Dec 31 2008
And as the year draws down…
Here I sit, at our family place in Nelson Bay, thankfully feeling better (but hardly perfect), and planning our night’s activities, and thinking about the year that was. Only about five hours left in the year, and it’s certainly been a varied one.
Really don’t go for all that “year that was” stuff, so there’s really only two things I want to mentioned here. I wrote a bit over 450 blog posts this year — at least one for every single calendar day this year. That’s more than twice as many as I’d written in the entire 6 and a half years of the blog prior to that, and I’m really pleased with my efforts. Obviously they’re not all gold entries, but I’m more interested in the regular effort and the regular committment to keeping this going, something I haven’t been on top of enough in previous years. So top marks there, and here’s to another year of full-on blogging!
Until November, I thought it was going to be another dud year for my fiction writing. Then a couple of things happened. We finally sorted some finances out enough to get ourselves new laptops — I got an eeePC 1000 — and I entered the NanoWriMo competition. Incidentally, I didn’t actually pass that, writing 26,000 words in November, but then I wrote another 20,000 words in December. I’m at 46,000 words as of now, this month’s effort slightly curtailed by Christmas activities and the illness of the last few days. But still — 46000 words of fiction written in two months. I expect to finish this novel draft in January, and even if this one doesn’ t work, I’ll go straight on to a new one. This sort of word count seems amazing, and it’s more fiction than I’ve written in the previous 2-3 years. It should be mentioned that the laptop brought new productivity, via reclaiming my time spent of the train every day. I get upwards of two hours every week day on the train, which with my laptop means at least 1000 words every week day. Of course, it seems harder to write anywhere else, but I’ll take what I can get.
So those are my two great activity triumphs this year. Regular day job stuff has been way more mixed, to the point that I hardly even want to mention it. And for 2009, that’s either going to get much better or much worse very quickly. But that’s the way of the world I gues, especially as is being forcast for 2009. Would rather not concentrate on that!
So, if I don’t post here again until the new year, Happy New Year to all, be safe, have fun, treat those close to you well, and enjoy yourself. First up for the year will be blog highlights, New Year’s Resolutions and a look at TV highlights for the coming year.
I mean, it’s not like you want to stop for pictures when you’re at the beach anyway… when you’re four or two, that is.
Connection speed is pretty good, and setup was surprisingly easy. Was especially impressed with the lack of install discs (considering my eeePC has no CD drive!) — all software is installed straight off the USB key, which was handy and unexpected. Once that’s setup, it’s easy, and it reminds me slightly of using an old dial up modem, except it’s much faster… barely any different from my home cable (Optus really need to upgrade their cable speed).