I think my 2022 was good relatively speaking but it was just a bad year for me as everyone else.

Inflation, high gas prices had me cutting expenses wherever I could. It meant fewer trips, more trips closer to home, more setting up camp and staying for 3 or more nights. I ended up spending 33 nights in the wilderness in 2022 which isn’t bad – nothing like the pandemic year but close to average.

More frustrating on a short term view is just watching how much things declined in our country and how negatively it effected my future.

While I was able to probably get things at a discount this year in the markets, everything from bonds to stocks are down and inflation is just chewing away faster than interest rates rise. Inflation makes going to the grocery store or gas pump painful. It seems like the city where I work is more dirty and dangerous than it was before the pandemic. Even the local library has gotten dingy and the book collection isn’t what it once was. And I don’t listen to the news anymore because of the partisan bickering. Despite the pontificating the politicians aren’t doing shit on the climate crisis.

But I’m not too focused on the year that was.

I built into my plans for instability, a recession. And I’m not focused on today but what I can do today to contribute to better tomorrow and protect myself from societal decline. Nothing is built in a day but day by adds up to a year and a decade. Ask not what you can do today but what you can do to better tomorrow. Today doesn’t matter except for what it can contribute to tomorrow. Pruning things today will allow for more growth tomorrow.