Wrap It Up!

And here we are, the last day of 2023, can you believe it?

I'll do a monthly and yearly wrap up altogether here. 

Reading: For December I was going to do a combination bio/self help to make things easier then ended up picking up Barbra Streisand's biography which was SO LONG so the bio/self help just became the self help and then last week a book I put on hold at the library way back in the summer when I was running out of self help books to choose from came available and so I read that as well. Ended up making it harder instead of easier, but that's sort of my way. I might write a piece about that book next week, but maybe not since it wasn't really part of the challenge, I just felt like I had waited so long on it, and it had been so highly recommended that I should go ahead and read it. 

I also ended up catching up with the monthly Fantastic Stranglings picks. I had that one month where it wasn't available until the very end of the month so I was technically reading one month behind on those from that point on, but this month I finished the November pick the first week of December and the December pick I am pushing to finish today to make sure I have a clean break between read in 2023 and read in 2024.

I did the breakdown that I wanted to with bio/auto/memoirs, self help, Fantastic Stranglings and free reading and hit those. Which will end up putting my reading at 93 books for the year. The original goal was 60. For awhile I was going in and adjusting it up but then at the beginning of this month I went ahead and set it at the original goal. So that goal was 155% completed. The part that didn't really budge was clearing books off my Kindle. I would read one and add two it seemed so I'm not really ahead on that, but THIS YEAR I feel it. I'm sure people will stop publishing new books and give me a chance to catch up. Right? Maybe not...

The goal for writing was 208 blogs and writing more days in a week than not with 52 fiction and 156 nonfiction as well as getting a piece to Dana every other week (though that could be a double dip and was 8 times). As of today after I hit publish I will have written 243 blogs 56 of which were fiction 187 non fiction and gotten those 26 pieces of fiction to Dana, 18 of which weren't double duty. So I actually wrote a total of 74 fiction pieces, either short stories or chapters to a work in progress. I clearly wrote more days than I didn't as well. I'm calling that one a giant win. Especially considering about half way through the year I thought I had totally run out of things to write about (and some of you might argue I had) but I wrote anyway. 

And that was it for hard numbers for the year. I was already sort of setting my mind toward letting go of goals like that, and I set some more nebulous ones. 

Fitness was that I wanted to find a balance between workouts (weightlifting, cardio, and flexibility) and also get my weight back into a happy knee range. Well...you all know I've been battling a myriad of injuries and such this year. Sciatica, a different nerve impingement in my hip, the whole elbow situation. So no, I did not get back to a balanced workout and my weight is actually a little higher than it was, but my knees aren't as angry about it because I got the nerve issue unissued.

BUT...I did run this year. I have never been a runner. And to be honest run is sort of misnomer, I jogged slowly, but still both feet off the ground at once propelling myself forward. And I didn't hate it. Once I realized I could "run" without going any faster (and actually slower than my speed walk rate) I kind of liked it. It's a lot bigger cardiovascular push than just walking. And that was going pretty well until Covid. Which slammed me right back to walking, and barely that, for awhile. But still. Even with the health issues I kept working on maintaining my fitness as much as I could so I'm calling it a win. 

I was going to pull all of my photos off of Facebook and also was going to finally get completely settled and unpacked. Yeah, no. The photos are still so daunting I haven't done it, but it's still on the list. I really do want to try and save what I can there. I see all the time that Facebook has deleted another album of mine and I know that if I don't pull them off I'm going to lose even more. It's just a case of sitting down and doing it. 

The house we did make some strides on, we bought shelves, finally. Put out some Halloween and some Christmas decorations on them and over the next couple of weeks I will set up their normal displays. So even though we've been here for ages and I'm still not done I'm closer than I was and that's okay.

The overarching goal for the year was to find what works. What does a good day look like? And I think I made progress toward that. Enough that tomorrow's blog won't be a set of numbers I'm trying to hit over the year at least. 

And I also thought that it felt like 2023 was finally going to feel like a progress year for all of us. Not just 2020 part three. And even though I did end up catching Covid, I do think that it did. I mean, I know for a lot of people the year sucked, but it sucked on its own merits, so that's progress right? Or something...

But here we are. Ready to step into 2024 (or already there for some of you). 

Thank you, as always, for being here with me and my random pursuits and side jaunts. I really do appreciate all three of you. 

Happy New Year! 2024, please be kind!