2020 in the Rearview

Seeing as January’s on the way out, I suppose it’s past time for me to do my end of 2020 blog posts.

I haven’t really wanted to blog. I reached the end of 2020 and didn’t feel like I’d accomplished anything worth sharing even though I know that’s not true. Despite everything going on with the world, I still moved forward in 2020. Maybe not as much as I wanted to, but maybe I need to let myself off the hook for not meeting my own high expectations after immigrating to a new country in the midst of a global pandemic (gee, ya think?).

I’m going to try to focus on what I achieved during 2020 rather than on what I failed to achieve.

Life

After getting married in December 2019, I officially moved to Australia (well as officially as one can while leaving behind a bunch of stuff in one’s parents’ spare room. I’m sorry Mom and Dad, I’ll get it out of there eventually). I filed my visa paperwork to obtain Australian permanent residency, I got on Medicare (it’s amazing living in a country with medicare for all, highly recommend), and I now have a Western Australian drivers license (look how official I am)!

On the social side of things, last February, I joined a book club made up primary of American women living in Western Australia. It’s been a god send especially during these times when we’re all so far from family with no idea when we’ll be able to travel internationally again. I’m so grateful to have found this community and support network and we read great books too. I was especially grateful during our thanksgiving get-together when I was missing my parents and my mom’s cooking the most.

Music

One of the hardest things about the last couple years in Australia has been a lack of musical community. There is a small bluegrass community but jamming just isn’t the same as playing with my family in a band. I’m still struggling with that, especially since the local jams are a little late at night and a bit further away than I’d like. I have however found a choir. And because Western Australia has been Covid-free for months (excepting a few cases in hotel quarantine from returning overseas travelers) we’ve been able to meet and sing together.

I’ve been singing in a choir the vast majority of the last two decades and to be able to sing again every week with other passionate singers has become a true joy. It’s a gospel choir too, which makes it even more fun since I love singing gospel music. The choir has filled the part of my soul that was missing a musical community and I’m so happy to be singing again.

Reading

I’ll do a post later about my favorite books read in 2020 and a breakdown of genre/author demographics, but for now, allow me to summarize:

I had a really difficult time reading with any consistency in 2020. I read a lot of online comics and manga, since that was where I was finding the most joy, if I read anything at all. If not for book club, I wouldn’t have read very many, if any, serious books. But with my late December comic binge I did manage to exceed my goal of reading 54 books by reading 89 books.

By the end of December, I totaled 22,665 pages read with the longest book being Brandon Sanderson’s Rhythm of War and the shortest being Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor Vol. 1: Weapons of Past Destruction by Cavan Scott (told you I read a lot of comics this year). The oldest book I read in 2020 was If Beale Street Could Talk (published 1974) by James Baldwin and the newest was Brandon Sanderson’s Rhythm of War (published Nov 2020). The rest of my reading was a mix of new releases from 2020 and books released in the last ten years, though I have been slowly making my way through The Tale of Genji which is supposedly the oldest novel in the world.

I’d say my biggest reading accomplishment of 2020, was finally getting all the way through the manga Bleach by Tite Kubo. I’ve been reading it for years and I finally finished reading the final arc. While the final arc wasn’t my favorite (I like the Rukia rescue arc and the Arancar arc best), it was incredibly satisfying to make it to the end of a story that I’ve invested so many years into.

Writing

The majority of my accomplishments this year fall into the writing category. As those of you who follow the blog know, I published my first three short stories this year and also sold a fourth (set to be published in March 2021). I completed a new novel during NaNoWriMo in November, I successfully completed by September Short Story Submission Challenge, and I attended an online Writers Conference that had a lot of really great content and helped to expand my writing community.

This was a good year for focusing on short stories. I managed to surpass my goal of 52 short story submissions by submitting 71 times in 2020. Out of those submissions, I received 40 form rejections, 20 personalized rejections (that’s 33.33%), and 3 acceptances. That may seem like a lot of rejection, but it’s an improvement on 2019 where only 25% of my rejections were personalized and I only received 1 acceptance. I only hope that I can continue making such great progress in 2021. I also wrote several new short stories for submission and discovered that I enjoy writing stories for themed anthologies even if those stories don’t get accepted.

Overall, I’m feeling good about my 2020 writing progress even though it didn’t take the form I’d planned (I had planned to do a lot more on the novel-writing front, but it just wasn’t a long-form kind of year).

So, here’s to 2020 being finally over. Here’s to a new year. Here’s to muddling through.

Thank you for reading!