Back again for the yearly recap and review - time to look back on the year that was, review how close I got to my goals, and make brand new ones.

I started training on my goal to run 5K in December, but I really ramped it up in January, taking on a plan included with my Garmin watch/app. I hit a weight loss milestone in March (under BMI 40) and bought myself a new fitness watch - the Fenix 7. I’ve really enjoyed having all the additional stats from the watch.

In February, I had a benign lump excised from my arm and it has healed really well, to the point where most people couldn’t tell after a few months. We finally bought shelving for our dining room now that all the works in the house are over and done with and decked them out with all our nerdy memorabilia. I also came down with a chest infection and was knocked out of my training for a few weeks before being diagnosed with asthma. Though, while I was sick, I did get back into reading and finish a tapestry I’d been working sporadically on for a few years.

In April, I signed up for a 5K fun run that would take place in November. I also started attending parkrun on the weekends after I did my first one while visiting my parents up the coast. I also did a few paintings that I’m really proud of, one of which I’ve included here - this was based on a photograph I took of a beach near Victor Harbor almost 10 years ago and I completed it while I was staying with my parents using a travel kit.

In May, just for fun, my partner and I drove to Wagga Wagga. We stopped at Junee and bought chocolate and liquorice from the factory there, had excellent Thai in Wagga, and stayed in a hotel. The following morning I did parkrun at Wagga and set a new PB at the time. It was a nice flat course, which helped a lot with my stamina. We drove back after that and made it all the way back to Yass, stopped for lunch, and then my car would not start again. After an ordeal of trying to get the NRMA to help me (they were useless), we arranged our own tow truck to tow my car the 100km back home on a Sunday afternoon. It was not cheap and neither was fixing the issue with my car - the injector seals had failed. It was just lucky my car was stopped and it didn’t cause a fire.

A few weeks after that, I did a two day figure drawing workshop at Canberra Art Workshop. It was excellent. There’s something to be said for being locked in a room for 8 hours to do nothing but draw because even if not much of what I was taught was new to me, it was the guided mileage I needed. I just wish more art societies would host things on the weekends or evenings for those of us in full-time employment.

Lastly in May, I booked flights to take a holiday in New Zealand in March 2025. I finally convinced my partner that we should book an overseas holiday and I think we’re both looking forward to it. We’re going to treat it like a sort of road trip and I’ll be taking a ski plane tour flight over Mt Cook, which includes a glacier landing as part of it. Very excited for that.

In June, I took on Adorkastock’s Draw Everything June. Usually with these, I end up burning out about halfway through because it’s so easy to fall behind… however, this one only had 20 prompts and the timeframe was extended beyond June itself. I completed my final prompt on 10 July and can be seen on my Instagram. (Depending when you’re reading this, it might be a long scroll).

July saw me crank up my training volume to try and force some progress with running, because I was still very slow and my heart rate was very high (easily hitting 180-190bpm sustained). Unfortunately, I ended up injuring myself and triggering bursitis in my knees again. It took about 6 weeks of physio and working on single-leg strength to get me back to running, but I never made it back to my volume or level of improvement from that time. On the upside, July was when people started to really notice my body composition shuffling around, it was almost like it happened overnight where people were commenting on it.

On my birthday in August, I went for a run and made myself absolutely miserable for several days over it. I think that was really the beginning of the end of running for me. I dropped my volume quite a bit after that (partially because of the bursitis too). I did get out for a couple of bike rides with friends and also got my second DEXA scan done, which showed I’d lost 20kg in the year to August, with only 7kg of that being muscle. My doctor was quite pleased with the results, but did encourage me to work on building and maintaining muscle mass.

Then, in September, I bought the first bicycle I’ve owned in around 15 years. I paid $1100 for a Liv Lurra 2 mountain bike so that I could ride with friends. I was extremely pleased with the price I paid and I continue to enjoy riding it whenever I get out. I’ll be getting a towbar installed on my car in the first week of the new year so that I can carry it more easily - currently it needs the front wheel removed to fit in my little Volkswagen Golf.

I went to PAX in October with some friends. We visited the aquarium and saw Pesto the Penguin, who was extremely popular on social media at the time because he seemed to be a really big and fluffy penguin chick (but apparently was normal for his size). PAX itself was great, I played a whole ton of indie games, bought DnD merch, and caught up with friends from interstate. I did parkrun on the Saturday, racking up over 10,000 steps before I’d hit the convention and that won me the Pikmin Bloom step contest with a whopping total of 22,508 steps all said and done. I was exhausted that day though.

Unfortunately, despite wearing a mask at the convention, I caught COVID again which knocked me out for about a week. My symptoms this time were much milder but I still ended up with almost 3 months of post-viral fatigue, which of course ran into November when I had my fun run. Oh yeah, I also participated in Halloween for the first and last time this year, having put out bowls of unattended candy and having a few bad eggs ruin it for everyone else - sadly, I don’t have the energy to answer the door all night to police it and my watch registered a whole lot of stress as it was. It’s a shame, because I had hoped to make a few kids smile, but enough people participate in my area that my contribution probably won’t be missed.

November rolled around and I did my fun run. I was going to take it easy but the adrenaline of the day meant I pushed myself as hard as I could. I wiped about 3 seconds off my previous personal best to set a 46:32 time. My heart rate hit 202bpm as I was crossing the finish and I don’t think I did my recovery from COVID any favours. I scored some of the PlayStation 30th Anniversary gear during November and also got a 3D printer, which I’ve been happily making things with.

I did not run for over a month after my fun run and when I did, I didn’t enjoy it and neither did my knees. As a result, I’ll be focusing on hiking and cycling going forward, having already done 2 hikes in December with another to come tomorrow. I’ll still be going to parkrun over the Christmas period to get the achievements in my app, but I’ll be walking and keeping the running to a minimum.

Goals Review

Exercise

• Be able to run 5km

This didn’t happen. I think the maximum I ever managed was 2.5km and it was incredibly painful most of the way because it was so slow and sending shocks through my legs. I’m really sad that this one did not come to fruition, because I worked extremely hard for it, running 3 times a week and strength training twice a week with the occasional extra walk or other activity thrown in.

• Continue to go to the gym at least twice a week

Aside from post-COVID recovery and a couple of other instances of being unwell, I did uphold this one. I had a look at my stats for the past 365 days today and I spent around 56 hours of strength training, or just over an hour a week. Given my sessions average 30-45 minutes, I’d say that’s pretty close to what I was aiming for.

• Lose 20kg

I got extremely close with this one. I am currently at 17kg down and haven’t been able to budge those last few kilos for a few months. I think it’s just a matter of being more disciplined with my food. When I last saw my doctor though, she noted that my insulin levels have come back down within normal range, which means my body is slowly regulating itself again.

Drumming

• Keep going with classes
• Build confidence
• Jam with other musicians at least once
• Practice at least once a week

I’m going to address this as one big block… I did finish classes for this year. I did not attend the last one of the year or my yearly concert. Basically, I have had a bit of a fail of a year on drums and will be taking a bit of a break. Whether that’s 6 months or a year, I’m unsure, but I think I need a break from formal education and to find some love for the hobby or else cut my losses and quit altogether.

Out of these goals, I did manage to jam with my friend in October but the experience felt strange because he is so much more skilled than I am and would just take a piece and run with it while I was left fumbling for what to do and then just playing a standard rock beat because it’s all I could hold steady.

Tech

• Finish my Clockbridge project

The project is at about 80%. It’s working and I’ve got some sweet dashboards but there is the occasional glitch where it won’t push to my endpoint and I need to edit the entry to get it to push up again. Otherwise, I ended up implementing some of my stretch features like updating and deleting entries because I shifted my end product from being a Google Sheet to being an Elasticsearch instance with a Grafana frontend. The main thing I need to finish with this is tidying up the code so that it isn’t just a bunch of crap in the main file. I’d also like to learn some proper design patterns and implement them - thankfully I have a fully-fledged development environment I can experiment with this in.

• Prototype my own journalling app

This didn’t happen, too busy with other things.

• Use my projects to learn more DevOps concepts

Absolutely, I learned heaps about Kubernetes, Docker and GitLab from getting Clockbridge to a working stage.

• Complete my Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) certification

Completed this in August and smashed it with a 94% score!

• (Stretch Goal) Look at the RHCE

I will probably be looking at doing this as part of my employer’s skills challenge in the new year. That said, I did achieve 3 HashiCorp certifications in 7 weeks, so if this stretch goal had just been “other certs”, I would’ve knocked it out of the park. 😉

Drawing

• Complete Alphabet Superset on my own timeframe
• Work my way through Meds Map
• Draw more of my own stuff

Of all the things that didn’t happen, this category didn’t happen the most. I did Draw Everything June and my figure drawing workshop but aside from that, I achieved none of my drawing goals. With drumming off the table for a while next year, I’m hoping I can get back into it.

Goals for 2025

Exercise

• Hike at least 100km over the course of the year.
• Cycle at least 150km over the course of the year.
• Get under 100kg.

Drumming

• Take a break from it. Play when I feel like it.

Tech

• Do that last 20% on Clockbridge to make it less ugly and fix the bugs.
• Take the RHCE with the skills challenge.

Drawing

• Get back into painting.
• Learn some CAD so I can play with the 3D printer more and make my own stuff.

I’ll be back next year, I will consider doing a mid-year or quarterly review on my blog to check out where I am on my goals and adjust them if they turn out not to be ambitious enough.