{"id":1364,"date":"2011-01-01T08:01:51","date_gmt":"2010-12-31T22:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/?p=1364"},"modified":"2011-01-01T08:01:51","modified_gmt":"2010-12-31T22:01:51","slug":"looking-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/looking-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking forward"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here in Australia, we&#8217;re eight hours into 2011, and I&#8217;m looking forward to it being a good year \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>2010 certainly had some highlights and some challenges, but it&#8217;s over now, and with the surgery behind me I&#8217;m excited about being able to resume more normal life in the coming year, and achieve some more goals and wishes.<\/p>\n<p>The highlights of the past year include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>many wonderful reviews and reader comments about my books;<\/li>\n<li>two short stories published in the Australian Woman&#8217;s Day magazines (in January and October);<\/li>\n<li>The Australian Romance Readers&#8217; Association Awards dinner, where Dark Country was named best Romantic Suspense of 2009;<\/li>\n<li>the excitement of Dark Country being named a finalist in the Romance Writers of America&#8217;s RITA awards, and in the Romance Writers of Australia R*BY Awards;<\/li>\n<li>the friendliness, support and enthusiasm of the reading and writing community &#8211; whether in blogs, conferences, email loops, or whatever, I&#8217;m privileged to have &#8216;met&#8217; and to interact with many, many wonderful people.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What&#8217;s ahead in 2011?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>finishing the current book, which has a working title of Dead Heat;<\/li>\n<li>recovering from the recent surgery, and gradually getting my fitness back and my weight down some kilos;<\/li>\n<li>teaching at the University of New England in first semester &#8211; I&#8217;ll be coordinating, revising and teaching a one-semester unit on Digital Media and Interactive Entertainment;<\/li>\n<li>a trip away with Gordon &#8211; we may have to wait a couple of months due to my teaching commitments, but we are going to have some time travelling together, perhaps going into outback Queensland again;<\/li>\n<li>making some progress on my neglected PhD research;<\/li>\n<li>all going well, a new book out, later in the year!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;ve also got some work-life balance goals in mind for the year; amongst other things, I&#8217;d like to make progress with the stalled landscaping and garden building around the house &#8211; as my health and fitness returns, I&#8217;ll be able to do more outside than I have for the past couple of years! By Spring I&#8217;d like to be able to cut some flowers and bring them inside, as I love simple garden flowers in vases. I&#8217;m also in the process of reorganising our sunroom into a more workable office\/craft space for me. I&#8217;ve sold the smaller of my two floor looms and a rocking chair we don&#8217;t use, and have decluttered by getting rid of excess stuff I won&#8217;t use and sorting through a filing cabinet, so soon there&#8217;ll be space for a writing desk, and also space to move around and use my big floor loom which has stood idle for a couple of years. This year, it&#8217;s going to get a workout! I&#8217;ve been browsing through weaving patterns the past few days and I&#8217;ll go stash-diving soon to find suitable yarns for a set of blue and white overshot placemats. I&#8217;m not sure when I&#8217;ll get the warp actually wound and on the loom, but maybe before the end of the week.<\/p>\n<p>As far as my recovery goes, I&#8217;m doing quite well, although still taking things slowly and having frequent rests and naps. My leg is still painful and a little swollen, and when I saw my GP yesterday she put me on antibiotics to ward off infection, so hopefully that will heal up soon and make moving about easier. I have done a (very) short walk with the dogs, and we&#8217;ve played a few games outside, so we&#8217;re on the road back to &#8216;normal&#8217;. I&#8217;m hoping to make an appointment to see my hairdresser next week sometime, so that my weird half-shaved hairstyle can be shaped into something less weird, and I&#8217;m sure that will be an additional good step on the recovery road &#8211; however, fortunately I have plenty of lovely scarves, so it&#8217;s no hardship to select a scarf to cover the funny fuzz on top of my head when I go out and about!<\/p>\n<p>Best wishes to all of my friends and blog readers for a wonderful, joy-filled 2011.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here in Australia, we&#8217;re eight hours into 2011, and I&#8217;m looking forward to it being a good year \ud83d\ude42 2010 certainly had some highlights and some challenges, but it&#8217;s over now, and with the surgery behind me I&#8217;m excited about &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/looking-forward\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1364"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1369,"href":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions\/1369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}