Title is from the poem The Shortest Day which is one of my favorite things from the Christmas Revels performances. (We’ll ignore the fact that the solstice was on the 21, not the 31.)

2013 has wound to a close and while I may not have checked much off my list, I had a blast trying. In fact I’m looking to recycle a lot of the 2013 resolutions, as well as some of the 2012 and 2011’s… 2014 will be the Year of the Mulligan! 😉

But 2013 was a lot of fun, so onwards to the review!

Accomplishments of 2013

Real Life Stuffs

• Eleven Year Wedding Anniversary, WOOT! 😀
• Got a kickass new job in IT (same company, new department) and am back among My Peoples™. *happy sigh*
• Then, six months into that job I got promoted! Never again shall I renounce my geeky ways!!
• HUBBY RETIRED FROM THE ARMY! NO MORE DEPLOYMENTS!! *massive insane happy dance of happy*
• Four year anniversary with the company (this has now become the company I’ve worked for the longest in my life). Next June means I’m 100% vested in the 401k and that is crazy to think about…
• Made it through the second year of trying to fit a micro-business into my life, and broke even!
• Kept climbing the learning curve for Google Calendar, I think this will be my last paper calendar year.
• Made it to Level 4 of the HealthMiles program for the second year running.
• I learned how to play a first-person shooter while walking on the treadmill.
• I am now good enough at playing games on the treadmill that I no longer consider it a handicap (except when it come to using the mic). I can walk a 5k and still put out higher than average DPS, how awesome is that?
• Had an EPIC garden this year and ate ‘free’ lunches the entire summer. Can’t wait to do it all again next spring! 🙂
• Adjusted once again having someone else living in the house other than me. (Yes, this is an accomplishment.) ((And yes, there was no bloodshed or alcohol involved.))
• NO HURRICANES! 😀 😀 😀
• Cut down the three Evil Pine Trees in the front yard (which also made way for the Garden of Awesome).
• Assembled a storage shed to hold all the new gardening stuffs.
• Participated in a Biggest Loser challenge at work and did NOT come in last! 😀
• Successfully swapped from a 7:30-4:30 shift to an 11-8 and then back to an 8-5… and now I really need to cut back on the Diet Coke again. *sighs*

Writing and Model Horse Related

• I didn’t get any new stories finished this year, but there were a LOT of new and old writing projects that I did work on. So even though I didn’t get much done, I got a lot done (if that makes any sense).
• Lost April Camp NaNoWriMo, July Camp NaNoWriMo and November NaNoWriMo, but had fun trying!
• Painted 21 horses (and 1 wolf!) : Portrait Horse: Dandy, Miracle Max, Tumbleweed, Shamrockstar, Sparklewulf of the Clan McSparklewulf, Unnamed Custom Order, Key Lime Limbo, A Quail of a Good Time : Big Orange Bash Donation 2013, Subterfuge, Spare Thyme, Pimped Rides Live Donation 2013, Twobit Tinker, Cryptoquine, Sandman’s Gold, Someday’s Child, Cliff Notes, Cid sin’Terminar, Underhill Playboy, Slowroad’s Silver, Sincity Cowboy, Spin Cycle, Lil’Red Dress
• Published 5 eBooks : Saturday Story Prompts 2012 and 2013 yearly Collection, Saturday Story Prompts January, February, and March 2012/2014 monthly collection. Pushed the yearlies out to Amazon to boot!

Blog Related

• Lured in 6,100+ unique visitors, which was less than last year, but interestingly it worked out to more page views (since they stuck around longer)
• Three year blog anniversary! Which I totally never got around to blogging about. I wonder I can get away with retroactively posting that. *ponders*
• There were no big blog events this year because I got too caught up in other things. I’m still trying to figure out how blog-social I want to be in 2014…
• I wrote 141 posts, which is less than half of last year’s total and significantly below my ‘post a day’ run of 2011. I’m expecting that total to drop again next year as I really lean on making useful posts and not just my normal ramblings. (Those I save for Facebook… 😉 )
• Improved on a few of the analytic stats from last year, primarily thanks to Google’s changes in the way it reports on search terms. The bounce rate dropped 75% and the folks who did come by spent more time and read more posts.

Goodbye 2013, Hello 2014!