I want to post this before the end of the year, which is in a few hours. Right now I’m a little overwhelmed, distracted, because I’m wrapping up a project my head has been deep in for the last few weeks. There’s been very little socializing, lots of pastry and cake and coffee, and in the last few days I’ve realized that I still haven’t figured out how to work and live at the same time. It means the first thing I want to leave behind in 2017 is this urgent obsession I bring to work, since if anything it makes what I’m doing harder, not easier.

I’m writing this without editing. Warts and all are going on the page. That’s what I hope to bring in with me, acceptance of warts in all.

What a year it’s been. The election and the shitshow that followed feels like a culmination of sorts, yet the march and everything Weinstein cracked wide open feels like a new beginning. There’s a sense in all of it of ‘no going back,’ and I want to believe it’s good. I want to think of the current POTUS as the end of something that’s been building for decades. That gives me hope, which I’m definitely bringing into next year. Next year can’t be tougher than this one, right?

Last year I wanted to bring risk in with me. Not the reckless kind, but the capacity to be embarrassed kind. The be who I really am kind. That’s who I was at the Writers Lab. The Lab was a high point for many reasons, but that's a big one.

Last year I wanted to direct something. This year I did. Even when I didn’t know what I was doing, I loved doing it. We got into festivals and keep doing so, and seeing it play on a big screen in a theatre with an audience made me want to make a feature. That’s a future goal.

Between the Lab and making that short, I learned that I have a community around me. As a writer of specs - scripts that are written before they’re sold - I’m always reaching out, reaching far past my community. A major shift is happening where I don’t want to do that anymore. From now on I want to only write what I can make or produce. I have a nice body of work that’s ready to sell, but, just for today, writing on spec has zero appeal.

Money. This year I want to make more. Yeah, that may seem obvious, but I’m looking at money differently after this year. It's not that it hasn’t mattered to me in the past, because that’s not true. But money has always been this thing that exists out over there. This year I’ve been looking at how I see money. When I’ve tried to do this in the past white noise takes over. This year I swept my brain clean of that. I want to make more.

We’re still house hunting for a little country place with a tree. This year we put a few offers in, but for one reason or another the sale didn’t happen. May we find a house this year.

Ginger had a pretty good year. She’d like more of Joe’s meatballs and I bet he’ll oblige her. That right there, that’s what I’m definitely bringing in with me. Family and friends are what matter the most, no matter how obsessed I get with work. Some of my happiest nights are simply being on the couch, Ginger curled around Joe’s feet, watching GLOW (the Netflix series).

I say it every year, but the emails and comments I get here mean a lot. As do you. Thank you for all of it.

Change is coming in 2018. Everywhere. Brace yourself, Effie.