so it’s time for my year in review, which is actually really fun to do most years, but this year is doubly fun because WOW 2020.

first, let’s take a peek at what i wanted to see happen in 2020:

1. so first on my list for years and years is take more photos. maybe instead of that as a goal, the goal should be to do something with the pics i take. like last year, an unexpected thing that happened was taking some wedding pics, but i don’t want to do that every year, yeesh. hmm. might have to think about this one.
2. sit on my new couch. i’m sitting on it now. it’s glorious. this one will be easy.
3. continue yoga every day. of all the things that i did in 2019, i think yoga every day was the best thing. i’ve got arm muscles, i look forward to spending at least 10 minutes on the mat, and it’s a great way to slow down, if even for 10 minutes. i highly recommend fightmaster yoga. lucky for you, she does a 30-day program at the first of the year every year, and this one is hatha yoga. check it out.
4. travel! this has gotten easier, whether due to just more expendable cash or me just saying “olé losers” and going. luckily, my boss is super good about pushing professional development, so there’s a trip to florida in march for work. it might also be a black hills year, and i do want to go up the north shore again. it might also be a bwca year with my aunt rae and uncle greg!
5. running goals? hmmm. earth day half is already registered for. i have a feeling we’re going to do ragnar again. and liz and i are already planning a DESTINATION RACE. destination races intrigue me to no end, so i finally sat down and looked at what destinations i would want to race at (no ultras or mountains for me, thanks). we settled on big sur in monterrey california (well, i settled on that – liz seemed to agree). the 2020 race was sold out by the time we checked it out, but we’re going to watch for registration for the 2021 11-miler, which should open in october. also, a sub-11-minute-mile 5k would be nice to hit this summer.
6. do something interesting with nate! i actually like this one because something interesting with nate could be just a quick trip to the cities or it could be an excursion to who knows where. any time i get him out of the house means an interesting time with nate hahaha
7. help out the earth. or rather, help out us humans who are seemingly hell bent on destructing our time on earth. like i’ve said before, is it wrong to want a clean earth, even if it DOESN’T stop climate change? seriously. so my goal this year is to really, diligently try to reduce my plastic use. that includes plastic bottles that are recyclable (plastic is a degradable recyclable, meaning it recycles into a lesser form of plastic, unlike glass or aluminum). (unfortunately, nate buys tons of drinks in plastic bottles; i don’t know if i should even try to get him to reduce his usage.) if i fail at reducing plastic, i will also try to reduce the amount of new items i buy (try to fix or buy used).
8. perhaps in conjunction with #7, i will add on “write more” in #8. one of the things that helped me really get on the devils syrup bandwagon was to do research on it. if i research stuff about plastic use and a bunch of other keep a clean earth stuff, it would probably push me to do something about it. and while the whole “blog every day” resolution is nice, it just never works out like that. so i think just write is a better thing.
9. be happy! i felt good about 40, and life is doing ok. let’s continue that trend!

well, it’s hard to realize your goals when there’s a global pandemic, a civil rights and justice resurgence, and a contentious, anxiety-inducing election. but rather than dive into those items, let’s review:

1. take more photos and do something with them. well….. this sort of happened? i definitely did not take more photos than the year i hit all the state parks. i did rent a macro lens, which was glorious, and i took an awesome few pics up in the dark skies of northern mn and got the full milky way. i sold a few canvasses of said milky way pics. i didn’t do any wedding pics because there weren’t supposed to be any big gatherings this year, but that’s ok. so we’ll give this one a point. why not.
2. i did, indeed, sit on my new couch. i am sitting on it now. point. on a related note, i am actually getting a replacement couch due to the fact that the fabric has a weird line going through it on the back. but, i am sitting on it. i like it.
3. yoga every day. i didn’t do yoga every day, but i did do yoga quite a bit. i would say 9/10 days, i did yoga. i even bought myself a nice, cushy, expensive yoga mat. there was some sad news on my yoga mat though. my yoga teacher, lesley fightmaster, died unexpectedly about a month ago. i never met her in person, but i did see her almost every day, and it’s still a shock. her yoga teachings live on, though.
4. travel? ha! LOL. 2020, wow. so the week before i was supposed to go to florida for my conference, the pandemic basically hit the US. i had plane tickets, hotel reservations, tickets for universal studios purchased, jane was set to come with, etc. etc. and then covid. #thankscovid #thankskim so there was no florida, no black hills. i did go to the boundary waters in august, which was super fun! went to the fake derry reunion at leech lake, and then camped at the state park in southeastern MN. other than that, there was no traveling to be had, other than visiting my parents a couple times. i haven’t even been out of state this year. #thanks2020
5. running goals were SQUASHED. SQUASHED. #thanks2020. i was signed up for the earth day half, and it was canceled. signed up for ragnar trail, and it was canceled. planned on signing up for big sur 2021 with liz, and that was already canceled back in may. i ran NO organized races this year, which is a bummer. sure, i RAN. that was no problem. but a race is something different; the energy of other people around just makes it an exciting run. so no point on this one. not for lack of trying.
6. the most interesting thing i did with nate this year was make him come to charlie’s 5-yr cheatin’ the reaper celebration. we stayed overnight in rochester and then headed to my parents’ house the next day. it wasn’t a fantastic adventure, but it was something different! i’ll take the point for this one.
7. if there was one good thing that came from a lockdown from the pandemic, it was to show people how the earth recovers from people. that was good news for the environment. on a personal front, because pandemic, i did not focus on my plastic use more than usual, which is something i still need to do. however, i drove less, contributing less CO2 to the air. instead of disposable masks, i use cloth ones. i baked a crapton of bread, reducing the plastic breadbags that i purchased (flour comes in recylable/compostable paper bags). so many weird byproducts of a pandemic.
8. i did not write more. i did not read more. you’d think with staying home and loafing around, i’d’ve found the time for that, but nope. i did do some research into environmental stuffs, but it was pretty minimal. i didn’t even manage to finish kablpomo, which was the first time i’d ever not finished it. sad. no point for me on this.
9. this was a tough year to be happy. there was a pandemic. there was a contentious election and elected officials who don’t want to do their jobs (mcconnell…). there were fires in australia and the US and there were protests against unnecessary killings and protests against wearing masks for the public good and protests against protests, and people who you thought you knew saying hateful things against groups of people who deserve no such hate, and hypocrisy of “just comply” except when it’s inconvenient for you and the bar you like to frequent, and people who lost their jobs, and people whose jobs didn’t pay enough for their essentialness, and people juggling a job and teaching their kids, and people losing their homes, and WWIII almost happening – twice, and people making insane amounts of money while others were making none, and through all this a virus spreading and people dying in hospitals alone and people on ventilators and people with long-lasting odd symptoms of a virus, and video chats/meetings cannot replace face-to-face interaction because we are a social species, and a year that just wouldn’t quit.happiness was hard to find in 2020.but there were some good things: dolly parton donated $1million to find a covid vaccine. clinics have finally embraced the video appointment. people spent a lot of time outdoors in the trees. we baked a boatload of sourdough bread. i got an awesome tattoo. we decided to not glorify parts of history that oppressed swathes of the populace (and instead put it in a museum, as is appropriate). as noted above, the earth showed what could happen if we pulled back on pollutant output. we found ways to celebrate. cities closed streets for people to dine outdoors. india planted 250 million trees. the internet didn’t crash on us when we needed it the most. a lot of us realized that we have a lot of work to do yet on racism. i painted my kitchen cabinets with help from liz. as a country, we managed to not run out of toilet paper. and i quit facebook.

there it is, year in review 2020. it has been, simultaneously, the longest and shortest year ever. not the worst year personally, but probably the worst collectively during my rememberable lifetime. the apocalypse came, and people couldn’t even be bothered to wear a mask. 2021 resolutions to come.