This time of year is always a time for me to look back and figure out how the year went.  When I think about it, there’s always the stuff that I intended to do, and the stuff that I did in the in-between.  I’ll write about my resolutions in the next post, but here I just wanted to write about how everything that wasn’t what I was planning at the turn of the year.

Health

At the highest level, I feel like I lived a reasonably healthy life this year.  I started to gain some weight near the middle of the year, but started eating better and managed to bring that back down by the end of the year.  I plan on keeping an eye on this in the future and maintain my eating habits to make sure I’m doing better next year.  I’m also keeping up on my exercise for the most part – in some areas I stepped up and did better, in others, I’m not quite as active; I don’t know whether these have balanced out or if there is a net gain/loss, but it feels good, so I’m happy with that.

In terms of pure physical health, I’m doing well – not dying of anything at the moment.  I did get my wisdom teeth removed which was a bit of an experience for me (I’ve never had any teeth pulled), but that aside, nothing major to report.

Socially, I’m in a bit better place than I was last year – I’m in a mostly stable relationship and I have a good (for me) social cadence.  Compared to last year, I never really felt overly lonely or socially overwhelmed, so I feel like I’m better finding that balance and am more comfortable where I am on that spectrum.

Work

There have been more technical challenges and workload balance issues at work this year, which has put a bit more strain on the team.  The primary issues have been an increase in the amount of work, the time criticality of the work, and the timing of those deadlines.  When all of that hits at once, something has to give, and that usually ends up being system health maintenance.  While I have been able to jump in and help relieve that stress at times, I’m not always there, and I can’t always help (as I have my own responsibilities).  My plan for next year is to provide better prioritization and high-level support to my team, while helping the team learn how to resolve the technical hurdles themselves.

Gaming

I’ve gotten to do a fair bit of gaming this year, but I haven’t really done any role playing sans a bit of microscope.  I’ve continued playing computer games with John on Saturday mornings, which is always a great time.  While I do occasionally boot up Guild Wars 2, and just barely finished Grim Dawn, I didn’t really spend a lot of my free time playing computer games.  This is okay, though I had really hoped to finish Guild Wars: Path of Fire.

On the other hand, I have run my own Warmahordes league this year, which was great.  Building cards and running a creative league really gives me that fix of doing something creative.  I am also participating in a casual Warhammer 40k league this winter, this promises also to have some creative aspects, and I am quite excited about the possibilities.