So, I’ve decided to attempt a yearly review, of sorts.

The big writing highlight of 2015 was that I completed my latest book in less than a year. It’s the best I’ve ever written in my opinion, and I only missed one week of work on it (an achievement in itself). I learned a lot by setting such a challenging deadline, particularly about the editing process.

An unexpected problem with having such a target was that the book was pretty much all I focused on in 2015. It’ll be a relief to get free of it in 2016. Though I’ll inevitably start another book, I plan to shake things up with some blogging and short story writing.

Speaking of blogging, I’ve had to force myself to update this site at times over the last year. Because I don’t want it to be a free-for-all stream of consciousness personal blog, it can often be tricky to come up with the right things to write about. That, and it’s just not been a priority. We’ll see how things change now I can give the site a little more attention.

On to music. According to Spotify my most listened to artists were The One Hundred, Wolf Alice, Dead Sara, Sunset Sons and Muse (even though I’m not a big fan of them, go figure). The top five tracks were all by The One Hundred, probably during the heady days of summer when I first discovered their EP and seemed to play it on loop.

As for the different seasons, Winter was dominated by Sunset Sons, Enter Shikari and Lonely The Brave. Spring was all about Dead Sara and oddly a bedtime lullaby/mediation collection (a certain child wasn’t sleeping). Summer was Wolf Alice, Muse and The One Hundred. In Autumn, Muse got replaced by Marmozets.

I don’t know what it means that my top most listened to genres were British alternative rock and alternative metal (followed by rock, hip hop and pop). Though it doesn’t feel like it, I only listened to 120 hours of music, but I did check out 883 different artists and 1524 different tracks.

Gaming next. Until Dawn was brilliant, a real curveball that I wasn’t even aware of until I saw it on Amazon. Another game I liked was The Swapper, especially because I got it free with PS+. Sadly, those are the only big gaming highlights I can think of, though I’ve got Fallout 4 and Uncharted lined up so I’m optimistic for 2016.

As far as television goes, The Affair was a surprise hit with me. I took a chance, not thinking it would be my sort of show, but I really enjoyed it. It straddled a fine line between drama and soap opera at times, but the duel perspective storytelling gave it a neat twist.

Another top program was The Game. I expected it to be Spooks set in the sixties, but it was more of a slow burn show. The time period, with its backdrop of union strikes, cold war paranoia and old fashioned espionage, was really refreshing.

I need to read more books than I have been doing, but of the ones I’ve read this year the highlights include The Martian, The Craft Sequence series of books by Max Gladstone (particularly the first one, Three Parts Dead) and City Of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett.

I could go on and on and detail all my personal high and lows from 2015, but that’s drifting dangerously into Facebook territory. So, with that, I’ll bring an end to my first attempt at blogging a yearly review.