2022 was ridiculously busy. There was almost never a month we weren’t either out of town or planning something. It was just kind of insane when I realized that we had every month going someplace or doing something.

Here are some highlights!

WE HAD A WEDDING

We celebrated with so many of our good friends & family! It was a LOT of work planning a Indian wedding in Boise. We had to plan 3 separate events: a mendhi ceremony (we ended up having to get someone from Las Vegas to FLY in for this!), a haldi ceremony (rearranged due to airplane schedules) and the wedding itself. Finding a Hindu priest in Boise was an interesting experience as well.

Everything went well except for the very last minute snowstorm that occurred that week that pushed all our activities inside instead of outside.

Lots of Travels

Just a highlight of places we traveled this year.

• Lots of trips to Boise to prep for the wedding and OUR WEDDING
• A trip to NYC and Boston for one of Mel’s friends weddings
• A weekend trip to Yosemite National Park with my friends Marina and her husband Steven
• A trip to Europe including Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands for another friends wedding (we actually missed this one because I finally caught covid like a day or two before the wedding)
• A weekend wedding in Mendocino
• A 2.5 honeymoon consisting of visits to Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, India and Turkey.

I was part of a wedding

I’ve been to many weddings but not really been a part of one. I was going to be in the wedding party of one wedding but that relationship didn’t work out. But for my Amber and Michael’s wedding I got to give a speech! It was super fun and Mel can attest to how many drafts I went through trying to get the right balance of sincere, comedy and something true to my voice.

Gastby Died

The saddest and most life changing thing this year is that Mel’s dog Gatsby died. We talked about it a lot and Mel knew that he wasn’t going to stay alive a lot longer. He was already on so many medications (when we left, he was on 4 different medications with maybe 6 pills total).

Thankfully he was able to make it until we came back thanks to some gentle hand feeding by our house sitters. Unfortunately there wasn’t much to do to get his quality of life up and we put him down.

He is missed every single day. Little things just remind me of him like just looking over the side of the bed and seeing a pillow and expecting him to look up at me there. He couldn’t get up on the bed anymore in his old age so he would just lay on the side of the bed until we got up.

Resolutions from 2022

Read 24 Books

Unfortunately I didn’t make this goal (kind of). I read 18 full novels. I’m going to half count this because I decided to re-read one of my favorite fictional series: Worm. Worm has its faults and you can kind of skip through the long monologues but it’s one of my favorite superhero stories (technically supervillain).

It’s a web serial and it’s HUGE. Like the 2nd largest book I read was 166,666 words (Leviathan Wakes, approx 500 pages in physical book form). The entire Worm series is 1,680,000 words. So it’s like 10 long novels. I finished that entire series and started the sequel Ward. Unfortunately, Ward isn’t as good. So if you COUNT Worm again, I’m way over the 24 book count so I’m going to count this.

No electronics until after I go for a run

This one was impossible for me. It’s such a bad habit to kick. The big thing is that I need my phone for podcasts which I listen to on my walks but I don’t really have an alternative device to listen to. So I end up getting my phone and just going back into bed.

Hosting regular events

This… was bad. It’s surprisingly hard to figure out who wants to go. I don’t know what the right cadence or set up for this is or how to do it properly.

Focusing on this year

Success! Kind of?

The Wedding

SUCCESS!

The House

Not success! We never had time to do these projects, far too ambitious.

Sabbatical

Success!

Conclusion

I was focused on this year as my primary resolution. I kind of count the book one but setting up my other habits were not a success. So going to give myself a 2/4.

Resolutions 2023

New Sport?

I think while I enjoy running, I don’t really have any fun goals for it anymore. I don’t really want to do a marathon again and I haven’t found a race that excites me. Some destination marathons sound fun but nothing that I am super excited about. There are alternative things like Color Runs or other stuff but those don’t excite me to get that distance picked up again.

Mel and me are also going to do this: https://www.theconqueror.events/shire/. This might be a fun motivation for keep running up and the mileage is reasonable for 2 of us.

24 Books

I’m going to repeat this one again this year. Part of our honeymoon fund supported a puzzle of the month and I’m going to subscribe to that and pick up some new audio books. I think at night I’m going to have to start reading books again, I think a kindle and trying to read at night was the best success I had. The only downside is that books sometimes become so interesting that I just want to keep rereading. It’s a careful balance that I have to find there.

Training Ryo

I think we’re going to be done with traveling for a bit. Both me and Mel want to really focus on just ourselves and our local adventures for a bit. I’m going to focus on training Ryo for a few things.

• I want to see if I can stop him from barking whenever anybody knocks or rings the doorbell. He barks whenever anybody comes through the back door or sneaks through the side of the house but I think that’s a pretty good burglar alarm so the main goal is just the front door. No idea if that’s possible.
• I wonder if I can teach him to put away his own toys
• There was a fun book I listened to from a speech behaviorist called: “How Stella Learned to Talk” which teaches a dog to talk or ask for command using a series of push buttons that record a little thing. This seems too ambitious so it’s going to be a stretch goal for me. Mel is worried that all he is gonna do his push the food button all day.

Plant a Christmas Tree

I don’t know if this going to be even possible but I really want to plant a Christmas Tree and keep reusing it. We bought a real one last year and it was super expensive! Plus it just seems wasteful to grow this tree and instead we have a yard and ample space. We can just re-plant the existing one and keep it in the house. I have no idea how well it will work but we have plenty of space in our yard to do it.

Volunteering

I’ve got my spring volunteering setup, I’ll be volunteering again at VITA. Helping low income people file their taxes and learning some fun stuff about tax law. For the spring and summer though I don’t know what I want to do in Oakland. Friends of Five Creeks was recommended for me a while ago but it requires a bit of a car to get to shifts.

Tackle one house improvement per month

I want to tackle one house improvement every month. Just something small or medium that I can make our lives easier in the house. For January I was able to build a window screen that was broken. I’m going to keep tackling small things in the house including things like adding gutters or something.

Build an app

This is a stretch goal. I don’t know what I want to build so it will matter about priorities. I love the app “Our Home” which friends of mine use to manage their household chores but I really want to build something more guaranteed toward my own development and system. The app also hasn’t been updated for 2 years so I’m a little wary about relying on it. I’ll have to figure out how my rewards system works but I like the idea of it.

Conclusion

7 Resolutions! We’ll see how it goes.