Doctor T Designs

As has been my tradition on the blog, I like to do a few year-end wrap up posts looking at how things went. I tend to separate the sewing things into their own posts and the non-sewing things into this post. I do really like sort of doing this general wrap up; I am re-reading last year’s post and it’s sort of amazing how positive and upbeat I was at the end of 2021, all things considered. 2022 feels like it has kicked the stuffing out of me a bit more, but a year end reflection might be a good time to look for the rainbows.

Non-Sewing Year in Review

My 2021 Year End Wrap-Up was actually pretty positive, all things considered. 2022 is probably a little less so. This was definitely a hard year in my personal life. It feels like there are so many important people I lost this year, and while I have been able to grieve there are definitely some permanent holes in my heart from the tolls taken this year. This was also the year I finally got COVID, and while I’m grateful for having had the vaccines and the relatively minor effects of being sick (all things considered), I will say that I felt like I spent a long time recovering from the physical effects of being sick this year, not just from COVID, but from all the other random quasi-high-profile diseases floating about. Yes, I think I got all of them at one point or another, and yes, it sucked. I mean, I think I sort of knew this was coming after being so isolated for the past 2 years, but that didn’t make living through it any more fun. Work also threw me several curveballs this year; it’s been an exhausting second half of the year for sure, but it has also flown by. While I’m happy to work hard, my energy levels have been a bit low from all of this and I feel like I’ve resorted to binging YouTube instead of reading, sewing, or doing creative pursuits that I know actually leave me feeling more energized.

On the upside, there were some exciting highlights this year:

• I bought my first new car! It’s electric and I love it; it’s definitely the nicest car I’ve ever driven and despite having a few weirdnesses that needed to be fixed (covered by warranty, luckily), it’s been great so far.
• I was able to travel to Argentina and Mexico this year for international competitions, as well as all over the US for domestic ones. While the travel has been exhausting, it’s nice to see the world open up a bit again, and it was wonderful seeing friends I haven’t been able to meet up with since before the pandemic.
• I was able to have a vacation with my boyfriend and visit my sister in New York! I haven’t traveled for fun in a long time (this isn’t even a pandemic thing; it’s a “I travel for skating competitions” thing), so taking these trips was really nice to be able to spend time with some of my favorite people.
• I’m still lightspeed saber fencing, and we were able to have a national level competition this year, again for the first time since the start of the pandemic. It was great to see how the sport is growing and to make so many new friends.

It’s been a year of highs and lows, for sure. The highs were amazing and lows have been devastating. I don’t know if it is the time distortion issues I think we are all still suffering post-pandemic, or the fact that I was so often sick this year, or just the fact that I’m getting older and time feels like it is going by so much faster now, but this year has felt both like the longest and shortest year ever. In some ways I still feel like I’ve barely left February, and it others it feels like it’s been so long a year I don’t even remember what happened. In some ways it really feels like since the pandemic hit this was the year I have done the least, even though when I look back at it all I really did a lot. I think the big difference is that after two years at home it is taking me longer to recover now; instead of bouncing back from things after a day or two it’s taking me a week, or longer when I get sick, and in a year where I was traveling at least once or twice to various events most months, that’s a lot of down time recovering from it all.

Goals for 2022 – How Did I Do?

At the end of 2021 I had a few goals for this year:

(1) Eat better. I didn’t really make a ton of improvements here in 2022. I’m not stress eating as much, but I also didn’t make a concerted effort to change my habits this year. This one probably needs to get added to the 2023 list of things to work on.

(2) Sew more. My goal was originally to sew at least 1 garment a month. I didn’t quite hit that, but I also had COVID and far more travel than I was expecting this year. So while I didn’t achieve this goal, I’m ending the year in a bit of a sewing binge state, so I’m not going to consider this a total loss either.

(3) Read at least 22 books. HAHAHAHAHA. I’m not sure what happened, but I don’t even think I’ll hit 12 this year. Partly because I’m re-reading The Wheel of Time as an omnibus e-book, so while I’ve *technically* finished several beefy novels, they don’t *actually* count towards my finished book tracker, and thus my book list is low. I’ve also spent a lot of time reading rulebooks this year, which again doesn’t count towards my finished book goals in any real sense. And, for some reason, I’ve been binging podcasts over audiobooks lately. I’m not sure why or what this phase is because I was blasting through audio books in the summer, but I’m kind of having odd whims right now, and I’m just sort of going with them.

Goals for 2023

Is it weird if my goals for next year are pretty similar to the goals for this year? I want to be more conscious about what I’m eating in the hopes of having more energy to do things, and I also want to try to be better about sleeping earlier. I do really want to try to read more books next year (I’m going to be more reasonable and say 12 books because I’ve got a giant stack of super beefy fantasy novels on my desk right now and length is definitely a consideration here), and I want to try to do more things with friends. I’m sure I will have sewing goals, but I’m going to cover that in an upcoming sewing focused post.

Conclusion

Overall, 2022 is probably not going very high on my best years of all time list, despite having some exciting moments. Honestly, I am really looking forward to moving forward and hoping for better in the new year. I am grateful for what I was able to do and experience this year, but, quite frankly, I think this year will always have a bit of a cloud over it for me and I’m ready to try and see more of the sun.