2015 In Review

Welp, I haven’t blogged much, but I like having the blog here, and felt like doing a New Year post. Here’s the one from last year for reference.

Stuff I Accomplished!

I didn’t hit all the things I was hoping to this year, but I did a ton, and am overall pretty happy with how I did. This year has been really hard, for a host of reasons, but I have learned a ton.

1. Book Roadie: Vended at four events, including Pantheacon! (PCon was by far the best event in terms of sales)
2. Book Roadie: Brought in about half of what I spent (aporox. $2700 vs. $5000). In the red, but it’s the most I’ve brought in so far, woot!
3. Dayjob: Got a good review at work and thus a merit increase!
4. Dayjob: I have now been a technical writer for a decade! Woot!
5. Personal: Nursed Bishop back to health after two nasty IBS flares.
6. Personal: Continued to keep Zephyr in largely good health – and he passed his 2-year anniversary of being diagnosed with lymphoma!
7. Personal: Made huge strides in self-compassion and other awesomeness! (Huge props to my therapist, spiritual mentor, and Nate)
8. Personal: Continued my conscious effort to stop reading self-help books and taking ecourses about things I already know. At this point it’s more about money than personal development. :)
9. Personal: I culled 90 books from my collection! (unfortunately, I also added enough books that my total is still higher than it was a year ago. oops.)
10. My word of the year was Discernment, and I feel like I really sharpened and learned to use mine better. You can see how some of the above are related. :)

What’s in the works for 2016?

I don’t do resolutions, but here are my goals for the year:

1. The Book Roadie: I want to vend six events this year! I have one booked already, woot.
2. The Book Roadie: I want to bring in $5k this year!
3. The Book Roadie: Figure out a way to make an information product for people. (Like an ebook or online course or something. I don’t want to teach, really, but I like making how-tos and stuff.)
4. Dayjob: Another good review and resulting merit increase!
5. Dayjob: Get “Senior Technical Writer” as my official (Right now it’s what’s on my cards and how everybody talks about me, but the work paperwork still has me as a regular tech writer.)
6. Personal: Keep kitties healthy/as-healthy-as-possible-for-them.
7. Personal: Continue culling library down to only awesome or regularly-used books.
8. Personal: Only buy books I already know are awesome, preferably because I read them already (courtesy of the library or a friend loaning them to me).
9. Personal: Cull my belongings down to only awesome or regularly-used stuff. I have a lot of stuff I’m hanging onto because it’s mine, not because it’s awesome. That needs to change. Especially clothes. Getting my custom-made coat just reinforced to me that keeping things that don’t fit well is not good.
10. My word of the year is Acceptance, in the “accept what reality is, then try to change it” sense. Stop wasting time and energy saying “but things should be like so!” when they aren’t. Say, “things are this way, okay. What’s the best move from here?” See Tara Brach’s work for more. Discernment is going to be a big help here, I suspect. How appropriate. :)

I’m also hoping to get my personal finances a bit more in order. I often tell people that yes, I’ve paid off allllll my student debt, but I did that by living on my credit cards for a while, which was… stupid a huge mistake not wise. I am sick of my debt sort of flapping around instead of vanishing with something approaching rapidity. We’ll see if I can get started on that this year.

Happy New Year, everybody!