“The year in review?” Charlie’s readers cried out. “It’s only November first, silly! There are still sixty days left until 2020. That’s like [whips out calculator] sixteen percent of the entire year still to come!”

Excellent point. I realize it’s tradition to wait until the end of the year to do a year in review, but then I thought: what if you get to that point and you still have regrets about the year? What if, after you pored over your list of accomplishments, you realized in horror, “Rats! I never got around to building that life size replica of Diagon Alley in my backyard.”

So that’s why today I thought I would go through my 2019 todo list and see how I’ve done, while we’re still only 82.19% of the way through 2019. That way I still have some time to head to The Home Depot and buy all those Diagon Alley supplies.

Here’s the high level overview:

At first glance, it doesn’t look too bad. There are three lines that are seventy-five percent or better. Although it feels like I hardly got anything done, I kept things up on the health and fitness front and Laura and I tackled some big landscaping projects: nearly finishing the plans we got rolling back in early 2017.

However, for the umpteenth year in a row, the creative, soul-fulfilling tasks have taken a distant back seat to everything else. I’ve only gotten three chapters in to the current novel-in-progress. And I made basically zero progress on getting the home studio set up again, let alone even doing anything with it. On the upside, today is the first day of NaNoWriMo, so I might be able to use that as an excuse to gain some more ground on the book. And who knows what can happen with sixteen percent of the year left.

The big thorn in my side — the garage — got a wee bit better this year. But if history is any indication:

…that will only get cleaned up after I’m dead. Sorry, kids!

Before I wrap up this post, take one last look at the only accomplishment of the year to hit one hundred percent. Yep, it’s the big family vacation. It’s a project that I spent over eighty-three hours planning. It’s a project that took two hundred and twenty-five hours to experience. And it’s a project that will likely take up all my blog post spots for the rest of this year.

See you next week for Europe, Part One.