Christmas thoughts, yearly round up, and what I hope for the new year.

My life has been busy in the week leading up to Christmas, so this is just a small post to talk about how my Christmas was, how the year has been and what I hope for the new year.

This Christmas, more than any other, I felt grateful. I got bad presents, but I'm okay with that because  it means I have relatives who give me presents. We saw extended family on Christmas Day, and I didn't mind, and it was quite a nice afternoon, really. And we had a quiet, smaller family Christmas on Boxing Day, so I didn't miss out on that, either.

I flew out to Texas to visit friends just before Christmas, and I'm not even going to complain about the badly delayed flight I took to get there. Because the trip itself was worth every minute on a plane and every penny spent. And I have the means to go on trips like that, and people there who I can visit, and those are opportunities not everyone has.

And why do I feel so much more grateful this year than I have in years past? Because even if mine was bad, which it wasn't, some people had it worse. Carrie Fisher's family, George Michael's family, the families of all those who were on the Russian plane, will be reminded every year about their loss. I feel like Christmas must be the worst time to lose loved ones, as everyone else is so happy, and every year after, you'll be reminded about it as soon as decorations start going up.

As for the overall year, I feel I can't complain. Some things happened that I didn't like, but a lot of good things happened, too. I hope that people can look forward to next year in the hope that it might be better.

My new years resolution was to read over 40 books in the year, keeping a count of them. Well, I can tell you now that my end figure was... 51. To some people, that's a large figure, to others it might seem sort of small. For me, though, I'm happy with that. I'm very sporadic about my reading - some months I can get through eight books, others I can barely get through one. And that's okay, as reading, like so much else, is different for everyone.

For my new years resolution this year, it is to finish a book. I don't care if it's 50,000 words of unpublishable tripe, just having the feeling that I can write that much would be good, and would spur me on to write more in the future. At least I hope so.