Unlike 2021, which seemed to be a forgettable blur, this year has been busy and filled with lots of fun activities and positive accomplishments. It’s like I exploded out of the year of lockdowns and engaged in a huge amount of travel and photography this year. Perhaps more than was good for my budget, but it was enjoyable. This included my first-ever trip to France, where I stayed in a historic château for a photo retreat as well as in Paris for tourist exploration. It also included two fairly long trips to Yucatán, México, in the spring and again in the fall, which included two photography tours and one photo retreat. I also made two trips to Utah for photo tours. In addition to the photography on the six tours and retreats, I also arranged for seven 1-on-1 photoshoots, which took place both at home and while on travel and included one remote shoot. I took 25k pictures in 3 different countries, with 15 different models of 8 different nationalities. Apart from photography, I also made my annual trip to Colorado to see some Shakespeare, and then I traveled to Florida to do a little scouting and exploration. These 7 trips exceeded my initial budgeting and planning, but happily, some opportunities arose that I decided to take advantage of.
I was hoping that the theater side of my activities would return to normal this year. It did a bit, but not completely. CalShakes only managed to stage 2 Shakespeare plays (but they were both interesting). The Colorado Shakespeare Festival looked like it was returning to a full season, but when I got there 2 of the 5 scheduled plays were canceled due to Covid outbreaks in the cast (particularly unfortunate since the two were both Shakespeare plays). The local theater company staged a couple of plays, one of which was Shakespeare. It looked like the Oregon Shakespeare Festival might have had a couple of interesting offerings, but the description of the one I was most interested in looked like they were pushing some woke preachiness, which they’ve been leaning towards lately. This caused my interest to drop. So some good theater, but not as much as in earlier years.
On another cultural front, due to the passing of my friend Blanca, I’ve had the opportunity to go with Bob into the city to see several musical events; one performance of the SF Symphony, and 2 productions at the SF Opera. The cultural arts organizations still seem to be leaning pretty hard into the Covid culture, with Bay Area venues still checking vaccine records and requiring masks in order to gain entrance.
In addition to the fun activities, I also brought some of my infrastructures up to date. I replaced my ancient stove which was basically disintegrating; I had my plumbing repiped throughout the entire house, which touched off a cascade of home updates that have been long overdue, and are still in progress; and I also had some major maintenance done to my car. All of this coming in one year (not all of which was planned), combined with my also increased unplanned travel has challenged the budget a bit but hopefully, most of the big expenses were a once-in-a-long-while type of things. A downside to all of the home improvement activities was that I have gotten dreadfully behind in editing the pictures from my various trips. But that gives me something to do during the winter.
The highlights of the fun parts of my year include
- 1 remote photo shoot (to New Zealand)
- 6 1-on-1 photo shoots (3 at my house, 1 local area, 2 while traveling)
- 2 US photography tours with models (6 different models)
- 2 international photo retreats, 1-on-1 shoots with 7 different models
- 2 international photo tours with models (3 different models)
- shot with 15 different people, 6 of whom were new subjects for me
- 7 live plays (4 Shakespeare, 1 Classical, 2 Contemporary)
- 1 visit to the symphony and 2 to the opera
Next year I already have some travel and photography plans on the books, but I think it will be a bit more moderate than this year.
Lastly, in the last few year-end summaries I’ve noted that I needed to make some health-oriented lifestyle changes, and finally this year I’ve managed to make some progress in that area. Through a dietary change, and an attempt to increase my activity level, I managed to drop more than 30 lbs. I’m still not where I’d like to be, but I’m in a much healthier condition than I’ve been in quite a while, and I feel like I’m on a good path. I also entered into that wonderful era of the government’s health plan, so we will see how that works out in the coming year.