Welcome to 2016 everyone! It is hard to believe that another year has passed already and even harder to imagine this little offramp on the World Wide Web is now officially 9 years old. As is tradition around here, the dropping of the ball signals a time to reflect on all the hard work that goes into this labor of love. I tried to expose you to a variety of topics through the course of the year but I will admit the focus has clearly shifted to more of a photography outlet than a world commentary. To compensate, I’ve tried to sprinkle various comments and opinions within those posts and every once in a while you’ll get a post devoted to some complaint or observation that strongly intrigued me in one way or another .. usually as of late with this this administration it has not been in a positive direction. The focus on photography has allowed me dive a little deeper into my art and pushed me to get better in the field knowing that my products will be put on display for all of you to critique. Your comments throughout the year have been thoroughly appreciated and invaluable when it comes times to selecting the entries for the UB contests. Last year also brought a new family challenge as my brother Ron fully immerse himself in the birding world cranking out new bird after new bird. That friendly competition drove a lot of bird posts this year due to my birding rule that requires me to devote a post to a new bird before I can officially count it on my Life List. I think it would only be fair if Ron also started up a blog to even out this competition a bit don’t you think? hehehe. I do find it personally satisfying to know he is falling way behind on his processing based on all the grief I get on my backlog – a backlog that drove all the bonus posts in December. For the fifth year in a row I managed to hit my minimum 6 posts per month self imposed quota. Oh, and I should point out the new challenge I gave myself of at least TWO images for each non-general post .. well that was shredded like the Constitution under Bumbles. This required a lot of posting from the road this year thanks to a running schedule that left little time for slacking. Speaking of the running load this year, you probably noticed there were plenty of new runs last year including several half marathons. One major running event went unfulfilled this year for a number of reason that might show up in a future post. Needless to say, missed goals are a solid kick in the nuts around here and there is very little in the way of excuses that takes the sting off when that happens. With that said, it was not entirely my fault and the journey to prepare resulted in setting a personal record that is likely never to fall. I owe a lot of that to my two good running friends Sung and Ryan that helped me get through the year in the cold, the wind, the sleet, the snow, the rain, the hills and the injuries – a teaser for the future post.
There were several projects this year – some completed, some progressed like the one you are probably sick of hearing by now – Project Aaarrrnnnuuulld. That project is nearly finished now – only ONE more phase to go and that multi-year project will be in the books. Book recollections were woefully undernourished this year but a lot of that time was impacted by the increased running schedule. If it wasn’t directly eclipsed by late night runs it fell victim as a result of being too tired to crack open a book before crashing on the bed. The Posey’s made their debut in our Halloween Trail this year along with several new Halloween related projects which rounded out a number of the November posts.
Every year I have to give complete credit to my readers for making the blogging commitment worthwhile. This year is NO EXCEPTION. Once again the drive to make my post commitments and the desire to make the images that appear here they best they can be is directly influenced by your commitment to reading my efforts and expressing your thoughts and opinions in the comments. Thank You!
And now, the annual stats for the year’s worth of blogging.
Hit the jump to see the 2015 stats!
Life Intrigued 