This will be my first update of any sort in months. I’m not going to blather about the following topics:
- the pandemic
- the Minneapolis riots
- the elections
- the insurrection
- my marriage/separation
- the kids
First off, let me just say that 2020 was fucking weird, yo. What would otherwise would have been the Shittiest Year on Record was punctuated with some otherwise good/great stuff. I found my dream job and I love it. My two months out of work this summer were super-productive as far as personal growth goes. I finished a “new bike project” in 2020, and while it’s not the crown jewel of my armada, it is a damned fun ride.
So let’s talk 2021, shall we?
It’s gonna be awesome. Dream job, for starters. Secondly, I added a new bike to the fleet, a 2021 Specialized Fuse Expert, so I expect I’ll be doing a lot of singletrack miles this year — already have plans for a trip to Bentonville, Arkansas in March, and am working on plans for a couple of Cayuna trips this summer, and a drive out to Ray’s in Cleveland after the weather turns (November-ish).
Snowboarding has continued to go well — haven’t broken any bones since February of 2020, which is a big plus. My skills continue to develop, and I’ve gotten to the point where I’m linking turns, and I’m recovering from near-crashes without consciously thinking about what I’m doing. Hoping that I’ll be ready for a trip to Colorado during winter of 2022.
Personal growth continues apace. Therapy helps, as always, but also focusing on working on my shortcomings as a parent and as human being, and undertaking the pursuits that are good for my physical and mental health.
It happens to everyone (so it seems), but my weight loss efforts stalled in December, and even reversed course a little bit. But I’m back to working on it and have been developing a battle plan to get back to good physical health.
One of the things that keeps me mentally healthy is having stuff to pursue intellectually and creatively. To that end, I’m:
- working on the skillset needed to go back to being a full-stack developer
- starting a project to rebuild this whole site from scratch; new template, paring down content, etc.
- starting a bike-oriented YouTube channel
Most of this I’ll write about in more detailed posts later.
So yeah, I have some mixed feelings about last year, but I’m feeling pretty good about 2021.