With the ringing in of 2021, our first full year in Chattanooga has come to an end. The obvious thing to say is that 2020 was a ridiculous year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the surface, things looked pretty bad. I had three jobs this year, which is two jobs too many. I lost a job, resigned from a job, and had to go see a doctor to get on depression and anxiety medication. Mechanic bills for our car and veterinary bills piled up. Our cat passed away two weeks before Christmas, too. Add that all up and \u2026 ugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But if you dig a little deeper, I\u2019d say things were good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m thankful that we spent the pandemic in the Scenic City. We got outdoors more than ever this year, which was the safest thing to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m an adventurous soul. Not being able to travel in the past year has hurt me the most. But instead, we adventured around Chattanooga, seeing and doing things (mostly outdoors) that I had never expected to do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have a Chattanooga area bucket list, and the majority of it has remained untouched. For instance, \u201cSeeing a Lookouts baseball game\u201d was impossible to cross off, because the entire season was cancelled. Likewise, we still haven\u2019t taken a train ride with the Tennessee Valley Railroad. Trains are running, but I don\u2019t feel comfortable going quite yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, I did have a list of hiking trails I wanted to tackle, and that got completed, and then some.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have hiked more in the last six months than I have hiked in my entire life. Some of the paths and trails we have done \u2014 ranging from easy flat gravel paths to moderate mountain hikes \u2014 were located at Big Soddy Creek Gulf, Greenway Farms, Booker T. Washington State Park, Lookout Mountain, Signal Mountain, Moccasin Bend, Prentice Cooper State Forest and Cloudland Canyon State Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It seemed like every time we finished one trail, we found another that we wanted to hike, and that is still the case now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting outside kept me sane. It felt good to get our heart rates up, stretch our legs, make it to a gorgeous overlook, and feel accomplished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We continued to hike as it got colder out, and we found that we quite enjoy winter hikes. I do not like winter time, as I get cold easily, but exercising like this is a good way to offset how our bodies feel in lower temperatures, and keep us more active throughout these months. I hope that we will continue to hike throughout January and February.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hikes aside, I got a lot more exercise than ever before. I was averaging about three or four walks a day around my neighborhood. In September, I participated in a virtual 5K, and got a medal and a t-shirt for it. Walks were calming, and necessary for me, while I was going through bad bouts of anxiety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Quitting my job was a huge risk, but it all worked out in the end. I was unemployed for about five weeks. Since Derek only taught two days a week last semester, we did a lot during the week days, to avoid crowds. We visited Wildflower Tea Shop for the first time, and it was nearly empty! We also went ice skating \u2014 something we had never done together \u2014 and there were only about half a dozen other people at the rink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I hated working from home for my old job, but now I am thankful that I got to spend all of those months with our cat while she was still healthy, and I was home with her when she did get sick. All of that time that she spent on my lap every day are precious memories now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I started my new job in early December, and I\u2019m the happiest I have been in a long time. I thought I had wanted to leave journalism for marketing, but I discovered that journalism is where I am meant to me. This has put a lot of things into perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am cautiously looking forward to what 2021 may bring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With the ringing in of 2021, our first full year in Chattanooga has come to an end. The obvious thing to say is that 2020 was a ridiculous year. On the surface, things looked pretty bad. I had three jobs this year, which is two jobs too many. I lost a job, resigned from a … Continue reading “Reminiscing about 2020”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[204,3,5,219,6,23,111],"tags":[326,328,8,12,327,108],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceniccityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceniccityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceniccityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceniccityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceniccityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=393"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sceniccityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":394,"href":"https:\/\/sceniccityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393\/revisions\/394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceniccityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceniccityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceniccityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}