I've Always Loved the Idea of Summer

July 2012 stands out in my mind as the month I decided to start looking for a new job. I dusted off the resume (i.e. found the folder where I'd saved it), updated it with the latest and greatest, and started sending it out to random companies with random openings. Not very strategic. I know. It was my lame attempt at saying I was looking for a new job while still not sure exactly what I wanted. The rest of the month was spent traveling.

• 4th of July feels incomplete without a trip down to G-town and watching the hometown parade in the same place we've watched it the last 30+ years.
  
  
  
  
• Traveled to Minneapolis and Milwaukee for work. We made it out of Wisconsin right before this fierce storm overtook our plane.
  
• Sometimes you get stuck in a construction zone on an early Sunday morning in the middle of nowhere Utah.
  
• Spent the end of July with my brother and his family in Newport Beach. The beach feels like my second home. So many great memories with family there and more made this week. My only regret is I didn't take the entire week off and join his family at Disneyland. Lesson learned = family is more important than work.

Great way to start the morning

Searching for tide pools

Walks along the beach

Not a bad way to spend the day

My happy place

Good Form

I've been organizing the last few years of pictures into folders. Forgot about this. Excited to do more of this at our family reunion this summer.

Let Me Explain. No Let Me Summarize

Tonight I was looking at the last time I wrote on a consistent nature. June 2012. Interestingly, that's right when life got turned upside down. I decided that the next few posts will be recapping what I've been up to the past 1.5 years. Because as much as I love to make everyone think I've only been working that entire time, I did find a way to sneak in some fun.

June 2012

• Ran the Utah Valley Half Marathon with my brother (he actually ran the marathon) and sister-in-law. Finished under 2 hours! I actually hated the course. The asphalt was killer on my knees and I had a neuroma flair up in my foot so it was 13.1 miles of fighting through pain.

  

  Rich, Kaylene, Me, Lesa, Brent

• Spent the week in St. George with my family. Well, I spent most of the week. Half of it was working while everyone played. That didn't make for a happy me.

  

  Okay. I had some fun. :)

• Traveled to San Francisco for work and spent one day at LinkedIn. Now that's a cool company.
  
• Hiked Timp. Started at 5pm. Hiked fast. Got down at 1:30am. I would not recommend leaving that late or hike in June. I now understand why people wait until August. Walking on a frozen snow next to a cliff created quite the slippery situation. Grateful we all made it back safely. I was incredibly sore the next few days. More so than when I ran the half marathon the week before.

  

  Only 2 hours into the hike

Resolutions

I've been thinking about New Year's resolutions and what I should focus on this year. I remember years where I only had one goal the entire year. One year: to be nicer to others. I had quite the sarcastic, bitter streak in me that needed purging. Another year: to be more patient with others and myself. That required the Irish/Arabic/Viking in me to learn to control my temper and also to stop saying harmful things about myself. I'm still working on both those goals but being focused on one thing for the entire year helped spur the change that I needed. 2012's list rolled into 2013...and those propelled me into an adventure I could not even imagined!

After pondering a bit for this year, I realized my goal was to become more in tune with spiritual things. For that to happen, I need to spend less time with my tech gadgets and to have a list of alternatives so I don't default to playing games on my phone or watching TV. Here's what I came up with:

• Read more
• Write more
• Run more

Too generic? Good. I'm liking this non-specific resolution way of doing things.

Happy New Year!!