I started this year saying I wanted it to be a year of excellence. It wasn’t.

It was, more than anything else, the year my father finally passed away, long after Alzheimer’s had stolen him from us. I won’t say more on the subject, but it obviously set the tone for a large part of the year.

It was also a year marked by injuries, as pinched nerves in my back and a crappy Achilles’ tendon prevented me from working out like I would have ideally wanted to. No running, no races, not even a proper training regime, as I seem to be going from bad to worse. It’s frustrating and painful, but there is nothing for it but to try and try again. For now, I’m walking 10,000 steps per day and do various exercises to strengthen my core. It helps, but I’m along way from where I want to be.

And yet it has been a good year in many ways. I took the children on several journeys – to Dubai, Croatia, the US and Canada, and Iceland – every one of them new countries to us all (well, apart from the US for me). I went on several more trips without them – to Crete to hike, the Pyrenees to paraglide, to Barcelona when there was no paragliding to be had, and to Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia for some prime adventuring. So it was a good year for traveling.

I did succeed in my ambition to read more non-fiction, and thanks to chess.com and Musescore I’ve at least kept up my chess game and piano playing, respectively.

My French probably has improved ever so slightly, but it’s still an embarrassment. Merde alors!

I kept a diary for half the year, but lost the habit when roadtripping in the US – the days were simply too long and exhausting to keep it up. I did get a new job – still in communications – but since it’s a project specific one and the project hasn’t really gotten underway yet there’s not much to say about it for the moment.

I stayed vegetarian the whole year, and am inching closer and closer to veganism, which feels good. And I’ve been staying away from sugar and alcohol since a month, which is showing on the scales already.

The birds and the bees still elude me – at least no chicken run or bee hive has been installed in the garden as of yet, but hopefully that will soon change.

So not all bad, if not an excellent year. Now let’s see what 2020 might bring…