2022 in Review

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Future time always seems to expand (it's still how long until the weekend? until summer? until Christmas?), but the past contracts (I'm having trouble thinking of the 90's as more than twenty years ago).

However, since COVID set in, my sense of time has eroded until the past has expanded too: during the last quarter of 2022, I repeatedly referred to things we did in January of 2022 as "last year" instead of "this year."

So let's get it right and review 2022's adventures.

Big Picture

For the Hedgehogs, 2022 was The Year We Learned to Ski.

Jerry had been skiing before, long ago in high school and college; Meera had never been. So both of us were learning, or re-learning. In December, we paid for our first-ever real skiing lesson. Throughout the year, we took five ski trips: two to Ruidoso, NM; two to Salt Lake City, UT; and one to Zermatt, Switzerland. A total of fourteen days on the slopes—pretty good for people who only get 17.5 days of vacation per year.

We visited 11 U.S. states (Alabama, California, Colorado, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah) of which 1 was new (Utah).

We also visited 7 countries (Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Switzerland), none of which were new (although Germany was new to Meera).

Overall, at least one of us was adventuring (skiing, sailing, hiking, camping, sightseeing, and/or traveling) for 111 days of 2022.

Major Adventures

Let's start with our major adventures last year. These are events that required real planning and execution, where we did something awesome.

One reason we started this site was to catalogue these trips, but you'll notice none of them are hyperlinks; apparently we need a goals post, too.

Note that there are some empty rows, and September's adventure was Meera alone. That means that during the five months from June–October, Meera took one real break, and Jerry took none. Not every adventure needs to be epic, and neither of us was sedentary during those months, but a full life needs interruptions, and spending all that time heads-down isn't healthy. We'll try to spread out 2023 more effectively.

Smaller Adventures

At first glance, trips to France, Australia, and Japan don't seem like "minor adventures." But those were mostly work trips, so while we definitely took some time for ourselves, most of those trips were spent working. Which is its own kind of adventure, sure, but not exactly the same.

Two of those trips, Dallas in April and St. Helena in September, were for friends' weddings; and one, McAllen, was for the Rio Texas Annual Conference, a church event.

Every year, sometime in December or January, we look back on the previous year. We have three primary goals in mind:

1. To identify things that went well, so we can remember them.
2. To identify things that went poorly, so we can avoid them.
3. To provide a benchmark to help in planning our next year.

Some people use the same framework every year, and that might be nice, so we could compare notes year over year. But different years are different, and we see no reason to assume that the framework we used last year is best for this year (or, frankly, was even best for last year).

So here's how we're thinking of 2022; as we continue to reflect, this list will probably grow.

• Our 3 Biggest Accomplishments of 2022
• Our 3 Biggest Mistakes of 2022 (And What We Learned)
• Our 3 Most Important Lessons of 2022
• Our 12 Favorite Sub-$100 Purchases of 2022
• Our 3 Favorite Sub-$250 Purchases of 2022

Okay, confession time: look at the calendar. It's already halfway through 2023, and we haven't even published our wishlist for the year. So let's quickly recap what we've done, and then we'll talk about what's in store.

What's Past

• 🏢 Jerry visited Las Vegas, Nevada, for CES.
• 🏢 🎿 Jerry visited Japan, New Zealand, and Australia in a whirlwind three-week business-slash-ski trip.
• 🎿 Meera and Jerry both skiied at Big Sky, Montana; and Aspen, Colorado.
• 🎿 Meera skiied with work colleagues at Winterpark, Colorado.
• ⛵️ Meera and Jerry competed in—and won—their first sailing race together.
• 🏢 Jerry visited Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
• 🏢 Meera and Jerry visited Denver and Colorado Springs for the second year in a row.
• 🏢 Jerry visited Nogaro, France, for the second year in a row.

What's Next

We're in the doldrums of the year here in Texas: the start of summer brings incredible heat with no relief in sight, and our travel schedule cools off significantly, meaning we're stuck in that heat, marinating.

Fortunately, we have a few trips already planned for the rest of the year:

• Jerry and Meera will attend a family wedding in Boston.
• Meera will solo backpack a 14er (see her travelogue from last year's solo trip).
• Jerry and Meera will ski Valle Nevado in Chile with a coworker.
• Jerry and Meera will visit Melbourne, Australia for a conference.

As for you, we're hoping to share all these adventures with you and write more about helping you on your own adventures, whether they're overseas or in your own back yard.