Before we slam the book tightly shut on 2023 and look tentatively ahead to another year, I am back with a Yearly Wrap-Up.  It can be helpful to look back to see what the last 12 months dealt out, what was completed, what was lost…

Out & About

This year, my partner and I made a promise to do more fun things this year.  If you don’t plan for things, and be intentional, months can go by and you realise you’ve just been working, running errands and doing chores.

So we made sure to do lots of fun things including:

Candlelight Concert. We attended a lovely candlelight concert by pianist, Ruth McGinley, and even got front-row seats that gave us an excellent view of the piano surrounded by (fake, for safety reasons) candles. Still very atmospheric and the music was incredible.

A Play. We saw An Ocean At The End Of The Lane based on the book by Neil Gaiman. We almost didn’t get to see it as we had been suffering from COVID but managed to fight it off in time. So glad we did because it was one of the best things we’ve been to.  The acting was incredible and the monster puppets were inspiring. Loved everything about it.

A Treasure Hunt around Belfast (we managed it all except 1 clue, nothing seemed to fit but the other 50+ ones we got!) Was a fabulous day out and it only started to rain at the very end when we had found the last clue.

Opera. We went to see our first opera, Tosca. Made easier to understand by the use of a screen and subtitles. A truly incredible show. I never thought I’d like opera, mainly because I never realised they now included subtitles to help your understanding. It made a huge difference and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Tango. We went to see dancer Vincent Simeone in Tango Passions, who along with his fellow dancers told a story of the history of Tango. While his dance partner Paula Duarte was unable to take the stage as she had been injured in an earlier show, the event was still incredible with Victoria Martin, a dancer from Belfast, stepping in to deliver an awesome performance.

Making of a Murderer. We got to listen to a talk by The Scottish Detective, David Swindle who discussed how investigations had proceeded regarding the UK’s most notorious serial killers, including Peter Tobin (who Detective Swindle had brought to justice).

Christmas Village. We ended the year with a visit to a Christmas Village with our niece and nephew who got to meet Mrs. Claus and feed some local llamas.

There was actually a lot more we did but these are a few of the highlights 🙂 Here are some photos too! 🙂

Let’s add in the (dis)honourable mention that we ended up with mice in our house. We believe they were disturbed from a house near us that has been empty for over a year and suddenly started having work done.

Managed to catch them all using a humane trap and peanut butter. Cus who doesn’t love peanut butter! Here’s the first of four being caught.

Cat Life

Our little Cilly-billy, has fully settled in. She had grown well but still has that manic kitten energy that is boundless. She loves chasing cat biscuits so we play several times a day with a few pieces of cat kibble, throwing them across the floor where she can chase and “catch” them.

We ended up getting her an interactive cat toy to keep her occupied when we are exhausted or trying to work.  Best money we ever spent! lol

Sadly, we had to say goodbye to our beloved Walter. He was our elderly adoption so we only got 5 years with him. Despite such a short time, his passing was still incredibly painful, especially as he had been such a clinging lapcat to me.  His absence is so noticeable and we miss him every day.

It’s been hard, for the last 8 years we have been dealing with senior cats (adopted as seniors or cats who have grown up with us and reached old age), who have been getting to the end of their lives and deteriorating one after another.

It’s not always easy to deal with loss after loss, but they definitely made our lives better and hopefully, we did the same to them.

The Writing Desk

I hit a great writing streak just before my family came to visit in the middle of the year and then everything tanked for a long while.  I always struggle after spending long amounts of time with people.

It’s like I need a massive reset and I didn’t really get that.  So while I started strong, I only managed to write 50,000+ words this year. Not great but could have been worse.

I did get some new ideas popping up and fixed some issues in my main manuscripts but I didn’t get any solid writing time down in the latter half of the year.

Due to how rubbish I am been with my writing, I invested in myself and took 2 courses. The first wasn’t really useful.  But the second has been super helpful to get me organised and scheduled.

So, next year, I am doing things a bit differently as I want to make my writing a solid priority over everything else. Which means setting up new systems, letting things go and guarding my time more aggressively.

Fitness

Following a doctor’s appointment for my depression, I was referred to a special gym program to help with physical and mental health issues. Shockingly, I actually went and even more shockingly, it helped. The classes were challenging but left you feeling invigorated, and the teacher was super supportive and the atmosphere was friendly and quite funny.

Not only did I make some great connections there, but I have continued to go to the gym (even doing spin classes… which I hate with a passion, but damn are they good cardio!) It’s been one of the biggest benefits and I’m looking forward to doing more next year 🙂

Psst… I even bought my own kettlebell!

Pod Life

This year I didn’t make any goals for the podcast. However, we managed to hit 8.4k downloads on Podbean!

We received a lot of interest from people through our Guest Application Form, to the point where we had booked up all of 2023’s guests by the middle of the year and several are already booked into 2024!

We always worry that we’re going to run out of episode ideas but they just keep coming. It really helps to keep everything organised by having a central place to jot all ideas down as they come up – thank you, Trello!

Want to enjoy the podcast? We are on plenty of platforms, choose your preferred one at our Podlink.

Studying

During this year, I continued my non-stop learning streak on Duolingo (learning French) and as of typing this am on 642 days.

I also completed Basic Level 1 & (most of) Level 2 courses in BSL (British Sign Language).

Busy-Biz

Things got hard this year, the economy did not make it easy for small businesses.

Neither did Etsy with its constant tests (some of which were just plain awful and right in the middle of the Christmas Rush! Great work, Etsy *eye roll*)

Neither did some of the new packaging regulations within Europe that made shipping to several European countries too much hassle and an extra cost.

And neither did the extreme cost of my business insurance which meant I could no longer continue to ship to Canada or the USA to do so added hundreds of pounds to my yearly insurance and put my mandatory excess at £5k!!

So, as you can imagine all this meant I had the worst year in 6 years.  I am not impressed with Etsy, they are getting worse every year.

I did do my first fayre which was both Craft and Variety. In the sense that I did something very different for me and was pleased with how everything looked on my display table.

I also made a decent profit, but there were fewer stalls and many were just second-hand variety ones rather than more crafty handmade stuff.  Despite being close to Christmas there weren’t as many people visiting the fayre as we’d hoped and those who came seemed to only be interested in “the cheapest thing possible”.  *sigh*

~ ~ ~

Overall, despite a lot of what happened this year, there were many more good bits to balance it out.  So I am thankful for that.

I’m also thankful to the awesome people who visit, follow, favourite and comment on this blog. It’s been 10 years and people still read my nonsense! lol I truly appreciate it.

Also a big special thanks to all the wonderful readers who reached out to my “Let’s Connect: Tell Us About Yourself” post.

Wishing you all the best for the festive season and hope you have been able to get some rest time before we hit 2024. 

How was your 2023?

Let me know in the comments, and if you do your own Wrap Up blog post, let me know!