2015 Recap

It’s the last day of the year, and time for a little assessment of the intentions I set last year with my OLW: Simplify. It was the second year for Simplify, and although I hadn’t really finished with it, holding on to a word for a second year didn’t prove to be very helpful or inspiring. Lesson learned. A year ago I typed up a document outlining my intentions for 2015. I found it this week, and it was fun to see exactly how well I’d done with them. I’m putting them out here as a way of being accountable, but fair warning, it’s a pretty long post.

Here they are with a bit of assessment:

One sketch a day. I didn’t come close to meeting this goal although I did completed one sketch a day during the month of May and again in October. I filled more than one and a half sketchbooks with finished sketches, and have another book nearly filled with experiments with different media and efforts to master a certain technique. There’ll be some kind of intention around sketching for 2016 as well.

Project 365 with the iPhone. Yes, I did take a photo every day with my iPhone. The intention was to learn how to use some of the many apps I had on my phone. I used Collect to organize the photos every month. I played around with a lot of editing apps, and have settled on Afterlight as the main app for editing photos. I also use SKRWT to correct images with distortions, PicTapGo when I need a good overall filter, & Retouch to get rid of elements I don’t want in the photo. I also like LetterGlow, Waterlogue, and HDRPhoto, although I don’t use them often. So I accomplished what I set out to do. This is the second Project 365 I’ve completed, and I don’t think I’ll tackle another one in 2016.

Participate in Helena’s meme: Pairs. Every week. Loved it. Looking forward to Snap in 2016.

Photography project: master back button focusing and panning. Nope. Not either one.

Read three books a month. Yep, exactly. I could certainly read more books if I read fewer blogs, but I get a lot of inspiration and information from blog reading, so I’m satisfied with this one. I also subscribe to and read three periodicals.

Organize and catch up with Project Life. In June I was all caught up, and I do have an organizational system set up. But being away a good part of the summer put me way behind again. I have four months (July is nearly done) to complete once I finish my Christmas Journal. (There’ll be no December PL pages.) Even though it’s hard to keep up, I love this system of memory keeping, and plan to keep at it.

Participate in one card challenge/week using a different stamp set each week. Not really. I did, however, make well over 200 cards this year. It’s still one of my favorite hobbies.

Purge and organize the basement. Done.

Purge and organize the attic. Not so much. On the list for 2016.

Organize art materials on IKEA cart. Yes, one of the best purchases of 2015.

Exercise: two spinning classea/week; three weight-training sessions; average 5,000 steps/day. Pretty inconsistent. We never got back to spinning class after our summer vacation. Weight training comes and goes. I was doing great this fall until Thanksgiving. I average 5,000 steps a day, sometimes it’s 12,000+ and others less than 5,000, but it averages out. Tracy and I hiked 76 miles on our vacation this year—a record for a three-week span. My friend and I have walked 5.5 miles once a week all fall and up until Christmas. If it’s not too snowy, we’ll be back at it in January.

Continue with no preservatives/whole food eating. Yes, we’re good about this, and I enjoy cooking. One of my best Christmas gifts was The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking with Science. It’s huge, but I already know I’m going to love reading it and trying out the recipes.

Practice portion control. This is probably my biggest deterrent to weight-loss. Once again it’s inconsistency that’s the problem.

Continue with volunteer commitments. I sit on four committees (three church-related, one mission center), volunteer at an after-school program once a week, cook meals with a Dining Room Ministry Team, and provide dinner for families staying at our church with the Rochester Interfaith Hospitality Network. The last two are rotations that come up every two or three months. I plan to continue with all of them next year, and don’t anticipate adding any new ones. We’re away so much, I have to be careful what kind of volunteer commitments I make.

Make photo book of our trip to Istanbul and Greece. This has been on the list for two years now. I’m not sure why I’m avoiding it, but obviously I need to get some help with it.

Participate in Voices every month. Voices is a noon-time discussion group at our church focused on a reading we get in advance. I’m there every week I’m in town. There is a core group of us (12-15) who are there every week, and it’s become a wonderful community.

Last, but not least, I had a long list of online classes I wanted to complete. I made a dent (a little one) in the list, but it will continue into 2016. I did complete several sketching classes (two by Liz Steel that were intense and wonderful), several Online Card Classes, and have been working on Cathy Zielski’s Clean and Simple: The Workshop over vacation.

I’ll be back soon with my One Little Word for 2016. I’ve been living with the new word now for over a week, and think it will serve me well. We’re still in Chicago visiting Sarah, and will only be home two days before we leave to take Tracy’s mother’s van to Florida. The schedule doesn’t lend itself to blogging very well.

Just an hour and a half until we usher in the New Year in Chicago! Not sure I’ll still be up, but I am wishing all of you the Happiest of New Years. I hope yours is filled with many blessings!