2016 in Review: Looking back (Part 1)

And like a flash, 2016 will soon be in the books.

It’s been a strange year, it seems. I can’t complain personally as, for the most part, it was pretty good. I had the opportunity to do a lot of different things, which is always nice. I saw many different things, and traveled a bit. I took photos and met people.

I’m breaking up the posts a little differently this year as I haven’t received the blogging report from Jetpack yet. Hopefully that isn’t discontinued as I always like that. So today will be the first part of looking back at 2016.

Just like it’s been in recent years, though, the year seemed to fly by. I can almost remember the calendar turning to 2016, and here we are knocking on the door of 2017. I try more than ever to not wish for things to come faster as it’s nice to see things come slower and build up. If you wish too hard for things to come fast, then they do and everything passes you by.

Personally, it was a pretty good year. I find myself in better financial shape than I was at the beginning and I’ve paid off a few smaller credit cards and bills. I had the ability to travel some and got to visit places I’ve never been. I traded in my car for a new one and it’s been nice to have switched to automatic. I haven’t been sick (knock on wood) for a prolonged period and, for the most part, I feel fulfilled professionally.

There was, of course, baseball and a lot of it. I tried to maintain other hobbies as well, though some took a backseat to others. I’ve seen Cameron as much as I can, and family remains near and dear to me. Hopefully we can all get closer and closer.

My 2016 wasn’t bad. And in this post and the next one, I will talk about the different parts of it. First, though, it’s time to look back at the goals I set and see how I did. The goals were from a post (https://hoohaa.com/?p=9869) from January 2016.

Let’s see how I did. Were there successes? Failures? A push? Let’s take a look.

Geocaching (pretty much a push)

Remember, when I say fail — it’s not necessarily a fail, rather I didn’t reach the level I was aiming for. I think as long as you do something toward a goal, it’s a work in progress. My goals, too, are pretty open-ended, so it allows me some wiggle room.

Such as with geocaching.

This goal had several tiers, so let’s see if I got to any of the levels. Part of this was an epic fail, but there were good things, too.

• Average a cache per day — Not even close. I’ve found 138 caches this year, which is by far the fewest in a year since I started in 2008.
• Add another state (or more) to my list — I added North Carolina, Kentucky, and California to my totals.
• Place 10 new caches (not including events) — Close. I have six caches in my name, and I placed three others for a geocaching challenge. So I’ll count that as nine. I definitely would like to place more and I think once the spring comes, I’ll work on fixing some of my current ones and placing a few new ones.
• Host at least 5 events — Though I had plans of doing one each month in my head, that didn’t happen. Still, I hosted eight events, including a CITO event. It was an overall good year for events!

In the end, it means I should find more caches. But I am not a fan of caching solo as it takes away some of the social aspect. So we’ll see how 2016 goes.

Home brewing (fail)

It seems each year this is a goal and each year, it’s a fail.

I just don’t dedicate enough time to this hobby and I really do have fun with it.

My goal was at least three beers. I didn’t get there. I need to sit down and do a few smaller batches, test, and see what happens.

I still have several ideas — I just need to follow through on them.

Blogging (success)

This has to be a success. There’s no way around it, even if it was a struggle at times.

Like geocaching, this was a tiered goal. Let’s take a look.

• Write a new “about” page — I tweaked it a little, but didn’t write or design a new one.
• Post at least 250 times — I’ll have done every day by the end of the year, so yes.
• Have a minimum of 12 posts every month — Done.
• Take part in a few other challenges, to keep things fresh: I might have, but honestly… I don’t recall. I know there were some I was looking to take part in.

Blogging is a lot of fun and I’ll dial it back a bit in 2017 as the everyday aspect was tough, but I will continue blogging and enjoy it. It’s been a part of my life for a long time and I don’t see any reason to stop!

Board games (fail)

This is a hobby I’ve done for a few years and I will be setting goals with it again for 2017, but this year was a little up and down. I didn’t go to my regular game group as much (baseball played a major part in this) and didn’t go to the local game store as much

Hopefully, that can change in 2017.

The board game hobby, especially the more “Euro” or strategy style games are booming. My personal collection is quite large and there’s a lot there I need to and want to play. Again, this was a tiered goal, so let’s look:

• Play 225 times — I was at about 120 this year, so not so much the goal.
• Play 100 different games — I played a lot of different games, but not near the 100.
• Go to a game convention — I went to ConnCon in March.

I will continue to play games and I have a lot of games that have a solo variant. That’s a hint of how the goal for 2017 will be somewhat shaped. I will go to at least ConnCon again this year and I have my eye on maybe another convention to add to it in the summer. Games really are a lot of fun — especially when you get away from the mass produced ones like Monopoly.

We’ll see how the goals for next year go, but this one I would call a fail for 2016.

Day Zero Project (fail)

This is a fail as I know I didn’t cross off 25 other things this year, even though it should have been easy to do so.

I have a ton of the options that are blog-based that I could have posted this year, but I just never sat down to do it. It’s a shame, too, as it likely would have made the blog post a day thing a lot easier.

This version of my Day Zero ends in 2017, so it will soon enough be a thing of the past.

Travel (success)

This is definitely a success. I had the chance to see many places. Mainly this was during baseball trips, but there were a lot of side things. I visited ballparks and places I’ve never been. I traveled solo and with friends. I saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time

That being said, I didn’t get to the minimum of five New York State parks, I didn’t get to Montreal this year, but I’m looking at it in 2017. I think the travel parts of my year went very well and something I am grateful to have been able to do.

Overall

I guess with my goals, I did some and didn’t get to others. The beauty of goals like this are ones I set for myself with the idea of knowing I’d probably do parts and maybe not others. I like to do a lot of things, that’s for sure, and a lot of times I will be in a situation where I don’t remember full goals — just some.

Part 2 of my looking back post will follow and I’ll go a little more in-depth with the year.

How did your goals/resolutions for 2016 go?

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog@gmail.com. Also, please “Like” A ‘lil HooHaa on Facebook! You can also follow me on Twitter @softball29!