This year has flown by and things don’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. I’m happy to at least say I’ve stuck with some of my hobbies for longer than a few weeks! On my journey of collecting hobbies, I believe some have finally stuck and have made it into routine.
Snowboarding stuck this year & we got around 15 days in!
Late 2023 season, Zach and I picked up snowboarding as a new hobby, immediately purchased some gear and got ourselves an Epic pass. I worried a little with a little over 7 months until the 2024 season if we’d stick with it, but we did! We blew nearly all of our accrued vacation hours at work and got in a handful of trips this 2024 season. I’m so happy with our progress – I think this one’s here to stay. We’ve already gotten next season’s pass locked in and have some new boards to break in further. I can’t wait to finally look like I might know what I’m doing.
We don’t take enough pictures, but we got one together on our last good boarding day!
We’ve passed the 1-year mark of this climbing thing.
Climbing (indoors) stuck around and we’re at the climbing gym 2-3 times a week, really making the most of our membership. I’m proud to say that me breaking my elbow did not drive me away from this one. It’s a little odd, but I think breaking my elbow helped me get a little more courageous and motivated to be better. Of course, I’m still very beginner, but I’m feeling way more comfortable and open to trying unusual or new boulders and routes that are outside of my beginner grade. My rope climbing endurance has also gotten much better, which is what I’m most excited about! I’ll see how far I can get with the rest of this year before we’re back to snowboarding.
Reading is officially back & I’ve already met this year’s goal.
In case it wasn’t obvious with the last few posts, I caught a case of the reading bug. I believe it may be permanent this time. I set a goal of reading 52 books in 2024 and I hit that goal with ease! I’m currently at 69 books read at the time of writing this and I’m in progress on the 70th book. I think I might try to read 100 books this year… we’ll see- I don’t want to get too lofty and make reading a chore.
I also recently catalogued every single book Zach and I own and we have over 400, making our way towards 500. We’ve only read a little under 25% of our owned books, though, so we’ve got a lot of work to do. It’ll probably help if we stopped adding to it but buying books is so satisfying!
Speaking of books, I meant to add in a book-related hobby that hasn’t quite taken off yet. Perhaps the latter half of 2024 will be the time. I’ve been meaning to dabble a little bit in spraying book edges and making my own designs. The idea has been in my head for over half a year, I have all the supplies, I just need to get started. Just me things.
But hey, I’ve done a lot this year and I’ll give myself a little credit. I’ll give Zach a lot more of that credit since he enables me to sit and read all day long, even with a full-time job. I also can’t forget emotional support Milo the corgi, can I? How could I get so much done if he didn’t judge me all the time?
We’ve done so much already that I have so much more I could add on. OH! Here’s a good one to bookmark the first half of the year with – I went fishing for the first time!! I got to hold a fish!! I realize that might be a weird thing to be excited about but I just am. FISH!! (We caught halibut and striper.)
Milo’s probably wondering what he’s doing with his two weirdos holding fish.