2022 “The Best Year of My Life”

I talked a little bit about using mantras((a statement or slogan repeated frequently)) to shape your reality as you want it to be, not how it currently is, earlier this year. For me, the “best year of my life” mantra was supremely powerful.

Without a doubt, 2022 has been the best year of my life in many ways.

Morning Anti-Depressant

My friend Lisa told me at the beginning of the year that I have the most epic RBF((resting bitch face)) she’s ever seen.

That genuinely surprised me! I don’t try to look pissed off or annoyed all the time!

But it made me think, “oh, maybe that’s why nobody talks to me.”

So I made it my mission to say hello to every single person I passed on our morning walk along the coast. This is quite a number of people, anywhere from 20-something on a cold rainy day, to more than a hundred during peak tourist season.

It felt really awkward at first. A lot of people wouldn’t say hello back, or my hello seemed to startle them. But a few people said hello right back without missing a beat, and that encouraged me to keep going.

After a few days I noticed there were people I saw every day and their expression would light up when they saw me coming and they’d say hello to me enthusiastically before I had a chance.

A full week into the routine, and the people who still wouldn’t say hello became my personal challenge. Come hell or high water, I was going to say enough hellos as happily as I could until they couldn’t help but say hi back.

I refer to these morning walks as my anti-depressant because it’s really difficult to be in a bad mood after spending an hour in the morning smiling and saying hello as cheerfully as possible to dozens of people.

A really neat side effect of this, I now have countless locals I would call my friends that I didn’t have before. I’ve adopted a few as grandfather figures, those are the individuals I look forward to seeing the most as they tell me stories from their younger years and share bits of wisdom and encouragement that the world is my oyster.

Like Henry who used to live on the East Coast, is retired from the Navy, and misses having the room for a real garden and not just a few tomato and lettuce plants. And Leo((which is funny because my dad’s father was named Leo!)) who tells me I’m a smart tough gal and reminds me to come to the annual Greek festival next year since I missed it this time around.

The days I’ve missed going out and connecting with people first thing in the morning are much more dreary. This is a habit that is good for my soul.

165 Workouts!

I started using the Hevy app just before the start of the year to track my workouts. We made a lot of progress in the gym this year, but it also surprised me how generally consistent I was with attendance each week.

Last year I had some nerve damage in both glutes, which caused a significant amount of lost tone. Since I couldn’t feel my glute muscles either, it made training them a real challenge. But I made it a major goal of mine to recover as much lost tone as possible and try to regain sensation. That’s why you’ll see legs were such a significant area trained!

We hit a lot of PRs including 200lb hip thrust!

I’ve committed to working on my squat in 2023. This is my real nemesis because resting anything across the top of my back is very difficult since I broke my neck in 2013. But even if I never rep out my body weight in squats, I want to say I at least have solid form and technique.

Ambulance

Last year was upgrades, this year was maintenance!

We struggled with a dead truck battery a few times at the beginning of the year until I got tired of getting jump-starts (from my most awesome of neighbors) and replaced it. No issues since then, and we even repaid the favors by giving a jump to a lady in August.

Then in April I went in for a regular oil change only to find radiator fluid was leaking into the coolant system. That was a not-cheap but essential fix. We also caught a seized driveshaft joint.

A few months later, it was time to replace the shocks and ball joints. I also found I’d been driving around with a flat tire (one of the inside duallys) so we replaced the rear tires since the tread was getting close enough to need it.

Felt a bit like I paid for a new top-of-the-line roof system on a real house by the end of it all, but she’s driving much better for the work.

The only real upgrade that happened this year was the addition of a “book nook”, screwed a bunch of baskets on the headboard wall of my bed to stow my current book collection in.

The first projects to commence in 2023 on the ambulance will be:

• Replacing this Dometic fridge with the Dometic CFX3 cooler-style fridge
• Adding a control switch for the Inverter so it’s not always on

Puppy Dogs

Sadly, this year I said goodbye to Petrie; he passed away in July.

From the first day I met him he decided he was mine, and never did very well the times we had to be separated.

I won’t say he always had a great life; he was with me through some of the most painful times of my life. But I’m really glad I was able to give him the adventure and happiness that came with living in the Ambulance. ❤️

Personal Relationships

My bestie came to visit!

I met a man… we’ve been dating since this summer and he’s been a wonderful presence in my life.

I’ve also reconnected with some of my family.

It can be very tough for me to connect closely with people, opening myself up to being vulnerable is not a strong skill of mine. But even if I’m not good at it that doesn’t mean I can’t work to be better. A little bit every day.

Raw Carnivore

At the start of the year I went raw carnivore and gave up cooking my meals.

There have been a few moments during the year that I would eat some cooked meat again for a short time but never quite felt good afterwards and returned quickly to raw.

I’ve been eating raw beef, chicken, pork, seafood, eggs, and dairy. Mostly raw beef, eggs, and dairy though.

I even started a YouTube channel to share all the mundane joys of eating raw meat meals!

I’ve also written about going raw carnivore in more detail with these posts:

• Why I stopped cooking my meat
• Will eating raw meat make you sick?

Fat Pony

I work full time from my computer; my day job is doing technical support for a software company out of Florida.

But since my early twenties I’d been freelancing as a WordPress and Shopify website developer, for small businesses. In 2019 I had to put that on hold for personal reasons, and this year I decided it’s time to dive back into web development.

My company is Fat Pony; if you need a website or know of someone who does I’d love to have a chat. ? ?

Artwork

This was the year I played around with more color and different mediums in my drawings!

Watercolor, colored pencils, crayons, colored markers, and colored ink.

I’ve also started working with different types of paper textures, and even cardboard, to see what I like.

Not all of my most recent finished pieces are in my online shop yet, but I’m working on it!

2023 and beyond

I’m not the sort to make new year’s resolutions.

I just like to keep plugging away at the goals I’ve established over this last year.

I’ve been working on writing a few books. Even though I’m the ultimate procrastinator, I’m still determined! I think I published my last book in 2008 (Centered Self, Centered Horse) so it’s time I get around to it already.

I’m always debating about how involved I want to be with social media so we’ll see what direction I take my YouTube channel in over the coming year.

I’ll be continuing to weight train in the gym and I can’t wait to see the new PRs!

And I expect I’ll continue with raw carnivore for the near future. I’ve also signed on with a Functional Medicine Doctor to dig into why I still have leaky gut and any other underlying health issues that could be slowing me down.

What will you be doing in 2023?!