Monday, January 5, 2015

Spilled milk - Day 1 of the Chill

I think New Year's Resolutions are quite funny.  It seems that most people make resolutions and then don't follow through on them.  "Oh, I'm giving up chocolate this year."  Then, a week later, they're eating a chocolate chip cookie or chocolate bar.

Resolutions are promises to yourself.  I like to use the word goals.  Goals are something you strive to do.  They might have a definitive ending or might not.  What happens if you don't reach your goal?  Do you cry over spilled milk?  No, I actually think that you re-evaluate your goals and see what could have been done to improve upon that goal for the coming year. 


In 2013, I found 1244 geocaches, making my goal of getting at least 1200 finds in a calendar year.  Looking back over my totals, I felt that the way I was now finding geocaches, I could probably find 1500 in 2014.  At the end of this past year, I ended up with 1424 finds.  Did I fail?

Some people would say that I did fail because I didn't reach my goal.  Looking at my statistics, I think I did fairly well at reaching my goal, even if I didn't quite reach it.  In 2013, I went caching on 161 days, which means I averaged 7.7 finds each time I went out.  In 2014, I only went caching 137 days, but found 10.4 caches every time I went out.  My average was up, but I went caching 24 less days which means that if I'd gone caching the same number of days, I would have found 1674 caches in 2014.  

So the key question becomes, why didn't I reach my goal?  Well, certain things conspired against me.  Usually, when I travel, I have lots of opportunities to geocache.  My yearly camping trips with my son usually allows us to geocache every day, getting at least one or two each day with other days where we'll find a lot more.  My son's schedule didn't include a camping trip this summer.  I did go camping, but it was a much shorter trip, so not as many cache finds.

July is usually a very good month, caching-wise for me since it's in the middle of summer with lots of time off when I can geocache.  In 2013, I found 199 geocaches in the month of July.  In 2014, because of family commitments, which limited my caching, I found 61.  I suspect this upcoming July will be similar because we're having a wedding that month.  I can live with that.  If I want to meet the goal of 1500 cache finds this year, I'll just either have to get out caching more during the rest of the year, or find more each time I go out.  I can see where a combination of both techniques will help me achieve the goal.

That's one of my goals for this year, to continue to enjoy geocaching and try and find 1500 caches by December 31st.  I think that's achievable and actually, I think the more important goal is to enjoy the game.  If I enjoy the game, the numbers will come.  

I have several other goals that I'll share with you over the next couple of days.  For now, this is my first post for the 20 days of Chill Writing Challenge.

11 comments:

  1. I have always enjoyed when you post your geocache finds. One of these days, I'd like to try my hand at geocaching....after the million other things I want to do!

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    1. Lisa, it's a fun game to do on those days when you're just sitting around doing nothing. I've decided to watch less football this year and go out caching more often on the weekends. It's probably more healthy for me as well.

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  2. Wow what a cool idea geocaching for a resolution. Exercise... adventure... and FUN!

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    1. Yep. It's like a triple threat. Even if you find a bunch of Park and Grabs, just walking to and from your car as you tool around town gets you a surprising amount of steps. I went on a hike on Saturday and was very surprised when we got back to the car to have discovered that we'd hiked slightly over 10 miles. We were having so much fun that it just didn't feel like we'd walked that much.

      One of my friends stated after he found out about geocaching from me, that geocaching was "hiking, with a purpose."

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  3. Awesome! One for one on the challenge.

    And I think you and I were discussing this sort of thing elsewhere... and I think you won, but in my eyes, I wouldn't say I met a goal if I didn't meet it. That being said, I wouldn't kick myself over it because goals are there to make you do something. ... and you did it.

    I need to geocache more this year. I am looking forward to doing so, too. I miss getting out and doing it a bit more than I have. I just wish there were a few more people around here for me to cache with! And yes... a trip to California is in my radar!

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    1. Yep. We had something of a discussion on your blog about this.

      Looking forward to see California become more than a blip on your radar. Still need to get you to Central Park to do the first part of that Wherigo.

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  4. Welcome Paul to the Chill Challenge.

    I'm all for being outdoors, no matter what form or function.

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    1. Thank you very much. The more I age, the more I've come to enjoy the outdoors.

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  5. So cool! Doing something you enjoy, setting goals, getting out and about. All good things. First goal of the year for me is to post everyday during the challenge. I've not missed a day in any of the previous challenges...hope this time will be the same. Happy geocaching and posting.

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    1. Excellent Goal Linda. So far, I'm good as I have my post for tomorrow already written, just need to wait until tomorrow to post it, although I wonder if P.J. would consider it cheating if I posted it tonight?

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  6. I think it's impressive that you bothered to do something you enjoyed more than a thousand times within one year. I have a few hobbies of my own, but I'm not sure I could say that I've had the attention span to achieve something notable through those hobbies a thousand times or more in under 365 days.

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