Year in review: 2014

Time for another annual year in review! Here’s how 2014 was for me 🙂

Life in general

Like last year, my life has been very stable and doesn’t change much. Same job, same husband, same house, etc etc. Not much to report here 😉 At work, I’m still a team lead and in a senior position. My team has grown though, so I have more people to manage.

Hobbies

In 2014, I continued my photography focus on cosplay photoshoots. I’m now able to fill all of my spots early on, with most of them taken by repeat clients. I did photoshoots at 2 conventions and also a private one in town. I’m happy with where this has gone 🙂

I’ve also been asked to help out the photography team at work more. I worked on the photography team for our biggest event (our user conference) and filled in here and there throughout the year.

When it comes to cosplay, I remade one of my costumes and made 4 new ones. Though, of the 4 new ones… only one of them was for me XD;; My two major cosplays were our Spirited Away group which we wore at A-kon (I made all 3 costumes) and my Rhyme cosplay which I wore in Japan.

As for gaming, well, I dedicated a whole entry to it already 🙂

Travel

2014 was the year for international travel! First, I went to London for a week in June for work and was able to use part of the trip for sight-seeing. (Read about the trip.)

Then in late October/early November, I spent 2 weeks in Japan. This is the highlight of 2014! I had been wanting to go to Japan for a while now, and I absolutely loved it there. I already want to go back! (Read about the trip, starting at part 1.)

Other notable events

• Built a new gaming PC.
• Posed with one of the actual RVs used in the show Breaking Bad. Our work managed to borrow one after the show ended and the RVs were sold.
• Our work hosted a hack-a-thon twice, and my team won a category in the first one and got runner-up in the second one.
• Bought an Oculus Rift dev kit 2.
• Celebrated our third wedding anniversary.
• Met 3 online friends in person! I met Agent Q when she visited Austin, Michelle at A-kon, and Ongaku at San Japan. That was my first time meeting Agent Q and Michelle, but Ongaku and I have actually met up before 🙂

Donations

I haven’t written about this in the past, but I’ve been donating to charities for many years now. It started small when I was in college and could only donate $25 to one charity. However, every little bit helps! When I graduated and became financially stable, I gradually increased both the amount and the number of charities. This year, I donated $615 split (unevenly) among the following:

• Doctors Without Borders – sends medical help to areas in need. For example, they began responding to the Ebola outbreak in March 2014, treating over 7,000 patients in West Africa.
• National Laywers Guild – for standing with the people of Ferguson and sending legal support for the protesters.
• Child’s Play – works with over 100 children’s hospitals to get them toys, games, DVDs, and other items. I donate directly to the 4 participating hospitals in my state (TX).
• Safeplace – helps survivors of sexual and domestic violence with support, shelter, child care, and other programs.
• Wikimedia Foundation – because I use Wikipedia a lot.

Resolution statuses

I made 3 resolutions for 2014. Here’s how I did on them.

1. Exercise more – Uh yeah, this was kind of a fail. I pretty much went between phases of regular exercise and none at all. I really wish I kept it up more.
2. Study Japanese – More fail. Like exercising, I did this one very on and off, and by the time we went to Japan, my knowledge wasn’t where I wanted it to be. On the bright side, the little bit I knew did help a lot.
3. Clean up and decorate our house – Though there’s still much more I want to do to our house, I consider this a success. I managed to do a lot of cleaning, reorganizing, and decorating, so it’s still a big improvement over how our house used to be.

And now for 2015

New year, new goals! Except not really. I’m going to repeat a couple.

1. Exercise more and lose weight – I know I make this a goal every year, but it really is something I want to be better at so that I can stay active and in shape. I also gained some extra weight last year and would like to lose about 10 lbs.
2. Continue to clean up and decorate our house – Though much has been done, there is still more to go! There’s still 2 rooms that need to be cleaned up, more artwork to be hung up, more curtains to make, and the family room needs new furniture.
3. Website organization – My photography site needs to open, my tutorials site needs to shut down, my graphics site needs a revamp, and I need to re-think which sites I should keep around.

I hope 2015 will be a great year for everyone! 🙂