The Year in Review

As is my custom, I find it helpful to reflect upon the good and the bad of 2022.  I start the year with goals; this post looks back at some of them and considers other factors we experienced this year.

Our year was defined by several factors:

- a return to 'normalcy' (meaning most pandemic-related restrictions or requirements were dropped by late spring)

- our van dying

- our kitchen flooding

The first was wonderful. Though I had COVID twice (during Christmas 2021 and in May 2022), both times were very mild. Loosening restrictions was such a relief; taking off the mask at the gym was a particular joy. Though we are still in the pandemic, technically, I am hopeful that 2023 will be the first fully "normal" year we've had since 2019.

Our van dying was unexpected and unpleasant. We had owned it for 8 years (and were hoping for several more). Buying a vehicle in this market, with pandemic-related supply chain delays, meant we had to wait over two months for a replacement. We managed with one car for about a week . . . I biked in to work most of those days, but was quickly exhausted. We were saved by friends who loaned us their car for more than two months. We are so thankful for their generosity. We picked up the new car in November and have loved it.  

Around the same time as the van problem, our kitchen flooded, which was another 'fun' wrinkle. We noticed warped laminate floor boards in our kitchen . . . we asked several handy people about the cause, but nobody could isolate the problem. We eventually determined that the refrigerator had two intermittent leaks (internal and external). The water from that had soaked through the laminate and hit an older linoleum floor, spreading out throughout the whole room and damaging the family room floor as well. Our insurance company has been great to work with- we're getting a new floor and cabinets- but supply chain difficulties mean this won't get fixed until February.

Though the last quarter of the year was dominated by the aforementioned challenges, the rest of the year was pretty 'standard.' It was nice to see the kids adapt quickly to life back in America and develop new friendships (or rekindle old). We feel settled, which isn't a guarantee when you move. We are blessed. On to goals:

Spiritual
My goals here:

- Be disciplined in prayer/scripture routines (and keep tracking them to encourage it).
- Teach the family.
- Take a more active leadership role in church.
- Redeem the time. By which I mean wasting less of it.
- Overcome two besetting sins.

Scripture was fine. Prayer was more sporadic- easily done when in my routine, but easily dropped when routine was altered (due to vacation or other factors). Need improvement there.

Teaching the family happened sporadically. I tried a variety of methods, but always inconsistently.

I started leading a community group at church (in addition to the men's ministry), and am considering other leadership roles. This one is going okay.

I still waste too much time.

I now have more besetting sins. Okay, not really- just the same ones. Need progress here.

Overall there is a lot of room for improvement here.

Nutritional/Fitness

My goals here:

- Get (and keep) weight under 185 lbs.
- Complete 240 workouts (run, bike, gym, soccer, hikes, etc.).
- Eat less sugar/carbs/food in general.

I keep going the wrong direction; I'm now at 199 lbs. I did a test in July (when I weighed 197) that indicated I should lose 11 lbs, which seems to hold to what I've experienced in the past: ~185 lbs is my 'happy weight' and remains the goal. I did put on some muscle this year, which could account for a few of the pounds I gained, but certainly not all. 

I did complete 274 workouts, which is satisfactory. I consider myself "fit fat," meaning I'm in decent shape and can do cardio and weights without problems. I just need to lose some pounds. Most workouts were runs, gym, bike rides, and yardwork. Included 2021 totals for reference:

2021: 63 runs for 134 miles, 115 gym workouts, 43 bike rides for 539 miles, 8 soccer games

2022: 38 runs for 91 miles, 113 gym workouts, 68 bike rides for 1061 miles, 7 hikes for 30 miles, 43 mow/yardwork, 5 misc.

My diet was poor—it's the same old culprits of too many calories (overall) and too many sweets (in particular). Need to improve there.

Financial
My goals here:

- Get good budgeting system in place.
- Follow it.

It's hard to budget when a vehicle dies and kitchen floods. Little progress here.

Reading
My goals here:

- Read 40 books.
- Focus on fantasy (a number of series) and American history/literature.
- Pick another topic and 'get smart' (i.e. read a few books) on it.

No problem here; I read 52 books, and got my 'owned but unread' pile from 33 down to 11 (until  Christmas put that number up to 15). My post here caps this year's book recommendations. I did not really pick another topic, but did a series of posts on the content we consume that was challenging and fun to investigate.

House

My goals here:

- Finish the basement.

Nope- kitchen flood dominated house, though we did also get some work done in the backyard to improve drainage. We have plans to do this in 2023, with the help of friends.

Language
My goals here:

- Continue studying Spanish.

This went well. It is easy to do DuoLingo every day. My stats (which they sent to me as of 30 November, so they do not account for the last month) indicates that I:

- completed 671 lessons (I do two per day on average)

- was in the top 4% of DuoLingo users

- spend 2333 minutes learning (7 minutes per day)

- learned 882 words and practiced 3199 sentences

Games
My goals here:

- Play the 12 games in my 'owned but unplayed' pile.
- Minimize game collection to what I play regularly.
- Build a cube for Magic.
- Have more game nights.

My 'owned but unplayed' pile now stands at four. I did some minimization and built a cube for Magic. (That was fun and I hope to build a few more this year.) I re-started my church's game nights, and one day hope to move them to my house (if we can get the basement finished). Overall, these goals went pretty well.

Conclusion
Looking across the seven categories above, I failed in about half of my objectives. Here's to a better 2023. "Never stop starting."