Here's to 2014!

2014 was one hell of a year.  I accomplished some major goals both athletic and artistic and spent major time with the people I love (my wife, kids, parents and friends).

I ran my first 50 miler

I built and exhibited a large outdoor sculpture in New York City that will be up for an entire year and did my first live performance in front of an audience.

One of my goals for 2014 was to build some community around my running, spend less time running alone and make a little more effort to run with friends. So I started a running team, then got recruited and ended up joining another running team being formed around the same idea.

I had another solo exhibition at Mixed Greens Gallery, one I really feel like might have been my best to date.

I ran my second 50 mile race in a time I would not have thought possible.

And lastly I started this blog, which I am really have a great time with.  And I got through all this with inspiration from friends and family, but also the Rich Roll podcast, WTF with Marc Maron, Our Hen House podcast, the many books I read this year including Animal Liberation by Peter Singer, The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, Hal Koerner's Field Guide to Ultrarunning, Toure's Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness? and many others.

I've got some big, hairy, audacious goals for 2015, the main one being to run my first 100 mile race.  But also, I am doing another Black Rock Negative Energy Absorber sculpture and performance in Pittsburgh as part of the Three Rivers Arts Festival and I am going to be doing a solo both at Volta, a major art festival here in New York City in March.

But another quieter goal I have for this year is to work on communicating better with my kids, and wife for that matter.  These are people I love greatly, that I see regularly, and have the potential to be a real positive influence in their lives.  But without thinking I could easily miss this opportunity and let time pass by without saying the things on my mind, or taking time out of my day to just be with these people.  Really and truly it is the harder work, for me at least.

So anyway, in this time of reflection and planning for the future, let's just take a moment and raise our glasses to 2014!  It was a helluva year!