windows 7 rollout project. It was with a company who had the dubious honor of being named the second worst place in America to work, but my experience there thus far hasn't been that bad.

The manager told me that the other techs really like me and they were all kind of surprised when I did not express any interest in applying for the permanent opening in the department. I've been reevaluating that position over the past couple weeks and after much contemplation, I went ahead and submitted my application last week. No, it's not perfect, but as Ben pointed out, is any job ever? I didn't want to go perm at my last job in Phoenix when my contract ended there either, but the manager talked me into it and I ended up staying seven years and made some lifelong friends (including that manager) in the process. So who knows? I figure that at this point it's at least worth putting it out there to see what happens. Que sera, sera, right?

2014 will be better. It has to be.