Running on NYE is a tradition of mine.

It’s become my tradition to finish the year with a run on New Year’s Eve. While out on my 5k tonight I reflected on this past year, and on the decade 2010-2020. These past ten years of my life have been very eventful. In the name of accountability, here are some of the things I’ve done, some I am still working on, and some I hope to do in the future.

This year my two biggest personal goals were to run more actively and complete some specific races, and to write and blog more. The running part went very well, and I managed to complete the:

1. Polar Night Half Marathon in January
2. Bønntuva Sky Race 15k in August (first mountain race!)
3. Mountain Challenge 25k in August
4. Oslo Marathon in September (in under 4 hours!)

I didn’t manage my goal of running 10 of the Tromsøkarusellen races since the shorter distances didn’t mesh well with marathon training. I only ended up running 3.

As for blogging, I managed to post 7 times this year, not quite as much as I had hoped, but still an improvement from not having blogged on my own site since 2015.

Other than these goals, my year has been very busy. I have:

• Worked to get the communication group I manage at the University Library up and running
• Was part of the organising team for WordCamp Nordic in March
• Attended WCEU in Berlin in June
• Moved to a new (rental) apartment in July
• Led the project team to develop an Indigenous Languages exhibition which opened in September and is now on tour
• Started a local WordPress Meetup group in Tromsø this fall with a friend
• Saw my favourite band Rammstein live for the first time in August
• Took on some freelance web projects
• Volunteered more actively for Dyrebeskyttelsen Tromsø
• Started to focus on my own photography again by attending a local photo group

Next year some of my goals include:

• Focus more on my own creative pursuits such as photography and writing
• Take on more freelance web work to build my portfolio
• Start writing weekly journal entries
• Keep working to improve my life/work balance
• Be more active at my local community garden
• Keep building the WordPress Meetup group
• Visit Scotland a second time
• Start swimming again

The decade 2010-2020 has been an amazingly active one, probably natural when you’re in your early twenties to early thirties. These ten years have been filled with so much, such as:

• Moving to Norway
• Completing my BSc and MSc degrees
• Working at the Arctic Council Secretariat for 7 years
• Contributing to the Journal of the North Atlantic and Arctic (JONAA) since 2015
• Getting a job at the UiT University Library in 2018
• Going on many trips around the Arctic and the world at large
• Getting married
• Adopting my kitty Tutti Frutti
• Taking countless photos
• Running and hiking in so many beautiful places
• Meeting many wonderful people and building up a network of great friends

Of course the decade hasn’t only been easy, there has been loss of loved ones (human and animal), conflict, tough financial times, tricky decisions, regrets, and missed opportunities. Still, I am pretty proud of myself when I look back and I hope that the next ten years will be full of different but equally important events. I also hope that the world as we know it will become a kinder and safer place and that we will do better to take care of the environment so that future generations can write lists like these themselves one day.