I always like writing these Yearly Wrap-up posts. Life moves fast and there is so much that is mundane, we sometimes miss all the things we have done or achieved or learned. So taking the time to look back over the year, always makes me feel more appreciative of everything that happened.

Out & About

Carrying on from last year, my partner and I kept to our promise of doing more fun things and creating memories. Being intentional and making time (and saving money) to attend events and do more interesting things, is definitely a plus.

Here’s a few things we did:

Ulster Museum – Visited the Ulster Museum again but got to view two gorgeous Caravaggio paintings: The Supper at Emmaus and The Taking of Christ. Incredible seeing these stunning works up close.

Ed Byrne – Went to see the comedian Ed Byrne. It has been a few years since we saw him live, and he was as funny as always, despite the topic of his show being about death and the loss of a family member.

Rhod Gilbert – Another comedian we hadn’t seen since just before the pandemic. And another discussing a difficult topic regarding his cancer diagnosis.

An Inspector Calls – We saw this play. I had never heard of it, despite it being quite a famous play. The way they did the set was clever and the actors did a great job, of capturing everyone’s attention.

Ballet – I once saw Swan Lake when I was like 9. I never appreciated it, so always wanted to see another ballet when I got older. This wasn’t a specific, full-length ballet but a set of small performances from different ballets so there was a wonderful eclectic mix of both classical and modern ballet forms.

Candlelight Concert – Held in Belfast Cathedral, surrounded by candlelight, we watched a wonderful String Quartet play some of Hans Zimmer’s most well-known movie pieces.

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Sadly, for the last 6 months of the year, we seemed to be low-level sick most of the time. Like we were constantly fighting a recurring flu. So we missed a few things we had planned.

Anniversary Fun

This year, my partner and I celebrated being together for 20 years by doing a “20 Days for 20 Years”.

So, for 20 days (culminating on our anniversary) we did something specific. Nothing huge, but lots of small fun days. 🙂

Here are just a few of the things we did:

• Boardgame night
• Drank hot chocolate by a roaring fire
• Made gingerbread dinosaurs
• Went to a local art exhibition
• Dinner at a restaurant we had never tried
• Attended an event featuring David Suchet (who played Poirot)
• Drove somewhere new (we visited a dark sky site)
• Saw The Mousetrap play
• Bookshop crawl in Belfast (and bought 10 new books each!)
• Visited the Planetarium
• Attended the Life of Pi play
• Played mini golf

Cat Life

We, foolishly, decided to get a playmate for our cat and brought Charlie into our home. A 12-week-old ginger kitten from the rescue centre.

Well… despite being a ginger menace who never stops playing, and lunges at everyone, including Miss Cilly… he is a lovely cat. But also a handful. We have managed to keep him from completely destroying the house (mostly).

We even gave in and got a giant cat wheel, hoping that a) he’d use it and b) it would burn off some of his inexhaustible energy. We’ve had kittens before… but he is like 10 times more active than all of them combined.

And yes, he does use the wheel! Took a few attempts to figure it out but now he thunders away on it.

It’s kinda nice not to have to report the loss of another pet. In the last few years, it seemed our older cats were leaving us every year. It was hard on the heart.

The Writing Desk

Just like last year, the first half of the year was great for writing. Then the family came to visit and brought flu with them and then we (as mentioned above) seemed to struggle with recurring illnesses for the latter half of the year. That flu just obliterated our immune system.

I did manage to finish The Blessed and even get it read by beta readers. The feedback was fabulous and made me feel so much better about my writing. They caught some issues I had continually missed and all reacted exactly how I hoped at the places I wanted a reaction. 😀

I already have plans on what I’m going to do with The Blessed. So feel a lot more in control now.

However, by the end of the year, I decided I really didn’t like Dark Hart any more. Yes, this could be my perfectionism. But it’s just not “right”.

I just need to stop looking at it for like 6 months. Because all I’m doing is “tweaking” it and what I really need to do is pull it apart and stitch it back together fully. But I’m not really ready to give more time to it. I need a good long break away from it.

I ended stronger in the last quarter by completing the outline for A Coming Storm and getting some writing done. It is currently around the 33K word mark.

I also managed to work on outlining book 1 in my Malory Warren series while I was travelling for the holidays.

The Advent Calendar Story Train made an appearance this year and it was great working with so many talented writers showcasing their flash fiction. Big thanks to all who participated, I enjoyed your stories so much. If you missed it, please visit the page linked above and read through them.

Health & Fitness

I did use my gym membership by visiting regularly and even went to a weekly spin class most weeks (unless I was ill). Yes, I hate it and yes I go anyway and it reminds me that even when I think I can’t do something… I can.

The gym itself I use more for weight lifting whereas classes I get in my cardio. The older you get the more you realise how important it is to work with weights. Wish I had started it younger, but hey, still started – that’s what matters.

During the latter part of the year, my depression got pretty bad, and it affected everything. So I ended up doing CBT therapy with a trained therapist which helped a lot.

PodLife

Rachel and I worked hard on the podcast over the year and we managed to hit over 12k downloads.

By the end of the year, we decided to make some changes. The main one is that the guest episodes are going to move away from topics and become more Author Interviews. We have already got our guests ready for 2025 while we trial this new form.

We are always so happy that so many writers want to be on the podcast. Thanks to everyone who joins us and to all you awesome people who listen to our nonsense.

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

Studying

I didn’t manage to do much British Sign Language this year, but I did continue my unbroken Duolingo streak for learning French and hit my 1,000 Day Streak (on Boxing Day).

I also started to learn Korean (blame it on me watching all the K-shows). It is HARD and I am terrible at it in every way. I also threw in Maths (why!? I have no idea!) and Music (for fun).

Biz-Ness

Things continued to be difficult this year with fewer sales over the first half of the year. But Etsy did do a clear-up of a lot of garbage that shouldn’t be on the platform.

Unfortunately, a lot of real creators got caught up in the overhaul. Either having their shops shut incorrectly or having items deactivated (the latter happened to me).

Thankfully their bots only did this to 4 of my items. Overall, this site wide clear-out seemed to have helped and more sales came my way.

However, the EU brought in another regulation that affected those of us in Northern Ireland. With many UK Mainland shops saying they would no longer sell to us because of the hoops they’d have to jump through (really expensive hoops that is ridiculous to expect any micro or small business to do!)

This caused issues as almost all of my vendors stopped shipping to N. Ireland. Before it came into effect in December, I had to do a massive purchase of stock to tide me over while I try to locate new vendors for my supplies.

This meant most of my profits were eaten up buying in larger quantities than I normally do. I also don’t have loads of space to put this stock so its in boxes around my room… and I’ve been tripping over them since.

I swear the EU has gone so far the other way, they are just driving people away with their over-regulating.

So far, the business has picked up enough that I’m going to keep running it but I’m taking it a quarter at a time. I even hit a milestone of 3,000 sales in my shop. Not bad to say I’m selling in one of the most saturated categories on Etsy (Jewellery).

Reader Life

One of the things I wanted to do was read more from my TBR pile this year. LOL well, I failed miserably as I suffer too much from “shiny object syndrome”.

I did try and think I read 6 books from my TBR pile… my goal was 24. Next year, I have a plan (will discuss in a later post) that will help my little goblin brain focus on the TBR books at least half of the time.

Especially since I can’t exactly buy any new books (or anything right now) due to all my money tied up in business stock.

I did manage to read 32 books in total this year and my Goodreads Challenge was 25. So I smashed it! 🙂

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I look back on this year with at least some fondness. It had its ups and downs but that’s life. The boat may rock, but it hasn’t capsized yet. 😉

Thanks to everyone who has actually read through this post. I hope you have a wonderful festive season, a quiet (or noisy) time depending on your preference and let’s hit 2025 refreshed and ready to go.

How was your 2024? Let me know in the comments!

See you next year