I wanted to do as silly wee post of good things that happened to me in 2015. It was a lot of fun to put together, even if it felt a bit weird to be talking about so many wee, unimportant things. It still made me smile to look back on all of this and remember.
I’ll definitely be doing a similar post this year to remember fun things that happened in 2016.
So, here are 35 things that rocked in 2015:
- Discovered that bowling is a lot more fun than I remembered.
- Finished a draft right at the start of January, yay.
- Beautiful starry nights through the cold January, February, and March.
- Getting hooked on Taylor Swift. ‘Cos the haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate haate~
- Getting to know my friends at work better, which is always one of the highlights of any year.
- Learning to cycle. (Yup, that’s right, I skipped that part of my childhood.) This was a HUGE achievement for me, mostly because it took a helluva lot of courage to embrace the wobbly learning process needed to become the mythical “adult who can ride a bike”. Thanks to Dave for trekking out with me at weird times of the day, like midnight in winter, so I could wobble around out of sight of everyone.
- Getting confident enough to cycle 5 miles, then 10 miles, then to work and back and to the pool and back…. and so on and so on…
- Trying Kale chips for the first time! (In December ’14, but I didn’t appreciate it enough at the time. Kale makes me feel immortal.)
- Fell head-over-heels with time travel scifi anime Steins;Gate. I still love you, Steins;Gate, you were amazing.
- Walked along the Dava Way with Dave!
- Played Hatoful Boyfriend, and had a fantastic time with it. PIGEON BOYFRIENDS!
- Redesigned my signature, with a little help from kind -people with much better handwriting than me.
- Tried out aqua aerobics, which is a lot harder than I expected it to be (especially when you’re doing it glasses-less and blind), but also ridiculous fun.
- Kept up a healthier lifestyle, both with my diet and exercise. Tried new sports, tried new foods, discovered hummus is actually pretty damn good.
- Met up with the lovely Laura Lam in Inverness. It was amazing to see her again, she’s doing SO WELL and I’m super excited to read her next book, FALSE HEARTS.
- Made bubble tea at home, and tried the BLEND tea shop in Inverness.
- Found confidence in my driving. It took a while, but I got there.
- Found the courage to send BROKEN THINGS out to genius beta reader Mike Kalar, and was rewarded with his incredibly thoughtful, story-changing feedback. He breathed new life into the story at a point where I was absolutely sick of it.
- Thanks to Mike, got another big redraft down by the end of May.
- Sat in the cockpit of a Nimrod, living my mecha pilot dreams.
- Watched Person of Interest and oh my gosh, what a show that is. Adorable puppy dog. Adorable people. Amazing cyberpunk-y storyline. I love it.
- Gave Wattpad a go. It was fun, but I like my current way of writing better.
- Completed Season 1 of Zombies Run, and in the process learned that while running is fun, it’s not as well-suited for me as cycling or weight-lifting. I still like it, and I’m still going to keep doing it, but I’m pants at it.
- Lost a stone in weight and gained a ton of shiny new muscles, bringing me closer to my dreams of becoming She-Hulk/Avatar Korra.
- LEARNED TO DRIVE A FRIGGIN’ CAR OMG OMG OMG
- GOT A CAR THAT I CAN NOW DRIVE ON MY OWN LEGALLY HOLY SMOKES
- We’ve been homeowners for over a year! It still doesn’t feel real.
- I basically figured out fashion this year, like patterns and how to incorporate colours into my grey-scale wardrobe. By the end of the years, I was even wearing skirts! Entirely of my own free will! Teenaged me would be astonished.
- Finished another novel draft by the end of August.
- Had avocados for the first time, and proceeded to master my avocado toast recipe, and my guac recipe. Avocados are pretty great.
- Met some adorable dogs, including Mac’s new wee brother-in-law Shadow and our friends’ terrier Ted.
- Got a manuscript back out there in the query trenches.
- Read a TON of books this year! It was great.
- Learned a lot about car care over the winter: which garage I liked best, how to top up all the fluids for winter, how to care for it during the icy weather and drive safely in crappy conditions. Being a newbie driver means a lot of unexpected learning experiences.
- Played the video game UNDERTALE for the first time, which was a fantastic way to round off the year.
It’s not all been good times: Sir Terry Pratchett passed on, we lost one of our pet ferrets, Tea. On the writing side of things, I spent the first three months of the year anxious about editing, then had to sacrifice huge chunks of my writing time to the exercise gods. I wasted a lot of energy this year stressing about exercise and weight-loss, and I lost a lot of cycling confidence after a nasty bike crash.
But 2016 is here, and it’s time to move forward and do better than the year before. It’s going to be awesome. I’m going to make sure of that.
Lisa says
Bring on more awesome things! Also, I will now look up that tea shop in Inverness. (I like tea. I know. You’re so surprised.)
EMaree says
Blend is great! Really nice food like bagels, a strong veggie/vegan range, and great teas. They’re still a very small shop so a lot of the bigger chains have more variety (Glasgow has the Tempo Tea Bar which seems awesome), but they’re the best we’ve ever had up here!
Blend’s Facebook btw, they regularly post their specials menus which are great for tea-drinking inspiration: https://www.facebook.com/BlendInverness/