In general I’m pretty happy with life these days, so 2022 was a good year. Looking at my resolutions for last year, I see that I had no overall plan or theme for the year. I think I’m just finally accepted the new normal of life now that the pandemic seems to be a bit more under control. Personally, I’ve gotten all the vaccine updates and the last one (which I got a few weeks before Thanksgiving) didn’t even make me sick. So while I don’t want to get covid and I still do wear a mask when I go in stores and other crowded indoor places, I’m not that worried about it. Because if I do catch it, I think it’ll be something where I just need to stay home for a while, like any other illness. I know a number of people who had it lately and none of them had to go to the hospital. They weren’t happy they got it and they felt awful, but it was manageable.

I’m very happy with how my garden came out this year. I grew a ton of tomatoes and I made sauce and froze a bunch of jars of it. So I am learning how to cook with food I grow, which is cool. I’m also just learning how to cook better. Cooking is something I’ve never really enjoyed. I still don’t know if I enjoy it, but I do like having the food around, so it’s easy for me to eat when I get hungry. And it’s easy for me to grab something for lunch.

Just checking my phone and my total biking mileage was 1,079 miles for the year. That’s not bad. Biking makes me happy, so I’ll try to do more next year.

My big outdoor project was I finally got the new concrete wall by my back stairs built. Is it perfect? Heck, no. But I think it will stand ok. When the weather gets nice again, I can rebuild the stairs. I have an idea of how I want them to look and it’s probably a little beyond my abilities right now. Hopefully, I’ll get them done and they won’t look too bad. Other house stuff this year was I got the lead water line to my house replaced, which cost ~$16,000 and the sides of the house tuckpointed, which was ~$10,000. Both of those were big jobs that needed to be done and that took a big chunk of my savings. But that’s why I saved the money. So it’s all good.

Work is going quite well and I’m still happy with my job. I often think about retiring, but I don’t know that I’d be able to afford health insurance if I did. So I’ll continue working until I come up with a plan. Plus, there are still a ton more jobs that need to be done on the house, so I need the money to be able to pay for them. I can do some, but a lot of the work is stuff that I’ll have to hire people for.

I also pretty much ignored this site most of the year, but that’s ok. I was trying to get away from computers and screens because I spend way too much time with them. If I have something that I really want to save, I’ll put it up. Otherwise, this site is fine as is. I do spend much more time writing in my journal, which I enjoy more.

So, 2022? A year I’m happy with. Let’s see what 2023 brings.