In 2014, I lived in eight different homes.

I’m using the word “live” generously, but I’m quick to settle into a spot, so I think it fits. Three of the eight were apartments across New York City. Another three were short-term rentals in South Africa. The final two were with family. Throw in a cluster of hotel rooms, friends’ couches, and a floor or two – and it’s been a lot of roommates, a lot of addresses.

To match, it’s been a year of bits and pieces: a week here, three weeks there, three months over there. Each new address meant slipping on a new self, crafting an identity to match the neighborhood, navigating a new walk to work and a rapport with roommates and kitchen supplies and how communal wine purchases are consumed. 2014 was constant motion. Constant change. Constant self-reconsideration. Who were my friends? Where did I fit? How should I dress? (My Williamsburg, East Village, and West Village looks are all pretty different, naturally.)

Despite my insistent wanderlust, I’m no nomad. I crave putting down roots; I’m an earth sign, after all. And it’s roots I return to, again and again. Which is why this year closes right back where it started: spending time with family in Idaho and California, places that I love but fight with because they don’t change with me. Instead, I revert back to them. Whether I’m 23 or 17 or 10, so many things are the same at home: mom’s fudge-frosted banana cake; uncertainty about the future; my dog Lincoln; a sense of not having accomplished enough; my favorite ratty sweatshirt; a desire to be and do more to fix the crises swirling outside our doors. Home brings up classic young adult angst, nothing special here.

But maybe it’s not wholly the same. Maybe this year’s angst is different, as this has been, objectively, the most different year of all (for me, at least). I mean: first interviews and first jobs, first times paying rent, first apartment-cooked meals, first jolts of the reality of our generation’s place in this country… I could go on.

Or maybe the world spins on its own crazy way, and each year is – in the grander scheme – a little smaller, a little more repetitive. Hard to say if our problems and pleasures are any truer and deeper as we age, or if they simply feel more pressingly present, and then by the time the next New Year’s Eve rolls around they’ve inevitably faded away to be replaced.

The least I can do is try to keep track. So, in keeping with last year’s New Year’s Eve post, a reckoning is in order. I didn’t always live up to the goals I set: My yoga handstands got worse, not better; my Portuguese is miserably rusty; I still have 50 pages left of Moby-Dick; and I’ve been a bad blogger. I did complete a few: I know how to use Pinterest, I figured out where I was living, and I found myself a job. So we’ll call it a wash, shall we?

Things I did in 2014: Moved into six apartments and out of five; met an eclectic group of people and made new friends; explored vineyards; designed a website; flossed more; started wearing red lipstick in the daytime; bought, consistently, only black clothes; became a coffee-drinker; learned a new language (well, the jargon of media work); drank a summer’s worth of rosé; figured out how to work a PC (and how to add things on Excel!); listened to great live music; bounced around various cities with good friends; developed a low-level SoulCycle addiction; spoke publicly in presentations; made small talk; had fun.

Things I’m working on for 2015: having longer conversations; planning a trip to somewhere new; finishing Moby-Dick; cleaning the bathroom regularly; productively running errands on the weekend; writing more; cooking vegetables; being there for friends who’ve been there for me; arriving on time; not being afraid of change. And maybe getting back to that Portuguese.

And so the cycle begins again. Happy New Year! Thanks for sticking around. Drink your champagne.