We did it again! We made it through another year!
I found myself comparing 2023 to 2019 a lot this year, probably because it was the first one to resemble life before the pandemic started. 2019 was a really good year for me: I traveled to the beach, the mountains, Phoenix, London, Spain, and Basque Country; I PR’d several races and even came in first in my age group in one; we adopted Gloria…the list goes on. Finally, 2023 gave hints at possibility and something to look forward to.
Health
Like with most years, this section is going to be mostly fitness related. I like how I put it last year: “While this category is the most quantifiable, I cannot begin to describe how much more it means to me than these numbers convey. And on the fitness front, movement is my favorite medicine, hobby, and way to socialize.”
By the numbers:
- Ran 521.1 miles across 122 runs; climbed 23,369 ft
- Ran 3 races: a half marathon, an 8k, and a 5k (plus a time-based DIY New Year’s Eve race I invented last year)
- Took 93 strength classes
- Hiked 69.2 miles across 19 hikes; climbed 12,910 ft (definitely want to increase the hiking numbers in 2024)
In 2022, I started going to Davis Dance Company and I have continued to take classes there! Their adult classes are perfect for me because they’re all drop-in and rotate styles, so I can pop in for tap, jazz, hip hop, or ballet. I’ve also continued going to Zumba on Saturdays when my schedule aligns.
I’ve been getting monthly chiropractic adjustments for years, and I kept it up this year. My appointments are for maintenance, and I can definitely tell when I’m a few weeks late.
I hold a lot of tension in my right hip and glutes, and my chiropractic adjustments and stretching just weren’t cutting it. So, something I added to my maintenance regimen is monthly(ish) massages and oh my godddddd why didn’t I budget for these sooner? (Locals: I see Megan Rowell and cannot recommend her enough.)
And finally: I got COVID for the first time this year. About a day after returning from a work trip to NYC, my throat was scratchy and I was exhausted. That trip was right around the same time as the orange-sky Canadian wildfires, but it turns out that it was, in fact, COVID. Miraculously, I didn’t give it to Richie (who has maintained his status as a dodger).
Personal Development
I read 18 books (my goal is always 12).
Fiction standouts:
- Circe by Madelline Miller
- The Fortunes of Jaded Women by Carolyn Huynh
- There’s No Coming Back from This by Ann Garvin
- How to Stop Time by Matt Haig
Nonfiction Standouts:
- Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs by Jamie Loftus
- The Woman in Me by Britney Spears
In 2022, I started taking remote classes through Creative Mornings. In 2023, I went to two in-person lectures through the Raleigh chapter. The lectures are thought-provoking and in beautiful venues.
Also in 2022, I started taking cooking and baking classes through Uncomplicated Kitchen, a nonprofit based in Jackson County, NC. I love the mission and have derived so much value from the classes that I became a monthly donor. And, at the end of 2023, I joined the board! I’m really looking forward to hopping back into nonprofit work in this capacity.
I’ve also been tinkering in the visual arts. I took an amazing watercolor painting class from Michelle Armas in September (a gift from Richie), and when I remember, I take about five minutes to draw every day. I also completed one paint-by-numbers painting based on a photo I took in Miami!
Travel
While Richie and I haven’t taken a big vacation since 2019 (there it is again), I did manage to get around the country a bit this year:
In January, Richie’s parents moved to Wilmington, NC and we visited to help them get settled.
In February, my brother and his family planned a trip to Disneyland and I was able to join in on the fun! My mom and I shared a hotel room and I spent two days riding rides and eating corn dogs with my nieces. A dream.
In May, when I was in between jobs (more on that below), Richie and I spent a long weekend in Miami. It was high on my list of American cities I hadn’t been to. Highlights include the Art Deco tour on Miami Beach and the Cuban coffee I had in Little Havana.
As I mentioned earlier, I went to NYC for work in June. I begrudgingly stayed near Times Square and barely slept thanks to drivers laying on their horns at all hours of the night, but it was a great trip. I got to meet a lot of my colleagues in person, catch up with a friend who also happened to be in town, take a graffiti class, and go to an incredible drag show.
In July, Richie and I braved the record-breaking heatwave in Phoenix to celebrate our niece’s 6th birthday. My mom had also just moved there from California, and my Dad and his wife also came in for the party.
August’s trip was to a Boston suburb for One Rare Experience, which I blogged about.
In October, I had a conference in the Bay Area and detoured to Phoenix on the way home so that I could visit family. I stayed at my mom’s adorable house, which wasn’t move-in ready when I was there in July.
As I was looking forward to my final trip to Phoenix in mid-December, I was patting myself on the back for the amount of time I was going to clock with my nieces in 2023. Unfortunately, the day before our flight, my brother tested positive for COVID and we had to cancel. We went to Carolina Beach instead and were able to visit with Richie’s parents in Wilmington on the way.
Richie and I made it to our house Sylva almost every month in 2023. We typically spend about a week there each time we visit, and we’re usually working while we’re there, but we do manage to get some adventure time in. We also hosted some visitors and it was great to share our second home with them. A highlight from 2023’s western Carolina trips: a stargazing event in Panthertown Valley where we saw a shooting star, Saturn, a lot of constellations, and the completely bizarre vision of the Starlink satellites.
Work
In May, I left Savvy Cooperative to take a role in customer success at Meetup! If you read my blog with any regularity, you probably know that Meetup is a platform and app for people to find events based on their interests. My run club, Bull City Beer Runners, has been on Meetup since we started in 2012. While lots of Meetup groups are social groups like BCBR, it turns out a lot of companies use Meetup as a way to find and keep in touch with their customers and users. I work primarily with those companies on their community strategy and help them leverage the platform to reach their goals. I’ve found Meetup HQ to be a great fit for my skills, experiences, interests, and personality.
And what kind of a millennial would I be if I didn’t have a side hustle or two? I started selling clothing on Poshmark in 2019 and I’m still doing it today. I mostly sell clothing that doesn’t work for me anymore as a way to manage my losses; but I do sometimes buy things with the intent to sell them if I find something awesome at a thrift store. I don’t make a ton of money from it (and I often spend what I earn on more goodies from Poshmark), but it’s fun and eco-friendly!
Also, I started swapping house-/pet-sitting services with a friend. We don’t pay each other, but the peace of mind of having a competent, reliable, and usually-available pet-sitter is priceless. Her four dogs are nothing short of hilarious and I always enjoy spending time with them.
Community
Bull City Beer Runners turned 11 on December 2nd! We have over 2,000 members on Meetup and more who found out about us through different channels. We have regular runs every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, plus weekend runs as folks are available to host. Before we took a 14-month hiatus due to the pandemic, I felt obligated to go to every run (there weren’t as many then, but still). Now, I go on Tuesdays and feel perfectly fine having others host the other runs throughout the week. The group—ahem—runs itself (with the exception of planning special events and working with sponsors) and I’m thrilled to have gotten it to that point.
As I’ve been working in the official big-C Community space at Meetup, I’ve learned over and over again that a thriving community becomes less and less about the person who started it or runs it and becomes a living, breathing thing on its own.
Which brings me to something that didn’t happen specifically in 2023, but Richie and I finally started coming to terms with it: we’ve lost a lot of friends. At first, we lost touch with folks because our reactions to the pandemic weren’t aligned. But then, as things started to feel “normal” again, we realized that we had lost some of those pre-pandemic friendships for good. It was strange, especially because most of those friendships were a result of the community we started and nurtured and it hurt a lot to be repeatedly left out and forgotten.
But, even though I still organize BCBR and consistently run with the group one night a week, I’ve realized that it doesn’t have to be my main source of friendship. In fact, Richie and I have made a lot of new friends since 2020 and we committed to nurturing those friendships in 2023. It has been incredibly fun, rewarding, and heartening to expand our social and support network in this way.
Richie
Speaking of our support network, I’ll wrap up by talking about Richie. People often ask, “How are Richie’s eyes?” and it’s a hard question to answer. His vision certainly isn’t improving, but it doesn’t feel like it’s deteriorating rapidly (to me). Like with other chronic conditions like arthritis, he has good days and bad days. And while it’s hard for him to articulate—or even know—what he can’t see, the real issue he has to deal with is Charles Bonnet syndrome, which “refers to the visual hallucinations caused by the brain’s adjustment to significant vision loss.” For real. Thanks to Chucky Bonnet, Richie can’t trust what he thinks he sees. To learn more about his experience, check out his blog.
He is still very independent and, aside from driving, doesn’t need me to do much for him. And that support network I mentioned has been great for giving him rides when I’m unavailable or offering to grab things from the store for us.
In perhaps the most impressive and admirable display of making lemonade out of lemons I’ve ever seen, Richie is not only thriving as an individual, but also as one half of Canary Advisors, the consultancy he started with his business partner in late 2022. They work with organizations seeking to do patient focused clinical development, and their first full year has seen an incredible level of success. I am beyond proud of what he’s accomplished and how fulfilled he is in this role.
This recap was way more verbose than years past; I guess I had a lot to document and share! At the end of this year, I’m hoping to report even more of the good stuff I’m sharing about 2023, including a return to international travel. Let’s go!