Last year, in place of my usual pull-apart-my-failed-goals-for-the-year post, I wrote about 10 things that were good about the year. This felt a lot more constructive and gave a lot more insight and a better broad view than dissecting how I did or (more often) didn’t reach my goal for performances or knitting. So I’m doing it again.

1. Obviously, I started a Masters degree. This has meant a simply vast amount of work, but already I’m seeing huge improvements in my music and how I’m thinking about my work and I’m really, REALLY excited about all of it: new friends, the composing, my teachers, new ideas, everything.
2. Bought a house! God, was that only this year? It seems to have been going on forever, but yes, in April this year the bank finally approved the mortgage and we bought our house.
3. Moved into our house! Yes, for most people this would have been a part of 2, but given than we weren’t able to move in until September and even that was a huge struggle, I think this deserves its own item. As of writing, while it’s still largely a building site, we’ve managed to make it not just habitable but almost comfortable. Certainly, it’s starting to feel a bit more like home and a nice place to be.
4. Completed my first album, thanks to RPM Project and a bunch of awesome online friends. This consisted of writing 9 new pieces and working up an arrangement of Pieces of Eight, which said awesome friends then recorded and sent back to me. I’m still really pleased with the result.
5. Completed my first opera! A mini one, true, but an opera nevertheless, AND got it recorded, again thanks to awesome online friends.
6. Completed my first real orchestral piece (cos I don’t count the one I did in my undergraduate degree which was rubbish)! It may have taken 9 months to write 3 minutes, but I think they’re a good 3 minutes. And London Contemporary Chamber Orchestra evidently did too because they workshopped them and then shortlisted the piece for their end-of-year concert.
7. We had an amazing week-and-a-half-long trip to Spain, which I loved, in spite of being wracked with flu for half of it and agonisingly sunburnt for the other half. We saw Picasso’s Guernica, proper amazing flamenco dancing, explored the countryside and wandered through the streets of Seville. We also made and consumed a lot of Tapas, which was a wonderful experience in and of itself.
8. Completed 6 client projects as Raspberry Blue. Not much for a year, but I’m pretty pleased to be able to report that number. And two of those were repeat clients.
9. Actually enjoyed the Olympics for the first time ever.
10. Djelibeybi. OK, so not a “thing”, but this year marks 15 years we’ve been together, and 2012 has been a really tough year, but worthwhile. He’s supporting me financially through my studies and even when things have got tough with money, he wants my composing to come first and for me to not have to faff around trying to fit work around my studies. He is an amazing man, and I’m very lucky to have him – and even luckier that he’s considered me worth hanging around for a decade and a half.

Now that that’s done, next step is to consider my creative goals for 2013… hmm…