Happy New Year!

It's been a pretty interesting year, all told, and as I sit here I find myself considering my accomplishments and failures of the year. A lot of people in the blogosphere and Twitterverse I follow have been doing the same thing, and there's a pretty steady consensus that 2009 was a horrible year, but I have to disagree. I know it's selfish, in the face of all the horrible events that have happened over the year, but I happen to think 2009 was an amazing year.

I started the year with an amazing new day job, with great pay and great benefits. As a result, I've earned more money this year than I've earned in my whole life. Granted, I still don't make a great deal of money, especially considering where I live, but this year I've been safe, comfortable, and happy, at least financially speaking. Don't get me wrong, there have been a few scares. Unexpected financial burdens and medical bills and the like, but overall, things have been good.

Thanks to the great benefits offered by my day job, I have managed to take several paid vacations this year. I've never taken more than a week off of work in an entire year, but this year I was able to travel to see my family, to take some trips with my amazing husband, and to take some time off just to hang out at home.

Don't get me wrong, I also worked hard this year. I had some amazing accomplishments at work. I had one scholarly article accepted for publication, and one abstract accepted for a convention. I wrote more this year than I ever have before (finished three short stories and started two novels). I even got up the nerve to let some people read what I wrote, which is saying something. Somehow, in the middle of all this, I managed to read almost 75 books.

What's on my plate for next year? Right now, I have almost new 30 books on my bookshelf to read (I don't even want to think about how many I have on my list to buy in the next year). I have a goal to finish at least one of the novels I'm working on, and to write several new short stories. Maybe I'll even get up the nerve to submit something. I have a list of things to do a mile long at my day job, and most of those things will help me get published in one capacity or another.

2009 was a great year. And I'm hoping 2010 will be even better.