My 2014 year in review

2014 has been good to me. I’ve been nonemployed and able to pursue my creative ambitions full force. I met many new friends over the past year and had the opportunity to travel to beautiful places. I’ve got a lot to celebrate. Here’s a rundown of the highlights in no particular order:

• Traveling to Seattle with my mom and my sister.
• Spending the holidays with my family in Cincinnati.
• Accompanying David to math conferences in Baltimore, Banff, Tucson, and the Bay Area (twice).
• Declaring myself the First Lady of Math Overflow on Twitter (#firstlady #mathoverflow), and writing some fun blog posts about having dinner with mathematicians, Taylor series jokes, and Algebraic Independence Day.
• Growing closer with my writing group, attending some kick butt writing conferences, and generally figuring out how to be a writer.
• Placing third in the Georgia Romance Writers Unpublished Maggie Awards for Contemporary Single Title Romance.
• Completing a 50,000-word draft of a second novel during NaNoWriMo.
• Graduating from Dad’s Garage improv classes in January and joining four improv troupes over the course of the year (Shark Party, Collective 51, The Outliers, and the now defunct Bangprov). I also auditioned for a couple of things that I didn’t get. I’m thankful for these experiences too because they made me realize how much I wanted to do improv and motivated me to work harder.
• Taking long form improv classes at The Brink Improv and becoming part of the awesome community there.
• Made $10 performing in a staged reading! It was my only income for the year.
• I wasn’t able to attend as many literary and storytelling events as I would have liked this past year, but I did have a couple of opportunities to share stories at Carapace and Naked City. I was a featured storyteller at Stories on the Edge of Night, and I’ll be performing in that show again on January 22nd.
• I maintained this blog! Since August, I’ve been blogging at least weekly thanks to the introduction of Fantasy Friday. I have plans to introduce some new themed posts in 2015 so stay tuned for that.

Thanks to everyone who reads this blog. It means a lot to me to be able to connect with friends, family, and the greater global community through this space.

Happy New Year!