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Very busy working on home inventory, treasurer job and a bit of holiday prep! Plus, Link arrives later today for a 2-week visit. I reviewed my 12 Months of Celebration posts for the year so I could bring you my personal Best of 2013.
January: Completely overhauled the home office. It has remained functional and reasonable neat all year!
February: I took an afternoon off work and went to see a movie on my own, something I’ve never done before. (It was Les Mis!)
March/April: I started and worked intensively on a home inventory, and enjoyed re-building all the LEGO and Bionicle kits in the house to see if they were missing pieces!
May: Rom and I took our annual trip to the UK. The London restaurants were especially good!
June: Encountered a wooded glade full of Lady Slippers, a rare wild orchid. Also (bad news), one of our cats escaped from the house and was gone 5 days, but eventually returned!
July/August: Started in-line skating at the Speed Skating Oval. Exhilarating! I felt like Ellen Page and Drew Barrymore in Whip It! Except without the combat!
September: Got ridiculously addicted to Game of Thrones.
October: Enjoyed going to the new board game cafe, and re-kindled an interest in board games at home (current favourite: Blokus).
November: Visited Link in Toronto to see their new apartment, and soaked in the culture and restaurant scene.
December: I am officially full-time at my new job and I’m finally able to walk to work.
What were your highlights from 2013?
I won’t link you to all my monthly wrap-up posts but they are searchable from the blog home page if you type “12 Months” into the Search Box.
An Exacting Life 
What a great list! I love the idea of breaking it down by month, rather than just making a blanket list of the year’s events and achievements. It seems like it would be possible for me to really recall more of the good stuff this way.
Thanks! Looking back on the whole year seems kind of daunting. The months were easier 🙂
This post made me realize that I need to keep track of what I’ve done with my days! When I look back on my calendar I see mostly appointments noted with the occasional event listed. Going over each month with my memory immediately conjures up the negative aspects of the time period (why is that?). When I really started to work at it, I was able to find positive and fun things that occurred for each month. I also think that if I kept better ‘notes’ I would be able to quickly trigger more good memories instead of the immediate negative ones! It would also highlight how much I’ve accomplished, instead of my default position of thinking I still have so much to do. I think I have my first New Year’s resolution – I don’t usually make those!
Is this activity something your spouse participates in too?
I started doing this for my monthly “celebrating the month” posts. I do keep a day book for work, and in it I also write personal appts, events, things I’ve done, personal projects I’ve worked on, books I’ve read and movies I’ve watched, and so on. I like looking back through my day books because I rarely record anything negative in them! Rom doesn’t do this. However, since we kept a shared entertainment budget this year, we’ve chosen what events to buy tickets for and attend, so we’ve looked forward to the “planning and doing” throughout the year (and vacations too).
Except for the missing cat, sounds like a fantastic year. I can see you in Whip It! Love that movie.
Haha! I love Ellen Page – she is a local here. You know what: this was an average year. And average is great!
I wondered about your missing cat – so glad he/she came home.
This is something I might try next year as there are times when I wonder what did we do and where did we go and it’s quite a chore sometimes trying to remember lol
Cathy
Yeah, a whole year can go by in a blur! Nice to hear from you, Cathy.
What a great year! We love Blokus too 🙂 I’m so glad your cat came home! Capone escaped for 2 days when he was about a year old and it worried me so much. Hopefully he won’t do that again!
Oh, it’s nice to hear from another Blokus fan! Once at the board game cafe, before we bought the game, Blokus was already taken so we played a similar game called Gemblo.
We appreciate our cats being safe and sound!
Hooray for a 2 week visit w your grown child! Enjoy!
Link arrived safely yesterday and today we are having our second major snowstorm of the week!
Sounds like a really great year 🙂 I love how getting addicted to Game of Thrones is one of your highlights!
I am not averse to a little media addiction, LOL! I liked the feeling of being caught up in the story.
I love looking at the years all together – who I loved, lost, big things like that. It’s a great thing to help anchor one year from another. As time goes by, it gets harder to remember what made the year stand out from another, but sometimes too close too, it’s hard to see the best parts! I’ll have to ponder mine some more.
You’re right, Sarah. Some years it would have been all about monumental life changes or losses, and I’m glad it wasn’t one of those years. They’re not all stand-outs, and that’s not a bad thing!
I love the whole year’s narrative altogether. I would love to have a memento like this of each year. What a great year. Here’s to 2014!
Hi Fiona, I was actually going to make this post “The Best and Worst of 2013” and I realized there was no worst to write about. So that’s even better!
A great year with a good mix of highlights! I hope 2014 is just as good, if not better!
Thanks, Laura – more of the same would be fine 🙂