My weight is slowly creeping back up. I have gained about a pound per month. I was in far less control of my time and diet and resorted to fast and easy food. This has caught up to me. I will tighten it back up.

I was able to keep up my blogging streak. I have been blogging on various sites once a week for many years. I also kept up with my writing commitment of writing once per day for an hour. This started off very difficult and then became a habit. Writing is a struggle and we get to choose our struggles. I could be struggling with something worse. I will continue writing into the new year.

Things that I cooled off on this year… buying board games, doom scrolling, and reading the news.

For some reason, I bought a new computer. It is a killer machine, but all I do with it is write in Final Draft, Word, PowerPoint, and Chrome. Well, at least I have just the right amount of RAM for my many Chrome tabs: 64GB.

My best purchase was a Canary Box Cutter. George and I love making things with cardboard and sometimes your tools matter. The Canary gives you a lot of control and makes it easy to cut through boxes. The blade is serrated and coated with a non-stick Fluorine coating. I bought a bunch of these and put them around the house. They make a short-blade version that we use to open our constant online orders.

How was your year? What are you going to work on next year?

Have you ever found a recipe online and noticed it so much editorial before it gets to the recipe? The author has to write a bunch of text, embed ads, write snappy prose, take nice photos, and embed a video. I often say to myself, “Just show me the recipe!!!” If the blogger just did that, you would have never found the recipe. There are thousands of copycat recipes for Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits. In order for content creators to get you to find their recipe, they have to get Google to rank the recipe well. By the way, my favorite recipe is the one from Damn Delicious.

I do have something for you to try in 2022 that may change your life. Focus on forming habits. Do something on a regular basis. Don’t worry about the what as much as the regularity of it. Just do something on a regular basis. Repeat it. Chain days together, weeks, months, and eventually years. Don’t think in terms of good or bad, just think about repetition. Think about how terrible it will be to miss a day? Have I repeated myself enough? In 2021, I wrote every day, including today. Most of the writing was aimless, but I found a few gems along the way. I focused on the habit of writing not the quality. I was surprised by the results.

If you can do two things in 2022, try writing down the recipes that you find in a notebook. Take some notes while you cook and write down the results. You are going to want those cheddar bay biscuits again and you will be surprised at how hard it will be to find that one recipe that worked really well for you and your tastes. And, you will forget what tweaks you made and you will always feel like you are starting over. If you really want to get good at something, take some notes.

Happy New Year.