2010: pretty good year

There’s a danger of end-of-year blog posts turning into a litany of achievements, like a CV or a nightmare round-robin letter, so I’ll try to be brief. 2010 was an amazing year and one which saw a lot of changes.

The biggest event was my holiday in India. I saw some stunning places but even more valuable was having space to think outside of my normal environment. The other night I was re-reading my travel journals and I could see myself changing throughout the course of the trip. For many reasons, my time in India was one of the highlights of my life and I am planning another trip early next year.

After India I spent about 4 months living in Derbyshire, working on my novel. Swansong was hard work but I am very pleased with the results. The themes of the book touched on some difficult aspects of my childhood and it was good to reconsider those.

Other than the novel I worked on lots of short stories. Two highlights were having a 25 word story Rapunzel published in Hint Fiction and In the Night Supermarket… published in Black Static as part of the Campaign for Real Fear.

In July I came back to Brighton. I love this city and the magical things that happen here: zombie walks, tea parties in the pavilion gardens, White Night, crazy drunk clownsBoxing Day swims and so on. I’m feeling very settled here, more than I have in a long time.

One thing that hasn’t gone so well is the running. I ran 600 miles in 2009, but last year I managed about 400. Injuries dogged me, stopping me from entering the Brighton marathon. Thanks to a great physio I am now back in training and have my sights set on the 2011 Brighton Marathon. I also entered the Santa Dash for the 4th time.

2010 has been an amazing year and one that has seen many positive changes. Part of that has been due to twitter which has led to me meeting some wonderful people in real life. I am now very excited about what 2011 will bring.