2014: pretty great!

It’s a day past Beethoven’s birthday and you know what that means. Ok, I don’t know what it means either… I guess it means it’s time for my 2014 wrap up post!

I looked back at my 2013 wrap-up, and it was a bit of a downer. Sorry. 2013 was not my best year. Though as I say, there were some pretty great things that happened: I ran a marathon, got a sweater with ponies on it, etc. Does 2014 live up to the pony-sweater-aquiring amazingness of 2013?

It surpasses it in many ways; I’m definitely much happier and more content this year. Let’s see why:

• I got a new job and it’s great! I miss all of my Methuen coworkers but working in Andover has been wonderful so far.
• I spent a lot of time with my friends and they were predictably awesome.
• My mom and sister visited in October and had an awesome weekend with friends in Rhode Island. It’s always amazing to me how game my family is for hanging out with my friends. It was so fun to see these two important groups of people hanging out together. Plus we had some rousing game of Masquerade. (Swap-or-not!)
• My library sent me to Austin, TX for the YA Lit Symposium and it was definitely a highlight of the year! Great authors, books, and discussions of issues in teen literature.
• I became a comics fan thanks mostly to my lovely new boyfriend. I highly recommend: Saga, Sex Criminals, Rat Queens (can’t wait to see the new artist post controversy), Ms. Marvel, The Wicked + the Divine, Lumberjanes (my love for Lumberjanes has no bounds), and more. I’m always looking for more titles!
• While the stupid, unrepresentative, and hateful actions of the president of my alma mater didn’t make me happy, the response of my friends and all of those involved in the One Gordon organization did. They are living out the change they want to see in the world and I couldn’t be prouder.
• I volunteered at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival like I have for the last few years and it was so inspiring. I discovered Carol Ann Duffy and realized I am way late to the game. She’s so amazing.
• I saw and interacted with some amazing authors. I saw Lev Grossman, Laini Taylor, Andrew Smith, and more of my favorites. I was totally dorky about meeting all of them. I got to bother Leigh Bardugo on Twitter for the Hub. She’s so gracious and writes great books.
• Writing for the Hub has been especially rewarding and our bloggers meetup at the Symposium was a blast.

Last year I made a list of goals for 2014:

• I hope to read even better books.
• I will do NaNoWriMo.
• I will run again and get healthy and qualify for the Boston marathon (JOKE).
• I will be the best at my job I can be – working as hard as I can for those teens and the rest of my library’s patrons.
• I hope to read more books than this year’s total of 122. I am especially excited about Dreams of Gods and Monsters out in April and The Magician’s Land out in August.
• I hope to somehow karmically repay everyone who helped me through this year – you all are priceless (especially Mom, Sara, Hannah, Ang, Maggie, Katelyn, Adam, Dani, Alex, Kells Bells, Church Amy D., Work Amy D., Tracy, Tatjana, Amy F., Paul and everyone else who gave me a hug when I needed it).
• I will be spend more time being happy.
• I won’t forget to be awesome.

Um, well, I did some of these?

I did read some pretty great books but I didn’t do NaNoWriMo. I helped with NaNoWriMo programming at my library but that probably doesn’t count. I think I did pretty well at my job, too, and even started a new one.

I did not read more than 122 books. How did I do that?! That’s a lot of books! I’m hovering around 100 right now. My goal on Goodreads was to read 125; initially it was 150 but that was crazy. I really wanted to read 125, but transitioning to a new job took up a lot of my brain space. Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that I watched a lot of TV.* But while I maybe didn’t read as many books as I wanted to, I read some really great ones.

I ran another half marathon but the bursitis is still lingering. Hopefully next year I will get to 100% and back to my best running self.

Spending a lot more time being happy? Yup. The beginning of the year was a bit stressful with the job transition but since then it’s been pretty great: I love my new job, my new apartment, my new boyfriend, and of course, I still have all the same amazing family and friends. I wish that I could say that I was able to karmically pay back all of my friends who were so sweet to me last year, but that’s an ongoing goal.

And yeah, I’m pretty great. No worries there.

Here are my goals for 2015:

• Spend more time with family and friends.
• Regain title of favorite aunt to my nieces and nephews. I think I’ve been slacking.
• Keep reading but focus on reading widely and not feeling so guilty about reading adult books! I like Book Riot’s suggestions for reading goals.
• Get my hip 100% healthy.
• Continue to grow in my job and become more confident as an advocate for teen services in libraries.
• Make full use of my vacation time.
• Be better about posting here once a week.

That’s it, we will see what happens!

Finally, I know some of you (mostly Hannah) like to see my list of best book that I’ve read this year. Here are my favorites: Station Eleven, Dreams of Gods and Monsters, Wild, Saga (all of it…), The Book of Strange New Things, Alone on the Ice, It’s Complicated, The Sea of Tranquility, Scowler, Reality Boy, Grasshopper Jungle, Five Days at Memorial, I am Malala, Sex & Violence, The Magician’s Land, Cloud Atlas, Brown Girl Dreaming, Ruin and Rising, 100 Sideways Miles, and Boy Snow Bird. There’s probably a few more but that’s all I can think of right now.

2014 was a great year and I’m really thankful to everyone who made it that way. I’m looking forward to even more wonderful things in 2015!

*I’m fairly embarrassed to say that I watched all of Supernatural that is on Netflix in a year. Nine seasons of basically the same thing. I watched it ALL.