Pause,
Observe…
🥳!Celebrate!🥳
Near the end of 2024, I developed an idea to create a blog post celebrating all the achievements from the year. I wanted to pause and recognize all the accomplishments I had achieved. As I reflected, I thought about things I had written or not written about throughout the year that I could highlight.
However, instead of actually writing the blog post, I paused and spent an enormous amount of time with my family, you can read about that and see the glorious pictures at the end of this post under Family Time Adventure.
Think about moments you could have celebrated but didn’t. How can you make celebration a regular part of your daily routine?
Professional Growth
We recently had significant turnover at work, and an engagement expertise facilitator, Tanya Zion came in via AAIM HR group to help us navigate some big transitions. The sessions were insightful, blending professional and personal development with focus groups and facilitated sessions that resembled group therapy. One message that Zion emphasized repeatedly resonated with me:
It is important that you remember to pause and celebrate after a significant accomplishment.
Often, we’re so focused on fixing problems and completing tasks that we forget to celebrate how far we’ve come. That idea stuck with me throughout the year and inspired this blog post.
Reflection on an Eventful Year
I want to pause and recall some of the achievements I accomplished in 2024.
If you get anything from this post it should be that
No accomplishment is too small to celebrate. You don’t have to buy yourself a car or go to the islands on a boat. Stop, take a deep breath, and shout, “Yeah, I did that!”
My Highlights: 2024 Greatest Hits
(Titles and images linked):
Certified Gamification Journeyman:
Gamification Certification by Sententia.
With my kids that is playable online.
On a real podcast!
Facilitating on Learner Engagement.
I Mastered 4-ft. (1.22 M) ceramic tiles and the Schlueter tile System!
The end of this Post captures this in depth!
Celebrating Completed Achievements
It’s easy to dwell on missed goals or failures. It’s challenging to be proud of achievements and celebrate the wins. Completing the tile work in our bathroom was one of those wins. As I admired the finished product, my five-year-old daughter walked in and exclaimed, “Wow, it looks so good, Daddy. Are you proud?”
I responded, “Yes, honey. I’m proud. This was hard work. It wasn’t easy for me, but I did it anyway. I finished the job.”
More Thoughts
Reflecting on 2024 reminds me of the value of pausing to appreciate our progress. We often achieve things that would have been unimaginable to our past selves. It’s important to recognize and celebrate these moments—not just for ourselves but to inspire those around us.
A contact/ mentor of mine named, Caitlin Johnson, talks about making our goals into quests. Her mission is to explore gamifying not only business strategy but our personal/professional goals. This concept works perfectly with my ideas of using Novelty to Bend Time and to me extends into the concept of artmaking as a process of religious practice.
Here’s to celebrating 2024 and looking forward to new milestones in 2025!
Thank you if you made it this far, take a moment to scroll down and view the absolute novelty of my last 2 weeks of 2024, and why I chose to write this post to open up 2025, and not close 2024.
Family Time Adventure
So, first things last. I want to share what I did instead of writing this blog post before 2025 started. I attended family gatherings for the holidays, played video games with my kids, tiled and grouted a bathroom, and took several impromptu vacations.
In retrospect, the novelty of those 2 weeks could have filled five months of a normal year. When my kids were meant to return to school, several snow days extended the joy of that time. The past three weeks alone have given me plenty to celebrate.
Cooking and Crafting
Creepy Tunnel
A random adventure I generated in the moment was a hike on the infamous Bootlegger’s Trail. We even found that creepy old-time brick tunnel that our pathologist neighbor Jim had warned us about!
Gravity Paintings
At one point my kids asked if we could make gravity paintings like Daddy does. I said Let’s do that and use the old ceramic tiles we found on Uncle Mark’s farm! #Novelty!
Art in the Woods
I kept seeing advertisements for a local light installation so I randomly invited friends of the family and we all went out. I took a lot of video of the Light Cycles show, and I will post that below the pictures!
Video of Art in the Woods
Here is some video of that show.
Train to Germantown!
Somewhere in the middle of the winter break from school, we took a train ride to a local treasure: Hermann, Missouri. Hermann is a small town in rural Missouri that was built by German immigrants in 1837 who initiated grape growing for wine in the rolling MO hills, but more importantly here AMTRAK goes there. So we bought a round trip and exposed the kids to trains!
Thai Style for New Years!
We were really in the mood for the Thai version of Korean BBQ. In Thai, this is called MU-GRA-TA หมูกระทะ. We have an electric version that also simulates the infamous Chinese “HOT POT.”
In the pictures above there is a handsome devil who also happens to be bald. He is known as The Bobby. During this New Year’s Eve party, he mentioned a great meteor shower that would fly across the sky for days. That is important later when he decides to return to bed instead of going out in sub-zero temperatures to see the meteor shower covered by clouds.
4 Foot Porcelain Tile!
So, I haven’t said much about this on this blog, but it has taken over my FaceBook account. I have been laying tile in our hall bath. So, the hall bath started leaking. I tried to fix it and then it didn’t hold so I just ripped out the whole room and expanded the ceiling. The main highlight for me of the last few weeks of the year was completing all the tile and grout in that hall bathroom project, and preparing it for a glass door installation.
If you can’t tell from the pictures that was a pretty big project. I listened to the Case 63 podcast when prepping the floor. and then I listened to it again when laying the tile! It felt like I was a new person with a new task. Listen to the podcast if you don’t know why that is awesome!
Listen to Case 63!
OK, Yes Betty, you are right. AAAH, Thank you to the great Betty Dannewitz for recommending this amazing Podcast that I listened to back-to-back in 2 days on 2 separate occasions. (OK OK). …And.. Betty is my #1. (Apart from my family.)
Seriously that podcast is RAD.
New Years had passed but we still had a whole weekend before school and work started back up!
The Final Weekend
So do you recall Bobby the Bald, that handsome devil? We had plans to wake up at 2:30AM (much thanks to Bobby) to view a meteor shower, but it was cloudy when we woke up and our friends (Ahem Bobby) canceled on us. So, to celebrate completing the tile and grout work, we spontaneously got in the car at three in the morning to watch a meteor shower. Unfortunately, it was cloudy, instead of turning back, we drove across several states to Cincinnati, Ohio.
Planning as We Went
We had no plan and it was an amazing vacation. On the way, we booked a hotel and spent just a single day in the city.
Start with heART ❤
We started with the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati.
The Aquarium in Newport
Next, we went to the aquarium, petted stingrays, and saw sharks, sea turtles, and a fascinating creature I had never heard of: the stingray shark. I’m still not convinced it wasn’t a robot, but it looked impressively real.
And I also took some other pictures at the aquarium…
Who is Hungry?
This was technically not in Ohio, It was across the river in Newport, Kentucky. Right next door to the German Brewhause Hofbräuhaus! Perfect!
Ice Skating
Our hotel room in downtown Cincinnati overlooked Fountain Square, where there was an ice-skating rink.
Even though we were practically running on fumes from waking up at 2:30 a.m. Central Time, we went ice-skating. The ice was so rough it looked like a layer of fresh snow had fallen on it. Despite the poor conditions, it was the best ice-skating experience of my life.
Keep on Ramblin’
The next day, we woke up at 2:30 a.m. again and raced back to St. Louis, Missouri, to avoid a snowstorm. We didn’t avoid it, though, and drove for miles on snow-covered highways. That in itself was an adventure, but the Odyssey didn’t let us down!
We Need an Igloo in All of this Snow
When we got back the kids had snow days so we went sledding again and started on an igloo mad out of frozen water balloons.. That didn’t pan out like we had hoped.
However, Thanks so an idea from Kassy Laborie, we did manage to salvage some of the failed water ballon bricks into some lovely ice luminaries!
Think about moments you could have celebrated but didn’t. How can you make celebration a regular part of your daily routine?
Thank You
Thanks for getting this far. That last point was again just how thankful I am to have such a warm and supportive family! The journey is always better when you travel with those you love! I do a word each year, and I started with thinking I would use Balance and then thought about Action, and then Balanced Action, but now I am thinking the way you find balanced action is via #NOVELTY … It is time travel after all. Novelty just might be the way forward on the quest for improvement. Be sure to check back in to see how it goes!
All the best!,
David.
Improvement Dave 