Inspired by other bloggers, in recent years I’ve chosen a specific word of the year as a special focus for the new year, usually to improve something about myself, my mindset or lifestyle. For 2024 I simply chose to focus on enjoying life, as a contrast to the miserable 2023.

While 2024 was another quite rough year, it offered a lot of good moments and things to be happy and proud about. Let’s talk about some of it.

Fitness achievements

Despite various injuries, I’ve had a fabulous year of fitness! I’ve made some really good progress in the gym with some milestone PBs, of which being able to squat with my own bodyweight on my shoulders was the most important one. I feel stronger and more confident with my body – a huge contrast to 2023!

2024 was also the year I came back to long walks and even planned a 20k trail walk (but cancelled for various reasons). We explored local trails, I tried some new routes around home, and we went on a hike at the base of the Majella mountain in Italy.

We also got our own home gym set up, with a proper squat rack and a good set of dumbbells. We need to clear some space to make it more functional but at least we have the equipment.

A good and bad year for photography

This year I made the decision to upgrade to a full-frame camera, and it has transformed the quality of my photos and particularly how I look at my own photography. I’ve loved my smaller sensor camera for many years but have always missed the sharpness and clarity I see in other people’s photos. With the new camera I’m finally happy with the technical quality, and can focus on improving my artistic skills – composition, photographic eye, use of light, etc.

Sadly after I injured my foot in Italy, I haven’t been able to get out much and my photography has been in hibernation for a bit. But before that, I took tons of photos when I was out walking.

Enjoying travels in Spain, Italy and Sweden

We spent a week in Spain in the spring with some fun and relax but also good walks, shopping, and my husband and his dad went cycling together.

Then in June we enjoyed a few weeks in Sweden – primarily because my better half was running the Stockholm marathon (his first full marathon!), and two weeks later he and his dad participated in a 310k cycling event. Both finished, and I’m particularly happy and proud of my father-in-law who did this at 76 years of age and too little training. He used to be a top athlete when he was young and he still has a lot of strength and jävlaranamma left!

Vätternrundan is a recreational cycling event where you ride around the lake Vättern, starting in the evening. It is quite tough with 310 km to go and quite some challenging hills and it can be quite cold at night. My husband finished about lunchtime the day after but my father-in-law had more struggles and finished in the afternoon. I’m so proud of both of them!

This was such a fun race to photograph, but next time I’ll make sure to not be distracted by other cyclists, and look for my husband instead because I missed getting a good photo of him crossing the finish line simply because there was a happy couple posing for the camera. He came just after them, so I never got a decent photo of him.

Both are doing the race again in 2025!

In September we went to Italy to our usual place in Abruzzo. Our plan was to relax, enjoy better weather, see friends and do our usual roadtrips, but also do some hiking, and I had looked up some good places. Our first hike was in Bosco di Lama Bianca, and it was a lovely route, challenging but not too difficult. Sadly I overdid something here (I believe it’s because I was stupid and wore new hiking boots instead of my loyal Altra trail shoes) and developed a foot injury afterwards, so all hiking plans were cancelled for the rest of the trip. But we still had a good time and visited places.

You can read more, and see more photos, in this post.

The more difficult aspects of 2024

Despite all the good things, 2024 was a quite hard year, although much different from 2023.

After turning 50 and feeling all oomphy about it, I slipped into a midlife crisis that has drained me of energy on and off for the rest of the year. And it’s been a stressful and exhausting year in a lot of other ways.

During December most was over with and I slowly started getting somewhat back to feeling better. Then, what was left of that midlife crisis came to an abrupt halt the week before Christmas when my husband ended up in hospital.

Everything is ok. But what should have been nothing more than a nuisance with bad timing became more complicated than necessary. Too much knowledge can be a curse, and with the initial lack of information from the hospital staff, my ex-oncology-nurse brain started wandering too much about the what-ifs. I had some of the worst moments of my life before he was offered surgery and it became clear we were still dealing with a simple gallstone issue. He came home the day before Christmas Eve, without gallbladder, and all is well.

During those rough days I learned that there is hope for humanity. There are good people out there and I’m still overwhelmed with gratitude. Some of you know that I don’t drive (for a variety of reasons), that we live in the country and I’m just barely recovered from the post-hike foot injury, so walking to town and back (which I normally would have done) wasn’t an option. And we were approaching the Christmas holiday with shops closed, taxi companies busy… etc.

I did my best to cope and solve the problems on my own, but had to contact people to explain why I needed to cancel activities. When they knew what was going on, I was given so much help and support. I’ve been offered help to get to town or home, even to or from the hospital (and this is a decent drive), getting to the supermarket, and one person texted me every day to hear if everything was ok. I’ll never forget this.

So this hasn’t been an easy year, but with a lot of positives, and lessons learned.

I will end this year by remembering the good times, be happy about my achievements (big and small), embrace what I can learn from, and leave the rest behind.

I’ll be back soon to share my goals for 2025 and, if I can decide on one, my word/focus of the year. Until then, happy new year to you all!

How was your 2024? Do you have a special focus or word of the year? What was the most important thing you learned this year?