As the end of the year approaches, it’s a convenient time to sit down and evaluate how the last year has gone; what’s been good; what got done; what kinda sucked and what can be done better in the next year.
For me 2013 was a year of changes and rapidly growing up. I spent the first half of the year interning and then working at Miniclip where I learned a ton about pretty much everything. That whole experience was great fun and a wonderful opportunity; my decision to have a gap year was definitely the right one.
After finishing up at Miniclip I had two months off to enjoy my summer and then started university at Warwick at the end of September. Uni has pretty much dominated my life since, and as I wrote about a couple of weeks after arriving it’s been pretty fun and — once again — another big learning experience.
That’s the uber-simplistic view of the last twelve months. There have been other changes, too, though: in September I parted ways with the site that pretty much taught me everything about blogging and the web, WPShout, the site I’d set up when I was fifteen. That was a big decision, but Fred and David doing an awesome job with the site has really vindicated the move to sell. I was essentially neglecting the site, and it’s brilliant to see the kind of content I should have been writing showing up on the site.
I’ve also been blogging “once a week” here on sevenironcows. The end of 2013 brings about the first anniversary of this site, and I’m pretty pleased with how things are going here. I don’t really give a crap about readership numbers, which is fortunate as they’re pretty abysmal, but it’s nice just having a corner of the interwebs to just write without having to think too much about it. This post is number 101, which slightly misleadingly implies I’ve published something twice a week. The majority of those posts are either haikus (I failed at writing 100 haikus in 2013, in case you were wondering) or pics, but it’s still a decidedly Not Bad content-count for the year.
The redesign the site underwent back in the summer was definitely a good move, too; pulling in my Instagram feed to the sidebar works really nicely, and I’ve even considered switching back to a one-column setup where photos are incorporated (and would dominate) the site’s main feed.
sevenironcows has basically been an entirely personal project, so with no real goals to validate and nobody to justify to, I’ve been pretty pleased with how it’s gone so far.
Looking forward to 2014 I’ve been quietly working away on a new blog which I’ll probably launch early in the new year. I’ve tried and failed to launch it before, but I’m much better prepared to make it work this time round, and I’m determined to at least give it a pretty good shot. I will nodoubt drop a post here if/when the site launches.
I’ve also decided 2014 is going to be the year I get out and see more of the world. I’ve got the first bits of a plan to travel Istanbul -> London over the summer sorted, and I’d love to get outside of Europe too. Travelling is definitely more-or-less top of my personal agenda for the next year. I’ve even kitted myself out with a new camera in anticipation.
It seems naive to try and round up everything of significance that’s happened in the last year into a single blog post, let alone a 600-odd-word one. Indeed, it is; there is a metric ton of stuff I’ve missed out here. In brief, though, 2013 has been good. 2014, however, will be better. Honest.
