A very mixed bag for me and mine. In some ways it's been very productive and left us in a very special place. In other ways I'm content to tell it good riddance.

On the plus side, my mates and I bought a beautiful house in a town we love, adopted a wonderful dog, and things progressed considerably toward us putting down roots together for the long term and my building a career and a life in this country.

On the negative side, all of these things felt extremely hard-won.

The process of buying a new house took us from the beginning of the year through to mid April, and involved much stress and many delays including one month with my household split apart, staying in friends' spare rooms and cheap motels with most of our possessions in storage while we waited with no idea when or sometimes if we'd finally have a house at the end of it.

My first attempt at gaining permission to stay in the UK indefinitely was confounded by the Border Agency publishing grossly inaccurate information which led to my application being mis-handled, and my partner and I being insulted and intimidated to a point where I feared that everything I had spent ten years of my life working toward was at risk.

We lost loved ones. Holidays meant to help us recover gave us more anxiety than normal life. Finances remain tight enough in the wake of the house purchase and associated repairs and upkeep that I'm left with no ability to tell distant friends and family when I might see them again.

Somewhere in the middle of all the stress and uncertainty, against all my hopes I discovered that I am capable of anger and bitterness after all.

In many ways it has been a year of ordeals.

And yet, we survive. The generosity and compassion of friends and loved ones has seen us through, along with our own dragony stubbornness. The above are all 'first-world' (though I would argue, legitimate) problems, and at the end of the day (or year at least) we have a roof over our heads, we are feeding ourselves and paying our bills and moving forward toward clearer skies. Having just bought our first house and finally finished paying the last of the unrealistically large sum of money required by the government to immigrate from outside the EU, financial stability is probably at about its lowest point right now and should only go up as our careers develop.

Things are good and will continue to get better. But man, 2014 has made us fight hard for it. 2015, I'm watching you. Behave.