End of the year wrap up time.
I decided to go back into full tilt goals for 2021 hoping that made the year a little better than 2020. And because I was full of optimism for 2021 at the end of 2020. I mean vaccines were approved and starting to roll out, things were going to go back to semi normal. I mean what could happen?
Well, Betty White died today. Eighteen days away from her 100th birthday big deal celebration that everyone was really excited about. So yeah, that's 2021 for you all wrapped up in a giant sauerkraut bow.
But I still rolled with a lot of goals so let's see how they went.
Actually? Pretty good. For me, on a personal goal filling level.
Reading, I was aiming for 84 books and when I finish the book I'm reading right now it will be 88. A little more but a clean break between years, which I LOVE. I also finished the Discworld series and the two essay collections of his that I had on the list. Check and check and bonus end of year check.
Writing, so this was mixed bag but mostly positive. I wanted to write 147 blogs total and 42 of those being fiction. When I publish this one I'll be at 149 total and 42 of those were fiction. So that's a check and a check. The boo bag part is that I had been planning on three total submissions, two contests and one other. That just didn't happen. I thought I might come in with a last minute push but instead I realized I don't really want to submit anything right now. I am not sure if the drive to be published and validated by an outside source is completely gone or not, but at least for now I just don't want it anymore. It's not important to me. So though I missed the gold star check for my 2021 goal I don't feel that badly about it. These goals are supposed to help me learn and grow and get better, that's a learning thing for sure.
I wanted to shop less on Amazon. I did. I went from 113 orders to 91. Which isn't a ton less, but it's less, if you take out the groceries and gifts for others (Amazon still makes that much easier, gift cards or delivery off of their wish lists is super convenient and that's where they get you) the number drops all the way down to 40. That's a significant drop. So I'll keep working toward that knowing that it might be almost impossible for me to completely abandon them as they've got so many businesses just using them as their store front.
Flexibility. This was metaphoric and literal. I made sure to include a few nonfiction books by and about people who have much different life experiences than I do, and a few fiction as well. Which isn't unusual for me, but I made sure this year to make a special effort to look for authors and books in groups I felt like I didn't really know enough about. So that was the metaphor part. Be more flexible in my thinking. Embrace these kids today and their changing world view. Try to understand instead of getting rigid in my though patterns. I'll keep working on it.
The literal was adding some more stretches into my workout routine. That was successful as well. Still need more, so it will show up tomorrow, but I did make progress. Inches of reach were gained.
Which leads us to fitness. I had two things here. I was going to finally try that elimination diet to see if it helped with my joint pain and I wanted to lose 21 pounds. Well I did the elimination diet which we all know how that went. And because of it I lost the weight as well. Full disclosure I'm at 20.3 pounds down as of today, but all month before this last week I was at 22 pounds down so this is a temporary Christmas yummy treats bump that will go away again in the new year.
I did Daily Gratitude, Picture of the Day and Daily Calm in January, February and March. I wasn't sure when I set goals if I was going to do them all year, and I didn't. I did discover that the daily meditation just didn't really float my boat. All of the benefits you are supposed to get, I just didn't get extra. I realized that though I don't do a formal meditation practice I've been meditating in my own way for a very long time. I just didn't call it that. So that's good. It takes the "I can't meditate!" stress away. I can. I do. I just don't call it that. Daily Gratitude and Picture of the Day lost their interactive shine. People either aren't seeing them, or they just aren't commenting like they used to so I didn't feel the need to keep them up publicly. And since I set them up as a temporary goal I felt no pain in dropping them.
So 2021 was a year of most things checked off. Most goals reached. The biggest ones for sure done.
And it still felt like a mess of a year. In fact it just felt like 2020 stuck around for another go round.
I made the joke last year that 2021 sounded like 2020 Won and now we are headed into 2020 Too so...
But that's not actually fair. I mean we did have an easier time of it. No family deaths. No real sickness. We all got vaccinated without any major side effects. We had a family vacation to Disneyland that was fun. We've gotten to spend all of the holidays together without the fretting that we had last year. Omicron is here and we are all pretty sure at some point we will catch it but we aren't worried, as we are all vaccinated so it should be really mild if we do. So 2021 was okay. We just need to step back and see it.
But I'm still hoping that 2022 is better.
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