powerwashing 16: a new year

2022-1 (will make more sense later)
So every year people make blog posts about doing better. Last year I sure did. But did I really meet any of the goals? Am I a successful goal-meeter?

I really do not think so.

I did go biking quite a bit, and did do a bit of hiking, but still fell very, very far from my goals. So despite not meeting those goals, I did accomplish a secondary objective of just having fun. Biking was fun, hiking was fun, and I had a fun time writing my newsletters until my life got too busy and hectic.

So what's in store for this year? What will Ryan think of this time? What are his goals? Well I don't need to worry about academic goals anymore and I don't feel like talking about my professional life so I'll focus on my hobbies/personal growth: photography, writing and fitness.

Photography

After a full pandemic of not taking photos, I fell back into the hobby because I got really bored. I spent most of 2021 figuring what and how I wanted to take photos, and even hopped on the film photography trend.

Since last year's goal was to figure out how I wanted to take photos again, this year's goal is going to be improve my composition and lighting. Each month, I'll do my best to find photos and identify the good compositional elements in them. I'll probably also try and pick up some resources (videos, books) that will help me learn what these compositional rules I should be following are.

Some secondary goals I have include: shoot more candid photos of friends, go on more photo walks (ties a little into fitness), and learn more about how to pose people.

Writing

So I may or may not have had a pretty ambitious writing goal last year, and when you put it into perspective writing 52 newsletters or blog posts is pretty ambitious. And my scheduling for newsletters was pretty wack — Tuesdays and Fridays? Come on.

After a lot of thought, I'll keep that schedule.

But this year I'm going to make it a formal goal of writing at least 100 blog posts/newsletters. I'll be keeping track of them each time I send one out, so we'll be able to see my progress as the year churns on.

The subject matters will mostly stay the same too, but I think I'll try my hand at writing a little bit about NFTs. Disclaimer: I do not have a very high opinion of NFTs so expect some downers opinions in that realm.

Clip it and ship it: 100+ newsletters in 2022. Let's do it.

Fitness

It's time I return to biking and hiking. We're going to change our biking goal to 750 miles (25 miles per week) and for our hiking ... well, we'll think of something. I think we're going to have put it on pause for now.

But I do have delightful news to report with my biking. In my journey to hit my biking goal I lost a bit of weight. My trouble with weight loss in the past is that if I thought too hard about it, it just wouldn't work for me (I have lost enough weight for a lifetime). Now that it's come as a by-product of my exercise goal, I'm less stressed about it.

Three main goals. I think I will surely fail the photography one as there's a lot less rigidity with how I've set it up. I'll come back on a Friday newsletter to give this one a little more definition (maybe I'll enroll in some 52-week challenges I've seen floating around the internet, or make one myself).

Happy new year, let's go get it.

P.S. yes, this is blog post #1