2019: The Year of the Jump

This is it.

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve.

2019 is coming to a close.

This is the time of year that people start screeching from the rooftops about how little they accomplished in the past year, and the huge expectations they’ve placed on themselves for the coming year.

I thought that it would be nice to take a look at the past year, and see some of the highlights.

School

I finished grade 10 and began grade 11 during 2019. This means that I only have about a year and a half left. 😱

Coming into high school, I was really scared. Around me, everyone told me how hard high school was, crying over their homework, and just struggling. Needless to say, by the time grade 10 had started in 2018, I was a nervous wreck.

To those of you who are going into high school and have heard the same stuff that I had and are terrified:

It’s not as bad as you think it is.

There are days that you feel like throwing your textbook across the room, or yes, even weeping across your textbook. But those absolutely horrible days are far and few between.

The difficulty level of school doesn’t exactly ever increase. It’s always just you trying to learn new things, and those things are always building off of old concepts that you already know. The only thing that really increases is the workload.

After finding that out in grade 10, I was a lot less stressed coming into grade 11 – which is extremely weird, because I’ve heard from everyone that grade 11 is basically the hardest year. (besides grade 7, of course, which seems to be the year that everyone struggles with)

And yes, I don’t really enjoy writing social essays, or doing pre-calculus, but I keep going forward and I’m still alive. If there’s one tip I can give, it’s to not stress about high school.

Blog

This blog has gone through a little bit of a whirlwind this past year – again.

I switched my blog domain and hosting, so now, instead of WordPress.org, I’m using WordPress.com. This has cut the amount I have to spend on it by about half each month.

By moving, follower count has increased much faster than before. I have a lot of new faces around that like to follow through WordPress, and familiar ones though my email list. (if you haven’t followed through my email list – which gets lots of cool exclusive content – you can here!)

And now, let’s take a look at all the posts I wrote this year!

Series I did this year:

• Things I’ve Learned from NaNoWriMo (the link is to the last post in the series, since it includes a recap with links to all the other posts 😉)
• How to Keep Readers Interested (the link is to the last post in the series, since it includes a recap with links to all the other posts 😉)
• NaNoWriMo 2019 (weekly recaps of each day with snippets) (the link is to the last post in the series, since it includes a recap with links to all the other posts 😉)

Collaborations I did this year:

• Weird Things that only Writers Do: Collaboration!
• What We Can Learn from 100 Days of Sunlight + Interview with the Author! {How to Keep Readers Interested}

Tags/Awards I did this year:

• Get to Know Me Writer’s Tag
• Project Inspire
• 12 Days of Christmas Book Tag

Writing posts I did this year:

• Who is the First Draft For?
• Should You Take a Break between Drafts? {CASE STUDY}
• How to Avoid Info Dumping
• How to Deal With Plot Bunnies – The RIGHT Way

There were a couple other random posts hanging around, but that’s basically it!

Writing

This year was a bit of a whirlwind when it came to writing.

• I finished the first draft of the third version of The Storm Inside.
• I wrote The Fire Inside.
• I started The Leader Inside. Didn’t get far.
• I tried to outline the character arc of Lilith from The Triad of Caosdif. (it didn’t work 😂)
• I outlined the character arc and plot line of the first contemporary novel I’ve ever tried.
• I started the contemporary novel. Also didn’t get far.
• I combined my trilogy of The Storm Inside into just one book, outlining two character arcs for it for the same character.
• I’ve been working on this new version of The Storm Inside; it was what I wrote for NaNoWriMo this year.
• And not to mention the bajillion and one ideas I’ve been playing with that are floating around in my head.

To think, when I came into this year, my only goal was to finish and launch The Storm Inside. 😂 Yeah, no. I’m thinking that’ll happen sometime in 2021.

Personal Life

At the beginning of 2019, when my inbox was flooded with emails on setting goals for yourself, one subject line caught my eye.

2019: The Year of ___

Upon reading the email, it explained that your choice of what you wanted your year to be would fill the blank.

Growth.

Publishing.

Happiness.

What did you want your 2019 to be?

I landed (ha) on the word ‘jump’.

I wanted to leap into the unknown this year. If I was going to be launching my book (which I never did ahahahaha 😅) then I needed to be brave. I needed to be prepared to leap into the unknown and just take the leap.

To jump.

And I did take quite a few jumps this year.

And you know what?

It resulted in one of the best years I’ve ever had.

Some were just small things, like trying new foods or doing some random things with my friends, but it was honestly a blast.

And yes, I was definitely burned because of my risk-taking. The worst one was when I was trying to get a drawing tablet. I bought one that ended up not working, which completely crushed me. But later this year, I actually tried again, and got a cute little one that works just great. 😉 (if you’re wondering, the kind of drawing tablet I’m talking about is one that can be plugged into your computer so you can draw on it and see what you’re doing on the computer screen)

I’ve already chosen out the word I want to fill the blank for 2020. Maybe I’ll tell you what it is at the end of next year. 😉

What happened to you in 2019?

Did you like this highlight-reel-look at my year?

What is your word for 2020?

-Julia