Midyear Check In

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Happy July! Doing a check in for the goals I posted earlier this year and see how we doin. In no particular order…

Fitness

Hiking wise: I have been working on my “shortlist” of hiking trails I’d like to do this year, and it’s an extra two-fer when one of my hiking groups does one! It feels like I’ve had fewer outings so far this year, but still pretty active (see travel below).

Angel’s Rest sunset hike

Running wise: I restarted some interval building earlier this spring to get and even did a 5k race! I think I went a tad too fast and felt like I strained a hamstring a little, so I took a little break to work on strength. Then realized how jogging really helps with stress relief and anxiety management for me, so we’re restarting a new training block! I signed up for a couple of fall races so, 👀 keep an eye out.

Gilette Lake & Table Mountain

Still eyeing a run club to join, with new training starting up again, it will be easier to pick one and go.

Financial Literacy

Started a terminology sheet a couple of months ago, that’s a start! Even looking more at where my finances are in accounts and related to my job, it makes a bit more sense if I can put a concrete example behind it.

Last year I started using this expense tracker template and restarted again for 2026. It gives a quick glance to what I am currently paying for, expenses and all that, in one go.

Code

This one has fallen to the wayside quite a bit after the last big update for the blog. I haven’t felt that motivated to work on the side projects in the last few months, but I’m looking at picking them back up soon. I was also eyeing some of the freeCodeCamp certificates now that they are reworking them. Specifically, more on the Python and Database side.

Books

This is definitely where I spend most of my free time since it feels the easiest to accomplish and a little bit of escapism in the day. I’ve already hit my annual “count” goal, but I wasn’t focused on that one as much this year anyway. More on the region picks, off my physical shelf, and through some series reads.

The region reads have taken over more of the first half of the year, so the second will hopefully gear more to off my shelf and series, but we’ll see!

Reading section Counts So Far

44 books read so far this year! There is some overlap with the counts below i.e. a book club read was also a region read, or a series read was off my shelf

• Region Reads: 13, across Africa, Middle East, Asia, Latin America, Oceania, and Indigenous Author (not a region per se, but including more diversity)
• Book Club: 17 (I’m in multiple groups! I don’t go to every meet but I like to see what other people pick)
• Series: 13
• Physical Shelf: 4
• Personal Picks: 6

Misc

Spring traveling! The last month was quite busy with a few trips and events including:

• Annual girl’s trip to Vancouver, BC (first time there!
• Long birthday weekend, didn’t go anywhere but did some solo-venturing around the city
• Hike retreat to Eastern Oregon/Wallowas

Trip picture spam :)

Capilano Suspension Bridge, Vancouver, BC

Jellyfish, Vancouver Aqaurium

Nanaimo bar from Granville Market, Vancouver, BC

Wallowa Lake night kayak

Joseph Railriders & Wallowas

Wallowa Lake Tram

For the second half of the year, I’m not trying to force these goals as a “have to” item (except maybe fitness for mental health reasons), but I’ve been looking to find where I can sprinkle in some more creativity in drawing and painting again. It’s been so long, it feels daunting to start again.

Not sure what the next post will be on, but here we stand for half way through this year!

— H