2013 has been… interesting. Not as full as emotional whiplash as 2012 which remains both the best year of my life and the worst. But 2013 was still challenging and wondrous in it’s own ways.

I started this year in Budapest courtesy of lovely best friend Debs.

Really this year I hung out with my best friends, a lot. Losing Lianne has really pushed home the importance of having regular meet-ups to eat yummy food and wear silly hats.

I spend most of the spring shut inside reading all the books and writing my final essays in between trying to get enough hours on my placement.

Shortly I handed in my dissertation, HWSNBN and I flew out for the holiday of lifetime and our honeymoon to Cuba. It was three of the most amazing weeks of my life and I was on a high for most of the summer. (And I still haven’t blogged about it. GUILT!)

And in July I graduated qualifying me to pursue my dream career as a counsellor. I still can’t believe that not only did I complete the course (when battling through grief) and I got a distinction!

Over the summer I swam in the sea so much HWSNBN christened me the mermaid.

And in August I spoke about losing Lianne one year on.

I went to France with the family and ate many crepes the size of my head. Sea salt caramel FTW!

HWSNBN and I started househunting then thought fuck it we are never going to be able to afford to move let’s go on holiday to Tokyo and Australia instead! To say I am excited is the understatement of the century.

In December to raise money for the hospice that looked after Lianne, Ros and I cut off our hair for charity raising over £600.

It’s been a good year. But the latter half of this year, ugh it’s been tough. I struggled with health issues. The last six months there have been two things I’ve been pursuing with every fibre of being. And although I haven’t exactly fallen flat on my face, in different ways I’ve failed to make the changes I wanted. The thing about change nobody tells you is how much it sucks. It’s uncomfortable, it forces you out of your comfort zone, and mostly it’s slow.

Feeling so stuck has led to some big emotional revelations. I started setting boundaries. I began counting my blessings and letting go of guilt. I cut down on the amount I took on. And this, really surprises me sometime this year something shifted within me and I started being kinder to myself.

Would I have learnt those lessons if everything hadn’t gone exactly to plan? Probably not. Would I preferred it everything had gone smoothly? Hell yes! But so it goes…

So for the 2014 in the grand tradition of making overly ambitious resolutions and giving them up in a strop within a week, I have three resolutions:

1. Make a recipe a week.

I need to expand my repertoire beyond pasta and studenty stir frys before I contract lurgy. So I’m committing to cook something new every week in the hope that come 2015 I will have 52 new dishes to add to my repertoire.

2. Write and submit a story

I miss being creative and writing had to take a backburner while I completed my degree. But now I have all this free time (haha) my plan is write and submit my story about anything by the end of 2014

3. Complete five things from my much neglected life list.

Overall if there’s one wish I have for this year, it’s that I surprise myself again.