It’s New Year’s Eve tomorrow and it’s been a huge year! Here are my highlights…

I conquered my fear of public speaking.

I was a keynote presenter at the Social Media Marketing in Tertiary Education Conference in Sydney. It was a tough gig – I was the final speaker on the final day. I was so nervous in the lead-up. But when I got on stage, I actually enjoyed it. I received wonderful feedback about my presentation ‘Managing organisational change in 140 characters’ and now I’m not afraid of public speaking at all.

My son finished school.

Forever. It’s been an epic 13 year journey that started at Hilton Primary School in Fremantle and finished at Caulfield Grammar School in Melbourne. He’ll go to University of  Melbourne in 2014 and I’ll figure out what the hell to do with myself now my child is raised.

My team won an award.

Swinburne achieved the second-highest Facebook engagement in Australia’s education sector (Social Pulse Awards 2013).  We also made the top 10 of largest brand pages. Not bad for a core social media team of two – Chris Wong and me. Chris undertook a 12-month Industry-Based Learning placement as Swinburne’s Social Media Officer in 2013. He is a talented, creative and hard-working digital and social media professional. He will complete his degree in 2014 and I cannot recommend him highly enough. Connect with Chris on Linked In or email chriswongstar@gmail.com.

I conquered my fear of performing music in public.

Overcoming my fear of public speaking inspired this. A community organisation I’m involved with held a talent night and I took the opportunity to conquer another fear. I played guitar and sung ‘Mad World’ by Tears for Fears and ‘Your Ghost’ by Kristin Hersh, on stage, to an audience of about 100 people. I don’t know if I’ll do it again, but it ended up being fun and I felt elated afterwards. Feedback was lovely – in fact one person described my performance as ‘mesmerizing’.

I launched Sun on my Parade.

After several years of wanting to do it, I launched a digital magazine for women celebrating the second half of life. Sun on my Parade is a work-in-progress, but I’m proud of myself for giving it a go. So, this post is also to let you know I’ll be busy building that platform in 2014, so I won’t be blogging as much in Summer’s notebook. I’d love you to join the Sun on my Parade community – we’re @sunonmyparade on Facebook,  Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, And if you’re inspired, I’d love you to share a story.

Best wishes for a very happy 2014.