Massage Your Sore Butt, Last Year

I kicked 2013's bootie.

Hence the title of this blog post.

It was a stunningly productive year and one full of huge changes.

Most importantly, this thing happened:

I have three kids now instead of just two. This is in an interesting development. It means that there is no more "you deal with that one, I'll deal with this one." If our kids are split into two categories, the categories are Baby and Not-Baby.

My three-year-old and six-year-old are cute, but when they bawl I want to tell them to fix their own damn problems. When the baby cries she sticks her lip out and big baby tears appear and she must be held and lovie loved. This is the main difference.

The baby's name is Brigitta, although I call her Betty after my grandmother, who always hated the idea of Betty being a proper name and not just a nickname. All solved.

Also, this year...

- I sold two stories.

- I wrote a novel! From start to finish. I began it in March, desperately writing fifteen minutes a day. It's a total piece of crap. But it has a beginning, middle, end.

- I recorded and mixed and released Pawnbroker's new album. BUY IT IT'S REALLY GOOD. Seriously. We dumped our brains and sexies into it.

- I bought a house! This was a big first for us. We've been saving in order to buy inside Bellingham city limits (can't do zero down in any liveable places around here). We had a great realtor, a former builder, who was also an old friend. It was a massive financial juggle with only one huge expensive last-minute extra issue. We just got in before Christmas. Wowee.

- I actually lost a little weight. I've been about ten pounds up from comfortable for years, and I am now back at comfortable.

- I determined that I wanted to change Primary Job, and have begun the transition...

- I quit writing for IGMS, and started writing for Bleeding Cool.

There were more things. My only disappointment was in the lack of publication, but most of that is due to lack of submission. A Hugo or Nebula wouldn't hurt.

By far the greatest side effect of this list, besides the cute baby squees, is this: writing feels fun again. For the last few years I've had to shackle myself to my desk. This year I looked forward to just about everything I sat down to do.

I am not sure why. I came out of a long depression that began in 2011, for one. I was teaching so much (and really enjoying it) that I got the reverse of teacher burnout; I had to write to process everything I was doing.

Now, I would like to point to this as a model productivity year. All year long I worked a full-time and a part-time job and I was a full-time parent (that includes time spent behind a locked door, pretending I wasn't there, btw). I am fairly amazed that I got all this sheeeeyit done.

If I do, though, I'm afraid I'll hate myself as soon as I hit a lower period. So rather than making this year the standard, I shall call it Extreme High Tide and hope the tide is high enough that I can get some more stories out the door soon.

That is why I follow my longstanding practice of NO DAMN RESOLUTIONS. I hate those things.

How about you? How was your year, and how is your relationship with Productivity getting on?