(Split into two parts, as this journal was too long to be fully displayed as one part on FurAffinity. Please leave any comments on part 2.)

I've heard it said that 2016 was a bad year due to how many famous people have died this year. But to be quite honest, I see this as nothing more than a coincidence. Just like the rest of us, they will all die eventually after having (hopefully) lived long and rich lives. For me, this year was an adventure, a year of discovery on an incredible level, and I am not at all ashamed to say that 2016 is the best year I have ever lived.

The path to my self discovery was to begin on September 28th 2015, when I was commanded by the JobCentre to work for a charity in order to continue receiving benefits from them. But just two days into this post, a company temporarily based in Network Rail responded to my application and drafted me in for a temporary contract. Though this job allowed me to make use of my computer maintenance skills, it quickly grew repetitive and tiresome, and at that time, I still had not shed my social fears, which meant I barely socialized with any of the colleagues I briefly knew.

Prior to this date, I was, in my mind, a truly pathetic being, and is a period of my life I no longer like talking about in great detail. As well as having been mistreated in middle school, my teenage years were marred by the fact that my mother was with a man who hated me from the very first day he met me. He was very controlling towards her, even manipulating her into blaming me for his faults and his childish tantrums. He kept me away from any friends I had, and even deliberately arranged the wedding so that it conflicted with the prom my high school held, preventing me from being able to attend it at all. As far as he was concerned, I was nothing but disgusting crap, and he often made it clear that he didn't want to have me around.

Even when the marriage turned sour and he walked out, the damage was done. I discovered the Furry Fandom for the first time through Eka's Portal about one month before his departure, which not only gave me my start in writing stories, but also allowed me, for the very first time, to feel as though I was actually worth something. It was here I met some of the friends I have known for the longest, and allowed me to unlock the secrets behind my kinks and discover what it was that turned me on and off. Additionally, many of the authors there lent their inspiration to how I approached my work, although it was not to last, and I soon turned to FA.

Outside of FA, my scars hadn't healed, and when a friend I'd known throughout high school badly betrayed me in 2010, that destroyed what was left of my self worth. I rarely left my home at all; I had no ability to trust any person around me, to ever feel close to them, and due to my country having had a very high rate of violent crime at the time, I was convinced that if anyone found out I'm a Furry, I'd be despised to the point of someone wanting to kill me. I grew to hate society, since I believed they would hate me if they learned anything about me, whether related to the Fandom or not. In other words, I felt that only the Fandom understood me. When I did go outside, I avoided eye contact, and sometimes wouldn't speak at all. The level of paranoia in my mind was bordering insane, and it was this lack of trust in others that led to several friendships fracturing.

Further blows came when, after finally getting a warehouse job through an agency in October 2013, I had to work with a man who hated agency workers and treated all of them with open contempt. It took me two months to work up the courage to make a complaint about him, and it turned out I was the third person who had complained. He got fired for gross misconduct, and on my request I was moved to the night shift. But this only lasted until March 2014 when I was one of the final people to be laid off. This, combined with getting my Steam account broken into a few weeks before, was another blow, as I'd been led to believe it would be a permanent job, and my feelings inside grew worse as I was unable to find more work. I was routed to another agency that October, but after discovering they were Polish and had no respect for the natives, I tried everything I could to get out of it, even managing to get three interviews with other companies, but it wasn't to be, and after only four days in that job, I was sacked for poor performance, which I owe to the building's very confusing layout and my plummeting morale as the days passed. I'd call 2014 the worst year of my adult life so far.

At that point, I no longer felt I had any aspirations at all. Even my ability to write stories, which previously had made me feel important and powerful, no longer felt like enough. By then, I feared my life would never lead anywhere, and that the only chance I had of the fame I desired was the jealousy I felt of others for their accomplishments. But last year, my life finally started to take a turn for the better. Once my job at Network Rail finished, I received a huge tax refund, and undertook my next job eight days later, despite it only being a temporary Christmas job. I got on better there than at any of my previous jobs, despite one of my colleagues being a neo-Nazi bigot. This one only lasted for two months, and after I left, I initially felt even more resentment at having not been chosen, but having known this time why I wasn't, I didn't take it as badly as before.

At the start of 2016, I drastically increased the time I devoted to finding another job, but was faced with failure after failure. I had recklessly spent money in the past, and I just wasn't enjoying playing TF2 to pass the time any more, which led to me quitting the game altogether on March 1st. I got sick of always being accused of cheating by stupid little bastards who were not only too young to play the game, but couldn't handle the idea that someone might play better than them, and this was happening on nearly every server I went to. I still haven't sold any of my items, though I also have no plans to ever return.

But soon after came the moment that I would start to discover the person waiting to be unleashed onto the world. This was the time I heard about Zootopia and the effect this was having on the Furry Fandom as a whole. I realized from the way it was advertised that not only was I finally seeing a world where I felt I could be accepted, but additionally, that the Fandom was about to see the start of a glorious new era. 2016 was the year where our Fandom's rise to public prominence would begin, and 2017 is no doubt going to be an even better year for us. I decided I wasn't going to be rejected any more, that I wouldn't stand for people rejecting me on the basis of who I am, and that I would finally show myself to the world and not hide away from it. I realized that I no longer had to be afraid to admit being a Furry. I was seeing the world becoming genuinely interested in the Furry Fandom, and that meant something truly special to me and every friend I know who has seen this film too.

I was so desperate to see Zootopia, it was the only thing I could think about, especially as it was to be released three weeks after the States got it. I couldn't wait that long, so, having failed to find the film online, I bought several shirts with Furry Pride slogans on them, and wore one of them to an early screening on March 20th, opening my leather jacket as soon as I paid for my ticket. And when the film started...I was utterly mesmerized, hypnotised from the very onset. It was like the world I had dreamed of was coming to life before my very eyes, and I could not turn away even for a second as the story unfolded, as rich and delightful as the environment and animation itself. and the number of similarities it had to the Furry world I'd created in my work also surprised me. I also spotted several other people wearing shirts with Furry slogans. Then I heard about Furmeets that had taken place at cinemas all over the States. That set something else off inside me.

Part 2: https://www.weasyl.com/journal/114350/2016-was-my-best-ever-year-3-part-2