2015 in review

I haven't been inspired to do much blogging this year, but it is nice to have an "end of the year" post on record.  2015 went by in a flash for me, probably because I spent most of the year jumping around time zones.  I made 10 (or actually maybe 11?) trips to Asia, and traveled to a few new countries, including South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines.  There were also a few trips to the US in there, and several in Europe (UK, Italy, plus Turkey if that counts).

My biggest concern this year with all the travel was maintaining a healthy relationship, and I'm happy to say I think we did a pretty good job of handling all the trips abroad. I've said it before, but I'm so lucky that C is supportive of my career, and he put a lot of effort in to making sure the time we had together was quality time. There is no way I could do what I do without him. (And thank God for Skype and Google Hangouts).

Next year will bring less Asia travel, so unfortunately my new-found chopsticks skills will go to waste, but there will likely be several exploratory work trips to Russia & India. I'll also be making more trips to the US.  It's kind of funny, because we have gotten used to C being able to come with me on trips whenever we felt like it, but with his new job, he's back to 'only' 5 weeks of vacation. It seems like so much at first, but then when you start looking ahead to what I've got coming up in 2016, those 5 weeks get used up so fast!

One resolution I had in 2015 that I wasn't able to keep was attempting to enlarge our social circle. Almost all of our close friends have up and left Paris, so I'm left with a lot of acquaintances but not many good friends.  There are so many interesting people out there doing interesting things, and I'd love to get to know them better, but my work schedule has made it difficult.  Making new friends requires a lot of up-front time investment, and people eventually get tired of hearing "Sorry, I'm out of town again" and they stop calling. So I'm renewing this one as a challenge to myself in 2016.

I'd also like to continue making my health a priority.  All that travel makes maintaining my weight extremely challenging (there's always so many new things to try!), but a lot of hotels in Asia have gyms, so that helped this year.  It likely won't be the case in many places I'll go next year, so I'll have to be creative.  YouTube is amazing though for finding workouts you can do in a hotel room (or at home), plus I always have my TRX bands with me.  And likely a bout or two of the unavoidable food poisoning in India will help keep things under control. ;)

Anyways, 2015 wasn't my favorite year due to a lot of work frustrations, but C & I made some great memories together, and I am overall looking forward to 2016.