A Year in Review: 2013

Here we are again at the end of another year.  Does it seem to have gone by really fast to anyone else?  I have to admit this has been a fairly uneventful year, which is kind of nice.  Still, I feel I have been very blessed this year so I thought I would share a few events from the year with pictures for some and others just mentioning them.  So off we go down memory lane.

Last year I had the opportunity to act in A Christmas Carol with a group of very talented people.  There were a number of people there that I didn't know, but I ended up getting to be good friends with two of them and at the beginning of the year the three of us got together and went to a double feature of The Hobbit:  An Unexpected Journey and Les Miserable.  Needless to say we had a lot of fun with each other.  Following that, we got together because the guy in the picture (I'll avoid using names just to be safe) had never seen Lord of the Rings, so we had a Lord of the Rings marathon.  During one of the nights we were watching, the girl's sister joined us.  We'd already met her during the play and she quickly became a part of our little group.  Our Lord of the Rings marathon turned into a weekly get together that has been going on nearly every week since.

Towards the end of January I quit my job at Dion's and went to work at Sitel, an outsourcing company where I take calls for AAA Emergency Roadside Service.  This is the third job I've been at for almost a year and my second full time job.  Its a high stress job and definitely not fun, honestly its the second worst job I've had and I have no idea how I've survived this long, but it certainly pays better than any other job I've had and I have yet to find one comparable.

At the beginning of May I moved out of my parent's house and got my first apartment which was exciting, but also a bit scary.  It was my first time having to deal with paying bills and rent and really having to budget to make sure I had enough money for food and other necessary items.  After about six months though I ended moving back home as the high price of the apartment coupled with the fact that I had a lot of problems with it just made it difficult to pay for everything.  Thankfully my parents didn't mind too much that I wanted to come back home. =)  Actually I think they like having me around again.  So I'm back home for now, though a couple of friends and I have talked about potentially renting a house together next year.  But we'll see what happens when the time comes.

Summer was fairly uneventful since I was working full time and I didn't start acquiring paid time off until I was at my job for six months.  With having to worry about bills and rent, I really couldn't afford to take any days off so I wasn't able to go with my parents on vacation this year.  That meant that I ended up spending more time with my friends.  By that time we were a pretty tight knit group.  Though we usually stayed in and watched movies or played games or video games, we did go out a couple times and ended up going putt-putting one time which with the four of us combined, was pretty much hilarious.  Also during the summer we added a fifth member to our little group, a long time friend of the younger girl's.  She immediately fit in with our craziness and quickly became an addition to our weekly get togethers.

Come fall I auditioned and got a part in a play called The Westing Game.  Having read the book as a child, I was eager to be a part of the play and was incredibly excited when I did get a role though I was quite daunted initially by the one I was assigned as it was far outside my comfort zone.  However, it ended up being a very rewarding, though challenging experience, and one that I am quite glad for.  And despite being terrified out of my mind at the beginning since I didn't know very many of the cast, at the conclusion I ended up making some friends and getting to know some people I didn't know very well better.

Shortly after the play ended I had another opportunity to act, this time in a short film a friend was making.  Other than a few jobs working as an extra for tv shows or movies where I was always very much in the background, I had no experience with film acting.  It turned out to be a very insightful, interesting, and fun experience and I personally think the final cut is fantastic.  It was completely different from stage acting and helped to cement my desire to one day act professionally.

My family hosted Thanksgiving this year at our house and I decided to bake a cake that I had seen in a Food Network magazine I'd purchased.  The cake, made in the shape of a giant caramel apple, took five hours to make, but in my opinion the result was well worth it.  It tasted pretty darned good too, if I do say so myself.  It was shortly after this that my father mentioned that I should consider taking some culinary classes at CNM, the local community college, and potentially seek a culinary degree.  Taking his advice I began exploring my options and though I had hoped to be able to start taking classes in the spring, it looks like I may have to wait until the summer or fall.  Still, I'm encouraged and thankful for the idea since I always figured that if acting didn't pan out, I'd be stuck getting a degree or working a job that I hated because I thought acting was my only passion.  Cooking, something else I love, just never really occurred to me as a career, partially because I didn't think it was particularly practical and I thought my parents might freak out if I had another crazy idea. =)

The highlights of December for me were being able to attend with my friends the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary showing in cinemas, which was fantastic by the way, and the midnight premier of The Desolation of Smaug, also mind-blowingly fantastic.  The premier was the first time I'd actually gone with friends as every time before I've gone by myself.  If I was lucky I might see a few people I knew, but generally I was on my own, so this was a real treat and a lot of fun.  Basically, most of the highlights of this year for me revolve around these four people.  I can't even describe how incredibly blessed I feel to have them in my life.  I can honestly say I have never had a friends like this before, where we were so close, but there wasn't a lot of jealousy.  Maybe part of it is that they are first close friends I've had since I was in middle school/first part of high school.  Whatever it is, I am very thankful for their friendship and the opportunities we've had together.  They are an extension of my family and I love them dearly.

On a more minor note I've discovered the awesomeness of British tv and am now a firm Doctor Who and Sherlock fan with Merlin and Torchwood also becoming shows I enjoy.  You can blame my friends for introducing me to the first two and I have to say that I'm glad they did because they are the two best shows I have ever seen, not just in terms of story line and characters but also in the messages that they send, more so in Doctor Who I think.

So that pretty much concludes this year.  I will say again that I feel I have been very blessed this year.  I can't say that I feel I've changed a lot or anything, though I'm probably not the best judge of that, but I think I shed some old weight I've been carrying around for a couple years now which was certainly a relief.  So here's to 2014 and all the opportunities and challenges it brings!