Since we’re halfway through 2013, I thought I’d do a roundup of my year so far. It’s been pretty mixed, but it’s steadily got better and better. I love the summer, I love learning new things and seeing new places, and the more I do the more I want to do. It’s been a fight to get to this point, and there have been plenty of lows, but right now everything is working out really well :D

January

I started the year feeling okayish (and dog sitting, which ended up meaning I had to break my original plans). I’d already decided with Joe’s help that I needed to see a doctor about my depression, which was when I found out I was more anxious than depressed. Photography, as always, cheered me up (as did a trip to Leicester to visit good friends), and I took advantage of the weather to get some nice snow shots with Sin:

I went to Second Wednesday and NACONF (New Adventures in Web Design) in January. NACONF was a loooong working day, starting at 6am and continuing until 4am the next day, but it was a lot of fun. If you missed my original post, you can read the write-up here: Lessons from the Experienced.

February

February ended up being a bit of a culture month. It had its emotional ups and downs, but overall it was a good month. It also marked the first time I took my DSLR out of the country (to Bruges) and the first time I’d been on the Eurostar.

I went to see a local theatre production of Little Shop of Horrors with one of my best friends, Hannah. One of my friends was in a production of Me & My Girl so we went to see that too. February was also a good month for cinema (Warm Bodies, Wreck It Ralph) and Valentine’s Day flowers:

I also made themed cupcakes for work:

March

March was the month of travelling, this time just within the country. I went to London twice, Swindon, and Leicester. My first trip to London was for the Link Love conference, which I combined with visiting old work friends and university friends – I had an amazing time.

My second trip of the month was down south to visit some old friends I used to work with. It was great to see everyone and we had a lovely meal out, pub trip and a visit to a place with lots of animals and flowers.

The third visit was a weekday trip to the outskirts of London to visit a certain well-known hosting company. We also went bowling and drinking, and it actually ended up being a lot better than expected (cocktails definitely helped).

The final trip was to visit two (three including baby) of my favourite people in Leicester…I don’t think I took any photos, but I did a lot of shopping and eating :P

April

At the end of March I decided to wake up and actually get back on track with my life. I renewed my gym membership and went to the gym obsessively in April; it made me feel a million times better and my old motivation and enthusiasm for life returned.

I went to Cheltenham to spend Hannah’s birthday weekend with her, and took my camera on a couple of walks around my area:

One of my work friends was in a production of The Full Monty. The stage version is Americanised, which is weird considering it’s such a British film, but it worked well and I enjoyed it despite the scarily overexcited women in the audience. The month was rounded off nicely with a free meal and trip to see Iron Man 3 with a load of uni people.

May

May was definitely one of the busiest months to date – I spent barely any time at work to cram everything in, and I never did get a chance to write a blog post about my visit to Turkey! Sadly I also had to miss out on Second Wednesday for the first time in months.

Anyway, my trip to Turkey with Beth didn’t have the best start; our first flight was delayed so we missed our second and ended up getting stranded overnight in Germany with no luggage and no accepted currency. In the end I had to change some GBP at a ridiculous airport exchange rate for emergencies.

When we eventually got to the hotel in Ankara though, all was forgiven:

And there’re about fifty million more photos on my Flickr if you’re interested in seeing any more of Turkey. I’ll definitely be going back – the people were lovely, the weather was great and it was incredibly cheap. Not sure you can ask for any more really…oh, except more English speakers! I lost track of the number of times I pointed randomly to something on the menu without having the slightest clue what I was ordering.

We flew back to London and went to see a production of Othello the next day. I don’t have any pictures because I wasn’t allowed to take any, but it was a production with a modern set and Desdemona wasn’t played like a wimpy victim which made me very happy. The battle scenes were played in army camo, which rather amusingly led to the (foreign) woman next to me to comment, ‘Why are the British so obsessed with the Second World War?’

The next weekend I had free, so I went and got a haircut. Breaking news for me since I went short and I only get a haircut maybe twice a year:

The week after that I went to the Zelda Symphony of the Goddesses concert with one of my friends. We stayed in a lovely apartment in London and I loved the concert. It wasn’t quite as good as the first one, but it was still very epic. Definitely one of the highlights of the year.

As soon as that was over, it was time to catch the train to Sussex and the beach. Joe’s sister was getting married and we had a long weekend of walking on the beach, hiking around the cliffs and countryside, and of course attending the actual wedding.

June

June was pretty heavy on creating and networking.

I chucked out all the dead plants and replaced them with new ones, which are all thankfully still alive. I bought some strawberry plants for 20p each, and they started to fruit – they’re much cheaper than supermarket ones!

June was also the month I started eating healthily and counting calories via My Fitness Pal to go along with my gym/exercise addiction. It was hard at first, and I felt pretty damn hungry more than I was comfortable with, but so far I’ve lost 10lb. Not too shabby. The important thing is that I feel I’m able to maintain everything even though I’m constantly out for dinner and drinks. I also re-joined GoodReads.

I went to a domainer meet with Joe in June. It was great to put faces to names and chat to such a successful and interesting bunch of people. Although I have a lot of friends and contacts at various big companies, I don’t often meet very many highly successful fully self-employed business people in the web industry, so it was very inspirational. The Prosecco didn’t hurt either ;)

I did my first cupcake class, a buttercream course, the weekend after. I loved learning how to pipe properly, what all the different nozzles do and how they should be used, and the cakes tasted pretty good too:

It was a bit strange spending time with a group of women since there aren’t a whole lot of them in my life and the ones I tend to see are more on a one-to-one basis rather than group chats. A few of the conversations I had to just not comment on, particularly ones about technology and how complicated phones can be to use when you first get them. Considering I’m more used to office conversations about the best way to load balance a server, it was kind of a surreal culture shock.

We also went to a local programmers’ meet up. I was a bit unsure about going since web development is my weakest area, but I met some fantastic people and the guy who runs it definitely seems like one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met. I have a lot of respect for him and I’ve also been inspired to learn Ruby (you know, with all that free time I have), so I’ll definitely be going to the next one. Unlike all the other events I’ve been to, this one is a casual chat and drinks rather than talks, so it’s a relaxing environment from the start and no pressure to arrive/leave at a particular time.

There was also a vintage fair being held in the city, so we went to check it out. I was hoping to get some good photos for my vintage site; sadly, it didn’t provide any opportunities for that but it was still interesting to look round and get some ideas.

June ended up being pretty good weather-wise and I even managed to get in a session of outdoor yoga:

I’d arranged to spend a weekend with Han, and at the last minute I booked tickets for an outdoor performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Nottingham Castle. It happened to coincide with midsummer’s night, and it was a gorgeous evening. I hadn’t planned for the fact that we’d be sitting on grass and only had my jacket to sit on, but the play was fantastic and it was lovely being outside:

The night after that we went to one of my ex-work friends’s flatwarming and played a lot of Cards Against Humanity. Lots of fun :) Then the weekend after I invited some work friends over and we got very drunk. Saturday was spent kicking people out and cleaning up…and having surprise flowers delivered:

On the Sunday I did a vintage cupcake course:

July

The past week I’ve spent doing a photography course at Nottingham Trent university. It was one of the best things I’ve ever done (blog post to follow), and it covered everything from the basics to Photoshop editing to printing. I now have some great prints for my house and some great memories.

The rest of this month is going to be pretty busy: a weekend away for Wordcamp, a theatre production of The 39 Steps, more uni friends coming to visit, Despicable Me 2, Second Wednesday, Notts Programmers, a therapy session aaaand sadly I’ve had to turn down a trip to Rome because I just don’t have the time. Life is exhausting, but I love it right now :D

So, that’s my year so far! What are your 2013 highlights?