I made ten resolutions for 2020, back in a different reality, before covid hit. I started last year incapacitated with an ear infection, and honestly the year didn’t really get that much better before it got worse. On the other hand, I finished my MBA, we bought a car, we refinanced the house, saving more than a thousand dollars a month in interest payments, and nobody got covid, so there’s lots to be thankful for. Before thinking about what 2021 should focus on, let’s review progress on these ten:
- Learn to play the banjo. Meh. I took a few lessons online, but didn’t stick at it, and I think online lessons when you’re starting to do something are often not enough. Call that a half?
- Help the community in some way. It took until October, but I’ve been volunteering at a homeless outreach on the other side of Seattle almost every week. Still need to think about what that means long term, but I’m doing something, which is better than nothing.
- Read more than two books per month. I think I did this, but I’m really not sure. I wasn’t assiduous at writing reviews here like I used to, so it’s harder to track. So let’s call it a half here too.
- Take an afternoon off every week for the first quarter of the year, to help with childcare. And here was a positive from the pandemic – I was at home every day from March onwards, and my enlightened employer allowed me to take every Friday off to help with the kids. I didn’t always observe that as well as I should have done, but I think we can call this a success.
- Play more Blood Bowl. Get better at Blood Bowl. I failed to quantify what either of these would be. My first match in 2020 was, I think, in a Korean airport, and I lost 2-1. In 2020, I played 504 matches on Fumbbl (I’ve played 889 since I started in 2018) so I definitely played more. Getting better would mean having a higher win:draw:lose ratio than before 2020. That’s harder to figure out, as I need to look at 17 web pages and count them all up, but I’ll have a percentage, and then we’ll see if that was better or worse than before. Improvement is hard to measure, because I might be better but still losing, or I might be better, but choosing to play more terrible teams like my goblins. We shall see.
- Sleep more, eat less dreadful food. I think we’ll say no on this, because of:
- Lose 4 kg. That would get me back to 80 kg. I ended at 83.7, so that’s less than 10% of this goal. I did install a chin up bar and I’m fairly regular at using it. My planned climbing routine failed because the gym has been closed (and won’t be open until the middle of January at this rate).
- Make a start on the next novel. Nada.
- Take full advantage of the great outdoors, and get the kids hiking somewhere every month. I don’t think we managed to go hiking every month, but we’ve certainly upped our average since we got the car. Let’s call this one achieved.
- Finish the Udemy juggling course I signed up for a year ago. Er, to finish, first you have to start. Let’s kick that forward.
So, that’s roughly a 50% success ratio. That’s not so shabby.
I failed to check in on this list every month (some things are a total surprise to me, looking back after 12 months). I do now have a spreadsheet for tracking things like chin-ups, so that’s one thing to add to the 2021 resolutions (coming up in the next post…). And 50% isn’t so bad for me. Was I too lenient this time around?