I love the end of the year. It is often a portion of the year where we start to finish things off and prepare for new things in the coming new year. Often people will set new year resolutions, and goals for the new year. I have done this a little different in the last couple of years and had pretty good results.

Instead of setting goals for the year, in 2023 I set some themes. These were just areas I wanted to invest or divest during the year to see a certain change in my life.

2023 Themes:

Investments

• Travel
• Family
• Health
• Creative outlet for my downtime energy

Divestments

• Drama, and toxic attitudes

My updates here:

Travel and Family

We spent a good chunk of the year travelling to new places. It took me a little while to get started in this, and that led to one of the divestments I had that wasn’t actually originally intended. My previous work requirements made it very difficult for me to invest in personal time and things like travel. I switched jobs toward the end of May, and that new role was much more flexible to my goals of being new places while I worked. Places we travelled:

• May 2023, Ruidoso, NM - Spent a week during the end of May exploring Midtown Ruidoso, the eateries, wineries, some hiking trails and a ton of fun shops to visit.
• July 2023, Lake Brownwood, TX - Spent an awesome weekend with some of our best friends at their lake house. Full family involvement here so this was a huge plus! I had a horrible turtle-nipple event the last time I went swimming in Lake Brownwood so I didn’t even pack a bathing suit! LOL! However, I did pack my POTA rig and made a ton of contacts while I was there!
• August 2023, Port Aransas, TX - My wife, sister and I went to Port Aransas to explore and had a blast on the beaches, swimming, activating POTA, and exploring some amazing eateries!
• August 2023, Caprock Canyon State Park, TX - We bought Mosey (Travel Trailer) right after we got back from Port Aransas, and decided to take our maiden voyage fairly close to home. This place was fantastic with bison roaming right through the campground, majestic sunsets, and a fun first trip with the trailer. What a fun way to travel as a family, with our dogs, and explore the world.
• September 2023, Ruidoso, NM - Headed with Mosey, the wife and dogs we headed back to Ruidoso where the temperatures were in the 60s/70s every day. What a relief from the end of summer heat in Lubbock! We got to revisit some of our favorite spots from the May trip, as well as explore new trails and shops that we hadn’t hit last time. Some favorites were Grindstone lake, and cloudcroft. We were there 2 weeks, and had a fun blessing that our family came to town on the weekend in the middle for the annual bike rally. Fun brunch with mimosas, afternoon rides to cloud croft and walking the shops up there was a super fun way to spend a couple of weeks in September.
• October 2023, Toledo Bend, TX - This trip was pretty stellar! We planned to head to Louisiana to visit some of our family in Fort Polk, LA, and decided to stay in Toledo Bend right on the edge of TX. It was an hour from Fort Polk, and a stones throw from the LA border. The lake was amazing, temperatures were pretty great without being cold. We started with a Harvest Hosts stay right outside of Abilene, TX at a cool little farm and then drove the remainder of the way th next day. We intended to stay 1 week, and ended up being there 2.5 weeks total lol. We got to go see family in Fort Polk, hang out together, eat together, and then the next day they came to Toledo Bend with us and we fished all day! The dogs loved exploring near the water, and only had one incident of chasing the geese into the water. The return trip we did learn to change our first flat on the trailer, but God had our backs there too. We stayed at Cockrell Vineyards about an hour outside Abilene on the way back home. When we pulled in we got to witness the wet, and sudden drop from 80s to 40s in Lubbock. During this trip I also activated another 6 parks! What a fun trip.

We parked Mosey after the October Trip as I was nervous that we’d get some major storms rolling through, and as of yet I have been wrong…

We are planning a January trip next week back to Ruidoso, NM for a fun New Year games and pizza extended weekend with my wife, daughter, dogs, mother/father in law, brother/sister in law, and neices/nephews. We are pumped!!!

Creative Outlet for my downtime energy

I mentioned in several of our travels that I did a lot of POTA activations, which has been a major goal for some time to get active with POTA. Finding ways to get RF quiet areas to operate has proven to me that radio is so much more fun than I ever could have imagined and I’ve been doing that hobby for 20 years. These parks are so quiet and perfect for operating, and I get 100+ pile-ups nearly every activation.

The other creative outlet I’ve focused on this year is DND and table-top gaming. I got a 3D printer for Christmas (early), and have had a blast creating new minis and terrain for our games. This has obviously led me to get deeper into painting and stretch my previous abilities there. I’ve basically sucked at painting for 20 years, and have really focused on growing in this area. This has now uncoiled itself into also getting into Warhammer 40k, mostly because I’m an addict, and the idea of painting regiments of minis has me stoked to really practice some painting skills.

Health

This theme, as it has for most of my life has been one that I let fall the the back-burner. I haven’t focused on exercise/eating, have still been addicted to nicotine, and stay stressed a lot of the time.

I have at least started a couple of changes now that will hopefully help me make some new focuses on this theme in 2024. First I’ve stopped vaping and am trying to kick nicotine. I’m only a few days in to this right now, but am hoping this will help my overall health. I have been re-upping with all my drs to get some real progress on issues I’ve been fighting for some time. The latest of which helped me understand I am allergic to almost everything, and have developed allergy induced asthma. Hence, no more vaping lol.

The other more specific goal I have is to do a lot more hiking when we are travelling. When we are at home, just walking the dogs more will do the trick. Stand-up, go look at the outside and move some body parts around while doing it.

Final Thoughts

All in all I feel like I did pretty good in 2023 in achieving some of the goals I had. My recent work history with start-ups don’t always afford a lot of extra time or energy at the end of the day, and we’ve really worked hard to incorporate these goals into the life we are in.

Into 2024

The themes that I’m looking at for 2024 won’t really change much. That is why I love the idea of themes so much more than specifics. It affords me a ton of flexibility here without freaking out if I’m not achieving as much in one area or another based on the needs of another area.

Themes for 2024:

• Health
• Family & Travel
• Career Progression
• Creativity and energy outlet