It’s December and for me that means it is “blog every day month” an effort for which I have long since concocted a list of blog-able reflective topics called my December-ish posts each of which should do little more than offer a leaping off point for some rambling writing to fill up my daily blogging quota.

Today that topic is…

Describe your 2025 in terms of fitness, health, mind and body.

Healing. 

There was a time when, privacy be damned, I’d disclose and lament any and all of my personal ailments on a blog like this… but needless to say those days are gone.

It’s enough for you to know that I am now in the last year of my 40s and what no one tells you when you start your 40s is that hardly anyone escapes their 40s without something on the old bod needing some fine tuning and generally more careful care. Even if you are reasonably active like me, running hundreds or thousands of klicks in a year and regularly hitting the pool and otherwise keeping generally on your feet, well, things start to wear out in this the decade leading to the half century mark… and as the kids be joking lately us “olds” get to tell everyone we’re historic and from the “1900s!” All of which means it has been a year of what I like to think of as evaluation and healing.

This means that I have pretty much officially cut a few things from my diet.

This also means that these days I make choices about running that are linked to avoiding injury as much as they are about finding adventure.

This additionally means that I restarted this blog because I realize that it is part of a suite of writing that I do that contributes to a kind of invaluable mental health exercise.

This also also means that it gets harder every day to think of myself as anything resembling “young” anymore, despite that I have a lot of friends whose ages start with a 5 or over a 6 who often jest that I’m still a young guy and to stop my complaining!

So… ugh!

I had to deal with the resurgence of my knee pain in 2025.

I have been working through issues that taught me that digestive health can be a holistic experience and symptoms can manifest in ways and places you would not think are linked to your stomach and diet.

I have had to do the hardest thing of all which is to accept that sometimes I am my own (and only) company and moral champion, and there are those rare times when no one else will have your back, even close family.

It has been a year of growth and healing and thinking and making and being, which in a year of the world being the opposite of that has often been counter-intuitive… tho pretty rewarding in the end.