My phone took this photo all by itself today, whilst I was taking snapshots of some perfect snowflakes (and I mean perfect. All snow-flake-y-like, though that’s not my picture). As I was flipping through my photos, though, I couldn’t help but stop on this one. This fuzzy, pretty accident shot.

This was kind of my year. Blurry, uncertain, not what I was expecting it to be… but ultimately a lovely thing.

2012 started out as a bit of a mess for me. The Mr. and I were broke, living down in Texas on some property my father had bought in a scary part of town and doing our best to clean it up and get it ready for business. And work on stuff for my Etsy shop, which was pretty much our only income at the time. And oh yeah, work on my writing. I was hoping to be finished by the end of June so that I could have the whole thing edited and ready to send out for submissions by December – that didn’t quite happen, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Then in March, without much real warning, my father sold his property in Texas, and The Mr. and I bundled up our stuff and headed back to where we met and started this crazy life together—Utah. We went on faith, mainly, because we certainly didn’t have anything promising waiting for us there. We were blessed to stay with good friends for a couple of months, and our hopes that we would find a soft spot to land from a long fall ended up justified. Soon I had a part-time job, and almost as quickly after that (thought it didn’t really feel quick at the time), both The Mr. and I got hired on at the same company—with a decent wage and benefits from day one.

Of course… it was a graveyard shift, so there was that to adjust to. And honestly, sometimes it feels as if we are still adjusting, a little over six months later. But we are under our own roof and paying our bills, which is a blessing some might take for granted.

With all the craziness, I read only a measley 22 books this year. And yes, that includes the one I finished today. I blame this largely on the fact that I’ve been trying to read both Bleak House and The Idiot without owning my own actual hard copy of either of them… but this might be a little crazy of me. It probably also had to do with the whole sleep-adjusting and moving twice thing.

I fell in love with the Android Librivox app this year, too.

As I said before, I did not write “The End” on my story by the time I was hoping—but I did write it. Now I’m working on edits and the new goal is to have everything triple-edited by the end of April and be on submissions after that, along with having another WIP done by this June.

2013 is my year! Hope it’s yours, too!