With another year gone, I take a while to reflect on my life in the past year. It’s been a year of change, a year with its ups and downs.

Personal life

2022 was, to a major degree, shaped by one large change in my life – moving out from my parents. I’ve chosen a location close to my family with a good bus connection to work as well as good reach for public transport for my hikes, so the initial part was quite easy.

The challenge was the move itself. In early 2022, many fields still faced disruptions in their supply chains caused by the COVID-affected 2020 and 2021, and furniture stores were one of those struggling the most. Despite my best planning, getting all furniture in my new place ended up being a tough fit with many challenges, so of which I described in more detail.

Settling into a new routine ended up being relatively easy – I guess that’s a perk of an introvert’s life.

Writing

I had a head start in early 2022, with a lot of work to be done based on beta feedback, and most of the major work was done before my move. Which put things on hold for a while, but after I settled down, I got back to it in force and finished the edits. Then, things were put on hold due to scheduling things with my other beta reader, and aside from some smaller fixes, I only got back to it at the end of the year. Right now, there’s still some work left to do before I can wrap up the next draft and move on to another stage. At this point, I think the second book will not be ready sooner than late 2023, and it may end up getting delayed to 2024.

And, despite my initial hopes, I managed to get no work at all done on the early version of book three, as the edits to book two made things a bit less predictable. Hopefully, that’ll change soon.

Somewhat related – I tried to make some simple drawings of my characters, but as I found myself struggling with several aspects, that’s also on hold for now and I’m looking into ways to improve – especially in the way I see things – before I give this more attention.

Reading

I’ve dropped my goal form 25 to 20 books for 2022, also as a foresight with the move in mind. Meeting the goal – if you take it by my Goodreads account – was a tough stretch, though this is partially because it counts collections as one book. So, while GR puts me at exactly 20, I actually read 22 books in the year, plus one finished and one half-way through beta read, and a several reads through my own drafts.

That said, many books were on the longer side. I had a good start to the year, but the later parts were weaker, so I should also work on some decent reading habits.

Hiking

Given the struggle in 2021, when I was dealing with COVID after-effects, I had put my goal for 2022 at an easily-achievable point: 700km. And I met that goal in late August. Length-wise, 2022 saw me beat my yearly best (1051km from 2019) by a bit, ending up at 1085km. That said, many of my hikes this year were pushed length-wise while not being that difficult, so there’s definitely room for improvement in other aspects.

That said, I’ve seen a lot of nice places in 2022. That, and I’ve gotten myself better equipped for winter hiking. I could’ve pushed it to 1100 at the end of the year, as I was considering one more hike in mid-December. However, the intense snowfall that came just with the change of public transport schedules, made any planning unreliable, and I decided to be happy with what I had done rather than push it at all costs.

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In hindsight, I think 2022 was a decent year, even if it was sometimes a bumpy ride. I hope it was a decent year for you, and that things will get better in 2023 – and that at least the aspects in our control will work in our favor.