The Ring Kiln Side Trail - Natural Ontario
Canada Day Fireworks

One Year Anniversary

One year ago today I was sitting at home on the couch with my foot up wondering if I had to have surgery on my broken ankle. I was trying to come to grips with the fact I was going to be in a hot, heavy plaster cast for the whole summer and possibly miss my chance to camp and hike in the fall. To top it off, work was absolutely horrible and the layoffs kept on coming. I wasn’t sure I was going to have a job when I could walk again. Needless to say, it was a pretty rough time for me.

What a difference a year makes! This year things are going so well! My hikes are getting long and faster, my photos are becoming much more dynamic and interesting, my weight is now at a three year low and work had some massive changes which made things so much better. Even my sports teams have been doing extremely well, which is just the icing on the cake. I’m not saying things are perfect, but they’re pretty darn close.

One of the few bright spots that came from breaking my ankle was that it gave me the chance to get this site off the ground! I’ve learned a lot and had a great time chronicling my stories, finding new places to visit and taking photos of our gorgeous countryside. I can’t wait to see where my journeys will take me this coming year as I continue to build and explore!

It’s also been 3 months since I last went through my goals for 2013 so here is a quick update on how they’re going.

Be more consistent with NaturalOntario.ca:
This one has slid a bit as the changes with work required more attention than normal. But, everything is settling down so I’ll soon have more time to devote to writing again. My focus for my next three months will be to get caught up on the site, but it will be rather hard since I just want to spend all my spare time outdoors.

Visit 20 new provincial parks:
I’ve extended this list to include conservation areas too because of the Healthy Hikes Challenge. So far I’ve visited one new provincial park and three new conservation areas and things are just ramping up! I’m also making some good progress on the hiking distance and the trail running and should have no problems reaching those goals.

Lose the broken ankle weight, get back in shape and then push it more:
This has been going extremely well! I’ve lost about 25lbs so far and I have about another 10-15lbs to go before I reach my end goal. I haven’t seen in the scale this low in over three years. A combination of eating right and lots of activity have been the major contributing factors.

Reduce my garbage output:
At the end of March I was at 16 bags through week 13. After another 13 weeks I’m sitting at 29.5 bags (another 13.5 bags). So while I’m still over my goal, I’m doing better than I did the first quarter. I hope that I can keep lowering the quarterly total, it would be great to see a single digital tally next update!

Posted: July 1st, 2013