Goodbye 2015!

Goodbye 2015!  It’s been a…full year.

On the last day of the year, I always like to do a quick inventory, looking at highlights of the year.  This often involves data–because I’m me and we’ve talked before about my potentially unhealthy love of spreadsheets.  So if that’s not your bag, have a fantastic and safe New Year’s Eve, and I’ll see you in 2016!

So, to review:

• I didn’t blog much this year.  A lot of that is that I was crazy busy with a project at Evil Day Job.  A lot was that I didn’t feel like I had anything interesting to say.  And a lot was simply that I was putting all my efforts into off screen sorts of stuff.   I’d like to find a happy medium for that moving into next year.
• I didn’t have a focal word for 2015.  I actually don’t know if I made one for the previous couple of years either.  But I decided that the focus for 2016 will be INTENTIONALITY.  I want to approach all aspects of my life with intention–my writing, my health, my fitness.
• Regarding Operation Goddess In Training, I’m up a few pounds from my low of the year, but I’m still finishing out the year 4 or 5 pounds lower than this time last year, so I’ll call it a win.  I established some new routines and habits this year and those helped, but I’ve been inconsistent (that comes back to that intentionality thing).  So I want to get more consistent with my routines for 2016.  Hubs and I are kicking things off on the 4th with a round of Whole 30 to reset our bodies.  I’ll be interested to see how that goes.  At the very least, I should carve off all the holiday chub.  I’m also planning to try Couch 2 5K again.  We’ll see how that goes.  When I did it back in September, I was having serious problems with histamine reactions to that level of exertion (Whole 30 should help with that)–breaking out into hives from running is rather unpleasant.  Which was why I stopped.  Either way, I’m updating my weight lifting routine and getting serious there.  I might wait until the Whole 30 is done to try C25K and focus on the lifting and maybe some yoga or tai chi for January.
• We lost our Daisy this year.  That was tough.  But she was fourteen and it was simply time.  And it made room in our home and lives for Huck, who has been a joy.  We’ve spent the last 6 months turning back into a family with two able-bodied dogs and getting active again.
• I read 70 books this year.  That’s down from 81 last year.  Most of it was small town romance, cowboys, and steampunk.  My new love is Maisey Yates’ Copper Ridge Cowboys.  Part of why it was down is because…
• I wrote 350k words this year.  That’s up from 319k in 2014.  It breaks down to 297k in prose, and about 53k in plotting.  That worked out to 2 novels (Know Me Well [Book 3 in Wishful], Book 1 in Sooper Seekrit Project, a trilogy hopefully to be released summer 2016), 2 novellas (Wish I Might [Book 4 in Wishful, which will be coming out this spring in the Virtually Yours anthology] and Dance Me A Dream [another Wishful holiday novella that will come out next holiday season]), and one novelette (Once Upon A Setup [Meet Cute Romance #5]).  Oh, and my cookbook, HELP! Food Allergies Coming To Dinner: The Pinch-Hitter’s Guide To Cooking Without Gluten or Dairy.  I wrote 296 days this year (3 more than last year), and my average daily word count is up to 1187 (up from 1088 last year).  I only plotted 31 days this year (compared to 85 days last year), so I’m getting quicker about plotting things out, which is also an improvement.
• I also won NaNoWriMo this year, which was kind of a bucket list thing I’ve been working toward for years.  I ultimately want to get to where NaNo level productivity is the norm.  I fully embraced Write or Die and the idea of getting up at 5:15 to write before my morning workout, something I’d been resistant to doing for YEARS.   But it worked.  So I’m going to keep doing it in 2016 because I have a VERY FULL SLATE with a whopping 9 (or 10, depending) titles I should be getting out the door (some of which being the ones I held back this year), and that’s the only way I’ll pull it off.

All in all, I did a lot, and I’m pleased with my progress.