And so, that was 2013. Not a year that I will remember with any particular fondness. It was very much a “meh” year. It was the year I gave up World of Warcraft, my guild and interest in the game inevitably drifted apart, I did however start playing Yogcraft, my first foray into the Feed The Beast modpacks for Minecraft and have been playing it almost every day ever since. I have never had quite so much fun in Minecraft building all kinds of magical, technical and agricultural contraptions and connecting them all together.

In real life, little has changed, I have at least one thing to be proud of; only having had one day of drinking in the whole year. This Christmas I have had nothing. Not a drop. Speaking of Christmas, it has been quite lonely, sometimes sad, but nice to be at home with my family, there’s nowhere else I’d want to be on Christmas.

The Christmas period has been happy at times too, though. For the third year running I have spent much of my Christmas season watching the Yogscast charity livestreams. It sounds silly, but they almost feel like a family to me, despite the fact I will probably never meet any of them in real life. I, like so many others feel a connection to them and they have helped make this sad time of year bearable. I’d like to extend my personal thanks to Lewis, Turps, Simon, Hannah, Duncan, Kim, Sjin, Sips, Zoey, Fiona, Nilesy, Teutron, Rythian, DaveChaos, Hybridpanda, Zylus, Chris Trott, Ross, Alex Smith, Ridgedog, Athene, Reese, Totalbiscuit, Sam Gibbs, Tom, Martyn, Strippin, Sparkles, Kayei, Beckii Cruel, Parvis and Area 11. I’d also like to thank the moderators who dedicated so much of their Decembers to helping them out, including JaneDash, Sadpear, Zach, Steelcryo, etc. I’m sorry if I missed any other names.

Watching these streams and being around other Yognau(gh)ts has boosted my confidence, too. I’ve become more vocal on YouTube, I have signed up to Reddit and the Yogscast forums and hope to immerse myself more in what’s going on in the coming year. I also aim to tweet more if and when I can, but I have always had this reservation when tweeting that it might be rambling nonsense and the worry that I’m putting people out by writing it. My new attitude to Twitter (actually my 2011 resolution) is just to tweet whatever and whenever I want, and if someone doesn’t like it, well they can fuck off.

With Christmas and new year over, I am sat here at the beginning of 2014 with literally a clean slate. I have my new favourite text editor, Brackets (brackets.io) open with a blank document, my web hosting with Ariotek is renewed for another year and my head is filled with (mostly) positive and productive thoughts. I have the ability to make this year the year I finally get my website together and cement my presence on the web. Today could be a day I look back on fondly in a year’s time. Or it could just be the start of another year of misery, loneliness and disappointment.

P.S: Late to the party as ever, this Christmas I became aware of such technologies as the electric toothbrush and more importantly, the tablet computer. I’m planning on getting a tablet later this year, I can see the advantage of using a tablet for web development testing purposes, as well as the convenience of being able to check tweets and Emails so easily.