This will be my last blog post of 2016, and fourth post this month. Hopefully I’ll keep up the writing in the new year. 2016 has been a pretty eventful year. I’ve seen a lot of people wishing it would come to an end either because of the ugly election cycle or the loss of famous figures, but this year has been special for me. In April I proposed to my then girlfriend, and after a short four-month engagement we were married at the end of July. She pulled off a beautiful wedding. Had I fully appreciated the stress planning her dream wedding would entail, I probably would have proposed in 2015. Now as we close out 2016, I can only begin to appreciate the ways she is enriching my life, and I look forward to continuing our adventures in 2017.
Some other things that happened this year include filming two weddings, making a Kickstarter video for Hegemony Technologies, video documenting the adventures of Austin and Björn, and converting my charcoal BBQ into a portable pizza oven (thanks, Gabe!).
In 2016 I read:
- The Last Lion (I finished this epic 3 book biography of Winston Churchill)
- The Decisive Battles of World History (part of The Great Courses series)
- Target Tokyo (The story of the Doolittle raid, and the Japanese reprisals against China)
- Rebel Yell (The biography of Stonewall Jackson, excellent read)
- Church History in Plain Language (An overview of church history from Jesus to present day)
- Dead Wake (The Lusitania's final Atlantic crossing, and America’s entrance into WWI)
- Bonhoeffer (The biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, finished today!)
New Year’s Resolution for 2017: Finish more projects than I start!
2016 was a busy year, so much so that I have projects from 2015 to finish. This year my goal is to check off those personal projects before dreaming up new ones to start. My wife made this recommendation to me, and I’ve turned it into my resolution. It also serves as a sneak peak into what I hope to share on my website in the coming year. So here is the list for 2017:
1. Three Wedding Videos. I love filming wedding videos for my friends and family; editing them is a different story! So now I find myself with three videos to finish before I take on anymore!
2. Family videos of Austin and Björn. After Austin was born I did a pretty good job editing and uploading little videos of his first year of life. I dropped the ball when Björn came along. I’m sitting on a back log of footage of my nephews that I would like to share. My sister has been nagging me for this year's Thanksgiving video.
3. Iceland Roadtrip. I’ve been meaning write about my trip to Iceland in September of 2015 since the weekend after I got back. I've started to work on a series of blog posts to detail the trip and to showcase the pictures that I took. Some of these pictures have already made it onto my website.
4. Silly Sheep. I hope to continue where I left off in the new year. My goal is to finish the model of Dandelion in January and begin working on several of the other sheep models. The first of these will be "Gus", the ram.
I think that is all of the side projects I've got going. Plenty to keep me busy in the time I have to spare!