Throughout the course of 2015, the only thing that we could always count on was that we had no idea what to expect next. Some of that was certainly to be expected after moving into the new house, but it seemed like every time the light at the end of the tunnel started getting close, somebody just made the tunnel longer. If you were to sum up 2015 in one sentence, it would be:
The Only Constant in Life Is Change
It seemed that every month we were having a talk about how “nice it will be for things to finally slow down” that just never materialized. So as 2016 dawns, we are determined to make things actually slow down. When the sun sets on 2017, we can look back on this post and see how successful we actually were with slowing things down.
So what does that mean for 2016?
For starters, we are going to get back into shape. Starting with the training for the 2014 Thanksgiving Half Marathon, our level of physical fitness has slowly been deteriorating. That might seem counterintuitive at first, how can extensive training for longer runs cause you to get less physically fit? Well I think we are living proof that the body needs the muscles to be challenged more than the cardiovascular system. The best shape we’ve ever been in was when we were doing bootcamp every morning, so we will be going back to bootcamp starting on January 11th. We will be going to the Ashford Park version this time in an effort that will hopefully lead to meeting more of our like minded neighbors.
Very closely related to getting back into shape is to eat better. But the goal isn’t just to eat better, it’s to cook with more variety and an eye towards learning more about cooking. In the past we’ve always tried to find new recipes online, which has presented us with a literally limitless supply of recipes. But with a limitless supply also comes the inherit problems with too many choices. In order to help alleviate those issues, will be taking a more Julia and Julia kind of approach and work our way through individual cookbooks. The goal is to take the element of choice out of the equation, within reason to maintain a healthy diet, which will help streamline meal plans while also expand our culinary tastes and talents. And who knows – maybe we will even add some recipes that we will like to the recipes tab at the top.
The list of house projects certainly hasn’t gotten any smaller recently, but hopefully by the end of 2016 we can have the list whittled down to just maintenance projects. The current list of “must do” items includes the backyard, the laundry room, the master closet, and the office upstairs. We won’t be doing all the work for these projects, most notably the backyard, but we do want to have all of these items completed this year. Once we get those items completed, we should have the house in a state that we are very happy with. Of course there are other items on the wish list, but getting those items checked off would truly put us in a position of working on all of the “nice to haves”.
And finally, as always, we want to continue improving our photography. To me, photography is a lot like golf. What I mean by that is photography a hobby that you always feel like you still have room for improvement, no matter how far you have so far. move the goal posts on yourself. I imagine even professional photographers still feel that way. Without getting into the nitty gritty details of what the plan is, there is a list of things that we want to learn and that we are excited to start applying. Even despite the classes we have taken so far, I feel like our journey has mostly been about trial and error. I want 2016 to be a much more deliberate exercise in improvement.
But I think the most important goal of 2016 is to feel like things have returned to normal. Ignoring the somewhat extensive travel plans we’ve already put together, we are most looking forward to enjoying what we have in our day to day lives. Hopefully when we look back at 2016 and ahead to 2017 we can relish in the fact that our lives slowed down enough to really enjoy the day to day, instead of feeling like the entire year flew by in a blur of excitement.