2013 Wrap-Up

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

   Well, happy New Years, you guys! Congrats on making it this far.

   I didn't feel motivated at all to make an actual vlog to honor the turning of the year, so I guess I'll just be doing this instead. I'm not entirely sure what this is quite yet, but I'm sure it'll involve books somewhere.

   It's kind of been a big year, book-wise, for me: I discovered the wide and glorious world of booktubers and book bloggers, for one, and I also found that lovely thrift book store that has now consumed all of the money I ever thought I had. To be quite honest, I'd fallen off the reading bandwagon in favor of other pursuits, so fall/winter of 2013 was more or less my rebirth as a reader. Like the second coming of Pages Christ, except not at all, because that was a terrible joke. I'm going to hide my head in a blanket now.  

    But in all seriousness, returning to reading, for me, was more or less a defense mechanism. 2013 was a problem year for me. An unyielding string of tragedies hit me really quickly in an extremely condensed point of time, and I was completely unequipped to deal with any of them, so I fell into a weird state of dazed angry-sadness and threw myself into physical training while I was overseas studying martial arts/weaponry. Then I came home, managed to patch some of my problems back together with an unsteady layer of duct tape, found a few unexpected allies, and learned to deal with the ideas of death and loss, in my own way. And in November, I found booktubing, and I honestly don't think I've ever felt better in my life. Seriously, even my attitude has markedly improved. Just ask my mother.

   Sure, I don't expect life to be perfect from here on out just because I've rediscovered reading as an escape hatch–I've already hit a low point, seeing as the holiday season did not agree with me–but I think I'm at peace with myself. {There's a saying about this somewhere–with every darkness there is a dawn??? Something????}

   So, here's me raising my glass of pomegranate juice to the sky and welcoming in 2014, because I now know it's completely within my scope of ability to overcome whatever challenges the new year may present.

   {That was shorter than I expected it to be, but oh well. Happy New Year, folks.}

 

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