Welcome back!

Periodically I have the desire to journal, but lately it's been pen to paper and then later shredded. This week I found myself reading my old "Deployment Digest" and being somewhat surprised at all of the things I had forgotten from that time. While I remembered some of the events, what really struck me was the rose-colored glasses I view that time with. It is perhaps a testament of resilience and reframing, to ensure that past does not cripple you emotionally and you can move forward with a kind of wisdom and knowing that makes your life better. That said, it was a nice little reminder that I was actually really stressed out in my 20's. It gives me a nice little frame of reference when life happens now, I can see that nice contrast and growth in how I handle things today. Things are pretty different in that regard and I am thankful for that growth.

This year had its rough moments, getting sick this past March really took all the juice out of me. My grandmother also passed away. I had my sewer line fail and had to drop thousands more dollars into fixing it. I paused retirement contributions this year to build my emergency savings back up, but then spent quite a bit of that on my sewer. I'm just fortunate that I've been saving in those retirement accounts for so long now, but I also want to have cash reserves so when big things happen I don't need to touch that money. That money is for geriatric Sam.

This month I am signed up for a couple classes that I am pretty excited about. One is a blacksmithing class for beginners and another is a welding class. I want to start learning/easing into various trades, even if it's just the basics. I have always enjoyed doing things with my hands but I would like to build more knowledge and confidence in the trades...and really any trade is fair game at this point.

I also started training a bit more with my 15# weight vest out on trail runs or inclines. I have a curiosity about something I might want to do involving running in my weighted vest, but I need to do a lot of testing this winter and even spring before I make any decisions.

Well, that's probably it for today. The time changed last night, we fell back an hour. So I am up earlier and feeling hungry! Today Allie and I are planning to go check out Devil's Head fire tower in Pikes National Forest. I've never been there but it's been on my list, and it's just nice sometimes to do something different and take one of those small bucket list items actually off the list.