2015 Year in Review

This was a weird year for me and my 2015 did its best to defy summation. That said, let's just jump right in.

Book of the Year:
This was a bad year for reading for me. I started reading lots of books, but only ended up finishing 13 of them. This was largely due to my intentionally picking books to try in genres I hadn't read much of, or arguing for viewpoints I knew I'd disagree with. I picked up random books I'd never heard of every time I went to the library. This wasn't a bad decision, but it did lead to a lot of abandoned reads as things got busy. Funnily enough, one of my choices tied for Book of the Year was the first book I finished:

The Way into Narnia: A Reader's Guide by Peter J. Schakel

This book got my reading year off to a good start. If you are any kind of fan of the Narnia books, you should read this book. Plus, it only gets bonus points for making the same argument for the literary reasons for reading the books in publishing order that I make.
  
The Choir Immortal by Katie Schuermann

This followup book to the also excellent House of Living Stones is on the list of books that have made me cry while reading, and more than once at that. These two books also hold the distinction of being the books that most closely resemble my real life. Freakishly so, actually, down to all sorts of weird little details including pet rabbit breeds. In addition to making me cry, The Choir Immortal also made me laugh out loud repeatedly and I finished this book in one day. I appreciate that this book did not take the easy way out at all and wasn't afraid to show real suffering and the real presence of Christ with his people in their suffering. 
[Side note: I also met the author this year. It's actually a funny story because I follow the author on Twitter, and she follows me as well because of my multiple tweets praising her books. She actually recognized me and greeted me by name before I introduced myself, all from our brief Twitter interactions.]
 

Soundtrack to the Year:
This was really a year with three listening seasons. One song dominated the spring with another song joining it in the summer, but the winner emerged in the fall and became a surprisingly obvious pick as the winner. I didn't discover the winning set until over halfway through the year, but this work was a large part of how I stayed sane through the fall. My soundtrack for the year is "Kreegi Vihik" ("Kreek's Notebook") by Tõnu Kõrvits:

Honorable Mentions:
I said this was a weird year, and my music listening helps show this. I'm including two honorable mentions because the two other songs I listened to in the spring and summer that would have been the runaway choices for Soundtrack to the Year if I hadn't discovered Kreek's Notebook. Both of these songs are by the Romanian band Voltaj. I discovered these songs because I'm a huge tennis fan, and Romanian Simona Halep has been by favorite on the women's tour the last few years.

• Spring Honorable Mention (1st runner up): De la capat by Voltaj
• Summer Honorable Mention (2nd runner up): Lumea e a mea by Voltaj (note: I'm not sure how you'll feel about the video. I only really listened to the song and ignored the video)

Notable Accomplishments
1. I was hired to play piano for the sample recordings for a portion of Concordia Publishing House's new music catalog. I had two weeks to learn 15 choir anthems in preparation for the recording session. It was a lot of work for not a lot of money once you factor all the hours in, but these recordings are used on the CPH website to help sell the music, so it's still cool to have been hired to be involved out of all of the possible options of people they could have asked.

2. I participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) for the first time and "won" by writing at least 50,000 words during the month of November. Each of the last few years, I've thought it would be fun to try but thought I was too busy. I thought the same going in this year, but decided on October 31 to just go for it. It was probably a bad decision because November was already going to be busy, but I guess I did win. It was also a nice confirmation that I can accomplish what I set out to do, even when it is something many people fail at doing and when it is a completely new experience.


Struggle of the Year
This was the year of the emergence of back pain. Between organ and piano, I did a ton of playing this year. All of that playing really took a toll and my body completely shut down after Easter. I'm learning how to manage things to avoid a similar shut down, but this is unfortunately something I'll have to watch the rest of my career. It's nice being somewhat sought after as a pianist, and increasingly as an organist, but I have limits I have to respect. Hopefully I can work to raise those limits and maximize the workload I can handle, but I've known for a long time that I simply have greater physiological limits than many of my friends who work at the same playing level I do.


Surprise of the Year
Once I pick something I hear or read tomorrow to end the year, this will be the second year in a row I will have successfully cataloged at least one quote for every day of the year. After failing the first year I tried this, this is a nice streak.


Goals for next year
My main goal for next year is consistency, and I want this consistency to show itself in the following specific goals:

1.  Read at least 52 books next year so I average once book finished per week
2.  Compose at least 12 new original works or arrangements to average one per month
3.  Post at least 12 new recordings to my YouTube channel (and probably start using SoundCloud) to average one per month
4.  Write at least one new post to this blog a week, but I'd like to set a 2 or 3 time a week schedule with themes so it becomes more regular.
5.  Come up with a framework by the end of the year that allows me to start a few conceptual creative ideas I want to get going.