Written by January 1, 2024

The End of 2023 (a recap)

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Even though it’s now 2024, I’ve spent a good bit of time thinking about the insane year of 2023. It’s tradition at this point to do a yearly recap, so before I ramble too much about how weird it feels to be in 2024, we’ll get started.  🙂

My 2023 Story Consumption 

Reading

I’m actually quite happy with how many books I read this year. It’s not a ton, but I’m happy with how much I read. I also really became obsessed with classics and discovered the wonderful world of Shakespeare. Here are some notable reads: 

  • Black Beauty – Fun fact: my dad read me the unabridged Black Beauty when I was a seven year old horse obsessed child. I had barely a clue of what was happening, but upon rereading I realized how simple and beautiful of a story it is. 
  • Romeo and Juliet – You know, I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed Shakespeare. It took a while to understand the early version of English, but there are so many hilarious lines and it’s such an iconic story. 
  • Lord of the Flies – I won’t say I enjoyed this book, but it certainly made me think. My friends and I unintentionally read it at the same time, so we had a lot of interesting discussions. 
  • To Kill A Mockingbird – I read this for the first time last year, but I reread it and noticed so much more. It’s still one of my favorite books. 

Movies 

  • Psycho – This is my new favorite horror movie.
  • Mean Girls – My brothers made me watch this classic. I had low expectations, but I actually really enjoyed it. 
  • Interstellar – I want to watch this again, but gosh, the emotions in this story hit me hard. I cried multiple times and the soundtrack is absolutely amazing. 
  • The Barbie Movie – Honestly, I kind of want to stop thinking about this movie. The only reason it’s on the list is because it was such an iconic part of 2023. I could write an entire novel on my thoughts about this movie. There were aspects of the story that I really enjoyed and other parts I hated with my entire being. The best part of this movie was the experience of going to the movie theater with friends, dressed in pink from head to toe. 

Writing Adventures 

I did not write very much this year. I can’t decide if I’m disappointed about that or not. I kind of had a “wake up” moment and realized that, while writing is still important, there are other things that are more important right now. But still, I wrote a few things. 

Fiction writing: 

Let’s see… I wrote a chaotic and clunky second draft to my monster hunt story. I love the story idea, but some things in it really don’t work. I’m going to give it some breathing room and then come back to the fun shenanigans in this project. 

Then I hand-wrote a short story fueled by my obsession with square dancing, and it placed in the Story Embers Short Story contest! (and you can read that story here)  

I also wrote a first draft of a completely new story that involves hat shops and a mailman. I need to do some research (mainly on the logistics of mailing a child) but I’m looking forward to tightening up this story. 

Blogging 

Ha, ha… you guys know how much I blogged this year. I tried to stick with a reasonably consistent blogging schedule, which I think was half successful? I worked on some longer and deeper articles that I quite enjoyed, I just didn’t write very many of them. 🙂 

My top three blog posts of the year were: 

Journaling 

This is where I wrote the most, hands down. I’ve never been much of a journaler. I could never consistently write about my life every evening, until this year. 

In 2023, I realized it’s really easy to forget things. I had a lot of amazing experiences this year, and I became afraid of forgetting them. So I filled up two composition notebooks with my adventures this year. 

Then, I started doing shorter, daily journaling that just went over the different things I experienced every day. I was worried I’d fall into a rut of “boring, ordinary life” but journaling has helped me pick out the special things that happen in everyday life. 

Other Various Adventures + Shenanigans 

So…  I did not intend to travel almost 15,000 miles this year, but I did. (This is what happens when you have too many friends on the other side of the country.) Other adventures included: 

  • I bought a car! After months of watching Facebook and used car sales, I bought an old minivan from a really cool lady, and I even took it on a road trip! 
  • I dressed up like a grandma with a friend. Even though I can’t do normal makeup, I can do wrinkle makeup. 
  • I went to the amazing YWW conference and didn’t sleep for a week. It was very much worth it. 
  • I went on a solo camping trip, which freaked out my friends because they listen to too many true crime podcasts. 
  • I took a roadtrip with just my brothers, outfitting my minivan to sleep in.
  • I hiked the Grand Canyon… twice. Both trips have hilariously insane stories behind them. For now I’ll say one trip involved a freak snowstorm and the other involved rendezvousing with my super-grandma, who also hiked. 

***

Overall, this year felt like multiple years. So much happened. I changed and learned so many new things.  There were some lows, but there were so many awesome adventures too. Most of all, though, I’m looking forward to what 2024 has to offer.

What fun adventures did you go on this year? What books did you read? What movies did you watch? Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a great rest of your day! 

-Hannah