The closer we got to the end of 2018, the more I felt that nagging desire to write some kind of “end of year blog post”. And yet every time I sat down to do it, I just… couldn’t. This past year was big. It was hugely transition in many ways, from gliding into my thirties, hitting many large positive and negative life milestones, and altogether having a sense that I’ve been doing the same things far too long and needing to take on new things.

While on the surface I’ve very much adjusted to living a life without YouTube in it, there’s still a huge part of me that is recovering from that lifestyle, and still grasping to find ways to fully fill the holes it left. It’s easy to keep doing things because you’ve done them for a long time. It’s brave to stop doing things when you realize they aren’t adding value to your life anymore. It’s scary and hard to figure out what to replace them with.

But every day is a new opportunity to reinvent yourself, and there’s no deadline. 2018 threw me some serious curveballs, but I like the direction my life has taken, and I want to keep exploring what else there is out there for me. So I’m going to spend some time looking back on this past year, and then think a little bit about my plans for 2019. As always, I thank you for joining me for any of it,

2018. We didn’t always get along, but boy were you an important year: 

• Got married to my best friend on May 4th. 
• Completed a lifelong goal of visiting Japan, on our honeymoon. 
• Learned to snorkel in Hawaii!
• Came home from my honeymoon to find out things were not going well at work. 
• Became the casualty of a company-wide reorg and lost the job I loved. 
• Got laid off for the first time ever. 
• Spent many months job searching and interviewing for so many jobs that I genuinely lost count (probably at least twenty).
• Went on many amazing trips like Disneyland, NYC, and San Francisco with friends, and a solo Chicago trip for work. 
• Took my spontaneous road trip to North Dakota while being unemployed and got to spend some quality time with relatives. 
• Finally started my book inspired by North Dakota, which became my 13th NaNoWriMo win.
• Also spent most of the year working on another book project that’s pretty close to what I’d call a “first draft”. This will be my first non-NaNoWriMo draft of a book.
• Taught myself all sorts of random new skills while being unemployed since I can’t sit still, like: sewing a quilt, embroidery, building miniature things and some minimal baking. 
• Finally got a new job at Microsoft, and started my exciting new role with the Mixer team as a Partner Account Manager in November. 
• Read 30 books, which is actually quite low for me, but a number I felt good about for wedding year. 
• Realized that with my new job and new marriage and fun hobbies and great friends I am genuinely just so happy, and cannot wait to see what this next year will bring. 

The start of the year was a whirlwind. I loved our wedding, but I hated what planning it did to me. I’m already prone to anxiety and stress, but the months leading up to the wedding were on another level. Frankly, I’m not sure I would do it all over again if I had to. But the wedding day itself… was truly magical. Seeing the joy on the faces of our friends and family really did help to make up for it, and people are still telling me it was the coolest wedding they’ve ever been to… so I suppose all the work was worth it. I’ve already blogged extensively about this, but it’s obviously the biggest pinnacle of 2018 and I am loving married life so, so much. 

I’m not so interested in new year’s resolutions, because I’m already big on habit tracking and basically set myself resolutions all the time… but here are the high level things I want to focus on next year. My values, if you will. 

1. Self-care, and setting myself up for success. By this mean I learning more about myself in terms of what food my body likes, how much water it wants, and getting in better shape, as well as being more mindful and intentional about how I spend my time. 

2. Investing time into the projects that mean a lot to me. Writing. Crafting. Cooking. Mostly writing. I’ve got a project I’m currently working on that I’d like to have in your hands by the end of the year, but we’ll see. I guess my intention for this year is to work harder on writing than ever before, and start to share it, in some form.

3. Travel! This one is a little tough because losing my job and starting over made me zero out on vacation days, but as I slowly start to accrue them again, Joe and I want to do so much traveling. We’re starting to think about larger life steps, so before we dive head-first into that stuff, we want to make sure we’re doing all the things that are so much easier with kids, a house payment, etc.

That’s it! I am in a really good head space going into 2019, I’m happy, I have a wonderful support group in terms of friends and family, my job is new and exciting and challenging, and I am deeply passionate about so many projects I’m working on. The biggest challenge, honestly, is focusing in on a couple things so I can actually do them justice. That’s always been the toughest thing for me because I always want to do EVERYTHING.

So 2019 will hopefully be the year that I do SOME things, and do them well.

Thanks for all your kind words, tweets, emails, instagram comments, etc. You have no idea how much it means to me to hear from you, especially when I’m not “creating content” regularly. I promise I am making things… it’s just on projects that take much longer, and stay much closer to the chest in the mean time.

Happy New Year! This will be a year of positive, intentional change, and I’m already loving it.

Societally, 2016 will be known as one of the very worst years of the modern age – but for me, I actually had a lot of really great highlights. It’s confusing, knowing the year was so terrible on a grand level, but still wanting to celebrate my own successes.

I’m all about the camaraderie of hating things together, and I know we have our work cut out for us for the next four years… but right now, I just want to take a deep breath and admit 2016 kind of rocked in a lot of ways, too. I saw online someone saying “don’t wish your life away”. So even though there are still 2 days left in this facepalm of a year, I want to take these final two days to be proud for having survived it, rather than rushing it to be over.

In 2016, I:

• Was hired as a Full-Time Employee at Microsoft in May, which is a career path I wasn’t expecting or even necessarily trying to take, but one that’s helped me grow in so many ways I’ve truly lost count.
• Graduated from my UW certificate program in YA Fiction Writing! This has given me so much more confidence and direction as a writer.
• Wrote my 11th NaNoWriMo novel in a castle in France, where I met incredible people and learned a great deal about myself along the way.
• Got engaged to Joe! He proposed in front of Hogwarts castle, with a ring he made himself, and I’m reminded every day how lucky I am to have found such a sweet boy who cares so much for me.
• Dyed my hair pink! After 28 years of feeling timid, I just decided to take the plunge. I’m a pink girl to the core, and now everyone knows it.
• Played a reunion concert with my band The Parselmouths! This is something I truly never thought would happen again, but somehow the planets aligned and we did it. And it felt good.
• Started cooking dinner more regularly thanks to Blue Apron! I’ve learned an insane amount about cooking since we began this endeavor, and the dedicated time with Joe doesn’t hurt, either. Plus it’s all pretty healthy food, which was a previous goal of mine.
• Ran my first 5k! Microsoft put on a charity 5k, and a bunch of my teammates and I signed up! I only actually ran about half of it, but I was proud of myself nonetheless.
• Created NINE new cosplays, including Future Twilight, Piranha Plant Girl, Lolita and Pajamas Princess Bubblegum, Taffyta Muttonfudge, Wendy from Lumberjanes, Gunner Peach, Renaissance Tinkerbell and Misty from Pokémon. This was maybe too many, in hindsight, but I had a great time doing it.
• Read _ books. I’ll fill this number in at the proper end of the year. I’m currently at 41, but there are two days left in this year. Who knows what might happen.

Last year I set some New Year’s resolutions for myself, so I thought it would be fun to revisit these and see if they worked out, how much I grew, and what to change for next year.

• Make at least one more cosplay than the previous year! (Last year I made 5, so this year I definitely hit this goal and more. In fact, because of how busy I’ve made myself, I actually want to think about this next year. Cosplay is fun, but it really has the power to eat up my life, so I want to limit what I attempt to do so I can balance with my other goals.)
• Finished editing my novel by the end of the year! (This did not happen, but I am okay with that. I decided instead of editing to do a total rewrite, and right now I am 2/3 done with that draft. I imagine I will have another solid draft of this done by spring of 2017, so that’s reasonable.)
• Read at least 52 books – one per week! (I’m racing the clock on this one, but I did make the executive decision to bump this goal down to 50. I still might not hit it, but I will get close. I really enjoyed the books I read this year, so I am satisfied here.)
• Invest in professional photo shoots for my cosplays! (I did this… twice, this year. I wasn’t overwhelmingly blown away by either set of photos, so I might just go back to casual photoshoots with my friends. I really want cosplay to just be a fun little hobby, so I think I am altogether backpedaling on my previous goals of taking it more seriously.)
• Hit year #2 at Microsoft! (Check! My anniversary is Dec 19th, so I’m officially at 2 years!)
• Find a method of exercising and eating healthy that works for me! (I got halfway there this year! Joe and I have been cooking dinner together regularly, I eat significantly less fast food than ever before, and I don’t crave as much junk food as I used to. This is a slow process, but I am proud of my progress. Exercise, on the other hand… well, that can be 2017’s problem.)

Here are my new resolutions for 2017:

• Actually finish your book to an extent where you feel okay sending it to beta readers and then, potentially, agents.
• For the love of god, start writing a completely different book. (After you finish this one, Kristina. After.)
• Plan an awesome wedding you’ll always look back on fondly, but also don’t let it make you crazy.
• Cosplay, or not, but only because you want to.
• Read at least 40 books. Be mindful of the books you choose to read. Consider #diversebooks and #ownvoices. (My reading goal number goes down every year because I am trying to be kinder to myself.)
• Continue to de-clutter and minimize possessions/wardrobe. Invest in nicer things, but less of them.
• Exercise. Please. Even just a little bit.

In 2017, I want to help others and this planet as much as possible. I want to live a more sustainable life. I want to help raise others’ voices when I can. I want to focus less on possessions and more on experiences. I want to write more, love more, worry less. I welcome 2017 with open arms.

What are your resolutions?