A few years ago I noticed a bit of a pattern: I’d limp into the end of year thinking ‘thank fuck that’s over!’. And to be fair, there were a few challenging years in there for sure.
But a couple of years back I made a conscious decision to look back at my year a little differently and realised that for every challenge, there was also something awesome. And at the risk of getting all ‘glass half full’ preachy, it really did come down to which bits of my year I chose to reflect on, as to how I felt about it. And truthfully? While I’ve had some pretty challenging years, I’ve also had some pretty fucking awesome ones as well. And quite often, they were the exact same years that delivered a bit of everything.
As I look back at 2018 then, there’s no question there’s been some tough stuff – especially in the past month or two where I’ve had to juggle some pretty tricky things. (Some of which I’m still juggling.)
Rather than focus on those though, even though it seems almost cool to gloat about how shit your year has been, I’m going to look back and remind myself of some of the awesome things that happened. Not to gloat, more just to hang it out there that I’m sure if you look closely enough, you’ll have more awesome things to reflect on as well, even if you don’t feel like busting out a ‘hash tag blessed’ any time soon.
First of all, I’m alive, and mostly well. A bit fat, but well. When plenty aren’t. So I’ll take that as a pretty fucking big win. And trust me, the older you get, the less you should take that one for granted.
I also managed to have some pretty decent adventures again this year. Some were ‘big’ like a trip to Bali early in the year, and a road trip up north to Uluru with my son later in the year. Both trips were completely different, but completely awesome. And of course, in between and around those were any number of other adventures. Some as small as an hour or two walking at the local conservation park, but no less awesome. And plenty in between.
I juggled my injuries and despite feeling like I had a shit year running, and despite complaining about being as slow as ever, looking back I realise I ran The Great Kanku-Breakaways Marathon (in Coober Pedy), the Pichi Richi Marathon, the Kangaroo Island Marathon, and The Federation 50 – not the toughest ultra going around, admittedly, but a big deal for me to be out there running anything longer than about 20kms on the trails. Three marathons and an ultra in a year is not too shabby. Even more importantly, I had great little micro adventures around all three marathons too! Something that’s become a real focus for me recently, picking and choosing the events I go to based on what else I can do while I’m there.
I promised myself to write more, and did that, adding a bunch of blogs and race reviews etc to my website. Unsurprisingly I didn’t win a Pulitzer, but I did manage to bust out a few words. On the other hand, I attempted to get into PodCasting and that one’s stalled a bit. Likewise for my ‘Fuck That’ book which I had great plans for, but is still waiting for a bit of love and attention. If I wanted to be down on myself, I could probably add a few other projects that never got off the ground as well, but… life.
I wrote a bunch of articles for Travel Play Live magazine, for the Snowys blog, for ioMerino, for Firebrand Talent, and got asked to contribute to a running magazine in New Zealand for the first time which I was pretty stoked about. Plus, I did a bunch of stints on ABC Adelaide radio. A reasonably productive year in that department I reckon.
I decided to spend less time on social media, with a total of about five months off Facebook, which probably accounts for at least some of the reason I managed to read way more books than usual. I set myself the goal of reading 12 this year, (I’m not usually a very fast or conscientious reader), and managed to double that. (If you want to see my year’s reading list, you can do that here.)
There’s probably all sorts of other stuff, work stuff I did, and personal stuff like spending time with a beautiful human which I’m super grateful for, but the other thing that gets an official mention here is my bird photography. I haven’t really posted much here on my website yet, but will get that sorted in the new year and in the meantime, you can always see what I post on Facebook or Instagram. That’s been a great challenge, a great learning experience and actually really great fun – if at times also a little frustrating!
So here I am, on New Year’s Eve, sitting here feeling quite fulfilled with everything I managed to get done in the past 12 months. Did it all go according to plan? Fuck no. Did some of it not happen at all, or worse, go completely tits up? Fuck yes. But did I still manage to have a pretty awesome year? Indeed I fucking did. And I hope you did too. And if you think you didn’t, I hope there’s a way for you to look a little closer and find stuff to feel good about. And to use this time to look to the year ahead, and plot and plan and scheme and dream as many ways as possible to fill the next 12 months up with as much awesome as possible.
As always, be awesome to each other.
Sputnik
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PIC: The above pic is of Cruise and I swimming in a waterhole in the West MacDonnell Ranges, NT, Australia.
