A couple months ago, my broke ass decided to be all fancy and commission some art. I know, right? Who even am I?

A giant nerd, that’s who I am. If you recall, last year I won a lovely picture of Commander Shepard and Liara, made just for me by artist Stacie Ponder, whose stuff I like very much. In September, Ms. Ponder announced on her Twitter feed that to help fund an upcoming move, she was having a sale on her sketch cards. Now, since I got the first one for free, and since I’m also a freelancer whose very ability to eat depends upon making stuff that strangers will want to buy, I decided to help a sister out.

As I already had Shep and Liara, I wanted a few more game characters that meant something to me, not just in terms of fangirl squeeing, but that marked important points in my life. I’ve been gaming a long time, and through all my successes and failures, there’s usually been a game somewhere in the background.

So here’s what I got:

Nine-year-old me with the Myst book, for curiosity. Lara Croft, for bravery. Asrai, my WoW druid, for friendship. Chell, for creativity. Shepard and Liara, for love.

Yes, I’m getting horribly sappy. But look at them.

I can’t wait to get them framed.

Last Friday marked Thirteenth Night here in Iceland. Yes, they have thirteen days of Christmas here instead of twelve, because they can. On Thirteenth Night, the elves who have decided to crash in your home for the past year have the option to pack up and go elsewhere. Folks are supposed to leave all their windows and doors open in order to allow for the easy passage of elven comings and goings. Somehow opening up all the holes into your home doesn’t seem like the best idea during a sub-Arctic early January, but who am I to argue with tradition? Anyway, after you’ve let all the heat in your house escape, you go enjoy fireworks and a bonfire with the community. The bonfire and fireworks symbolize how awesome bonfires and fireworks are.

I’ve attended bonfires in three countries now. Here in Reykjavik, for Thirteenth Night. In Edinburgh, for Beltane. In San Francisco, to celebrate being drunk college kids who could still get their shit together enough to build a fire. All had their merits, but this most recent one had a special charm. Maybe it was being part of an informal procession of folks dragging bundled-up kids on sleds (no, I did not have a kid, nor a sled, though I definitely wanted the latter). Maybe it was the box of gigantic sparklers that Berglaug bought for us to write our names in the air with. Maybe it was the free hot cocoa and pastries they were handing out at the bonfire site.

Honestly, though, I think the biggest contributing factor might have been watching a giant pyre of shipping pallets, Christmas trees, and busted fences burn atop a black-sand beach covered in ice. In some spots, the melted ice was boiling.

It doesn’t get much more badass than that.

If you over-think New Year celebrations (like I do most things), they start to feel a bit silly. It’s an entirely arbitrary holiday, based around how we funny little monkeys mark our planet’s orbit around the sun. A New Year isn’t all that different from a clock striking midnight, or any other time of day. It’s just a big party in which a large portion of our species celebrates the fact that we have a system for keeping time. Go us.

But I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. I like New Year’s. I like what it symbolizes. I like the unabashed optimism, even though January 1 is no more of a clean start than any other day. I like that we often choose to spend those transitional hours with people we love, as if to say, “It is awesome to be alive, and it’s awesome to be alive with these particular people.” I like that New Year’s often involves pretty clothes and drinking and things that explode (especially if you are here in Reykjavik, where the stroke of midnight looked like this; one of those rockets was lit by yours truly, who ran gleefully away from it in a foot of snow).

I also enjoy having sanctioned time for reflection, which is something I do a lot of anyway, regardless of the day. Arbitrary as it may be, the New Year gives me a chance to compartmentalize a particular series of events — in this case, 2011 events. I like taking time to look at the things I’ve done, the things I’ve learned, and the things I’d still like to do. I don’t make resolutions, per se, because I don’t think the goals I set on one day are any more valid than they are on others. But I do think hard about those goals, because they are the standard that I measure myself by, and in another twelve arbitrary months, I’ll be seeing how they panned out.

If 2010 was a year of learning how to earn a living by writing, 2011 was a year of learning what I actually like to write — not just fiction-wise, but in terms of earning my bread, too. I tried a lot — a lot — of different things. Some of them worked out. Most did not. But even the things that didn’t work out could usually be built upon, and if not, then I learned something important about my strengths and weaknesses. I’ve (mostly) stopped comparing every detail of my work habits to writers more successful than I, because I’m not them.

2012 also means that in a few months, I will have been out of college longer than I was in college. This is a marker that, to me, means a lot more than a New Year. It is a giant boot to the ass, and one that I heartily welcome. Scrapping my theater career and picking up writing was a good step in the right direction (nay, a totally rad step), but I’ve spent an awful lot of time this past year waiting for people to hand me the chances I was looking for. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking hard about opportunities I can give myself instead. It’s a very freeing line of thinking, but it’s scary as hell, too. As I think all good things should be.

That’s what you’ll be seeing from me over the next few months: experiments. Some will crash and burn, as all experiments are prone to do. But I’m hoping some — at least one in particular — turns out a little bit awesome.

Happy New Year, everybody. I hope it’s good to you and yours.