I figure it’s a good idea to start out the new year with a little review of what went on.

The Good

My kids, as usual. #1 is working on her life. #2 finished her Eagle Scout and is now a senior. #3 is now Star rank and is a sophomore in high school. #4 was the bravest of all my kids this year, but that is their story to tell. #5 bridged over to his brother’s scout troop and is almost done with scout rank.

I turned a milestone birthday. I’m not massively changing who I am, but I am working on getting better at being me. I spent a lot of time working on my leadership values. I have separate blog posts to follow on this and many other leadership topics.

My social media interaction has decreased. I only access FB through a browser on my phone, Instagram is there only for photos of the kids, and anything else has notifications turned off. I feel a lot better.

I started doing more photography stuff, and I may add that into what I post here. I’m still uncertain, but we’ll see how it goes. For context, I have an Olympus OM-D EM-10 Mark III (https://explore.omsystem.com/us/en/omd)

I am working on getting the budget under control and hopefully won’t be completely bankrupted by retirement age. I am using You Need A Budget. I also highly recommend the book it’s based on.

I did a lot of learning on Duolingo. The next step is to engage some more native speakers so I feel even more like an idiot, but can learn as well.

The Bad

My sleep is not great, so that is on the agenda to fix this next year.

Tech learning has slowed and my reading desire as well, so I need to get back into that at a regular pace. My desire to delve deep into technical problems has waned significantly. I find I want to delve into people problems more. How to help them, lead them, motivate them. Where that will take me this next year I don’t know.

I didn’t blog a single time. Not once. 

I won’t get fully away from social media, but I will limit it even more.

I lost the last two living grandparents I had. 

A close friend committed suicide. I never saw it coming.

I am finding out more and more about the mental issues around me, and I have to find a way to be supportive as possible. The good part is that I took a youth mental health first aid training to help with that.

The Ugly

I spent this last year working out a major elbow issue. As a computer tech, this has been the hardest year of my life to get any work done at any scale. I’m on the mend, but it’s been rough. I am grateful for a neighbor who suggested acupuncture. It really works.

Resolutions

I have none. But I do have plans. I’m going to go into detail later, but it starts with filling out my Year Compass. No, I won’t share it with you. It’s personal. And you should fill one out too.

I am not used to sharing of myself, but blogging allows me to control what the narrative is a bit, so I will be attempting to post at least twice a month.

–Dale