The best thing about 2013 is its mere existence guaranteed an entire branch of doomsday beliefs was neatly cut off as the whole “end of the Mayan calendar on December 21 2012 which must obviously mean THE END OF THE WORLD” has come and gone. So thanks for that, 2013!
Here’s my short take on the year:
Politics
The U.S. spies on everyone and everything. The most alarming aspect is the generally muted response from the U.S. public. Outrage is hard to sustain, all to the benefit of the NSA. The scariest tentacle monster is not to be found in manga.
In Canada the lingering Senate scandal and its handling finally took the shine off the Conservative government and has started the in-fighting. The Opposition, both official (NDP) and unofficial (Liberal) stand to benefit. Justin Trudeau has so far not screwed up as Liberal leader and has plenty of time to fit into his role. Will Mulcair trim his beard to look sexier? Stay tuned!
Entertainment
I am incredibly out of touch with pop culture vs. 20 or 30 years ago when I actually knew most of the current actors, musicians and “artists”. Even with my scant knowledge I can say I’ve had my fill of Miley Cyrus, the latest and perhaps most lamentable example of reworking an image. It is perhaps appropriate that her big hit through this is called “Wrecking Ball” (a song that Wikipedia says took five people to write). For popularizing the term “twerking” alone I’d be happy to never hear about Cyrus again.
On the plus side I discovered through a random comment on Broken Forum the band The Magnetic Fields, one of those great indie bands that never gets the attention it deserves. I have so far picked up their magnum opus, a three disc (remember those?) set called 69 Love Songs which is exactly what it sounds like, a collection of 69 songs about love. The songs are by turns warm and cynical, catchy and irreverent, switching styles as easily as one might switch channels on a TV in the vain hope to find something decent to watch.
And now a little on me:
Running
This was a mediocre year for running, with a combination of cranky feet and work conspiring to restrict my output severely over my banner year of 2012. By the end of the year I just kind of gave up, not even going out on weekends when I had available light (curse the early nights of winter, I sez). One of my resolutions is to get back to running regularly.
Reading
A regular commute that takes a little over an hour meant I had plenty of time to read this year and once I started my commute-based reading the number of books I went through shot up, ending with 24 books read (technically #24 is still being read but I could conceivably finish it today). A lot of this has been catching up on Stephen King novels I’d skipped over and I finally tackled The Dark Tower series more than twenty years after picking up The Gunslinger in paperback. I didn’t read anything I regretted reading, either, always a nice bonus.
Writing
Writing sputtered along. I flamed out halfway through National Novel Writing Month in November thanks to poor planning but may have enough of a novel there to salvage later.
The year was defined not so much by new output but rather old. Specifically I focused on polishing up a bunch of short stories with the intention to self-publish them as a collection. I’ll write more on this in another post but for now will say that the process of examining, editing and rewriting my stories has been a worthy one.
I did not put any notable effort into my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel The Ferry, which I intend to address next year.
Errata
2013 was at times a stressful year and I have ended up with goals partly based on some bad habits I let slip back in. But I got to do things I’ve never done before (fly!), read oodles of books and learned some important things about my writing that I will apply in 2014 and beyond.
