The difficult part about the end of December is that the multiple of holidays rolling into one another tend to create a feeling of inertia that makes it difficult to return to normal. But now the holidays are well and truly over; it’s long past time for the fake tree to come down and get stuffed back into its box for another year. Time to dust off the blog and think about what I want to say.

Originally, I planned on doing a post about what 2013 meant to me. A lot of people are going on the record as saying that 2013 was the worst year ever. That might be true for them; I don’t think it’s true for me. 2013 had its ups and its downs, although overall, I think there were more ups.

What will 2014 be? I’m hoping it will be a good year. I’m going to try and publish my book (at long last). I have a few other writing and editing related opportunities that I can’t discuss in detail (out of respect to the privacy of the client) but that have me very excited. I cashed my first check that I earned from editing last week and it was glorious.

The urge to spend it all on a new laptop instead of building up my ravaged savings account was almost overwhelming. Right now, the desire to save is winning . . . but we’ll see how long that lasts.

One thing I’ve been discussing with myself is the direction I want to take the blog. Over the past year, I tended to write about whatever struck my fancy . . . and that included a lot of political and opinion posts. I’m uncertain whether I’ll continue that trend. It did provide me with something to talk about but it also meant that sometimes I went looking for things to get annoyed at just so I could have something to write about. I think that tendency skewed much of my writing towards the Cynical end of the spectrum. If 2013 was the Cynical year, I feel compelled to make 2014 the Idealist year.

Expect posts about adorable kittens and puppies falling asleep EVERY DAY. Ye be warned.