The holidays hit me hard this year. Hard to believe that two full cycles of the normal Holiday season were completely disrupted by an ongoing pandemic. Last year, many events were cancelled as society braced against a surge of pandemic cases. This year, society chose to largely ignore surging cases and full hospitals. Personally, I’m finding the continued lack of normalcy increasingly challenging. I think a lot of people have switched over to social media to find connection with others during these trying times. I don’t think it helps. I started working on this post New Year’s Eve, but really struggled to get it going.

My 2021 goals read in retrospective, as more “resolutiony”, than goals really should be. I really let my piano playing lapse (feeling especially rusty during the holidays) [#1], the garden boxes never materialized [#4], my writing languished [#5], unpacking wasn’t much of a thing [#7], and I definitely stopped blogging on a regular basis [#10]. I did slightly better increasing my reading level (though this lapsed after the Summer) [#3], and got a nice account setup at Inoreader.com for myself [#6]. The biggest year wins were in improving some skills [#8] and grinding out some grad classes [#2]. Finally, I’ve greatly reduced my presence on advertising based social media [#9].

The big, unexpected development, this year was switching to a new company. I’m working at a smaller place now, and there’s at least a better balance of expectations. Plus, I’m a remote employee now, which means the commute is substantially improved.

Here goes the 2022 goals. This time, I’m going to try to keep them in the “SMART” framework!

1. Build soldering / electronics / hobby work area in our garage or “slightly conditioned” area in one of our outbuildings. This Christmas, I decided to build up some skill at doing PCB rework, and I’ve found it enjoyable enough that I want to start looking at doing more “Make” sorta stuff. Before winter hits again, the goal is to build a workspace where I can do soldering and such in an area a bit safer from our animals.
2. Get a Civil Engineer to build recommendation plan for drainage and foundation. There’s really two goals here. First, the basement needs to be cleared out to have the engineer. Second, is getting the engineer here. Ideally, we’ll have them here before its time to plant the garden.
3. Complete 2 more graduate classes. Spring Semester started on the 10th, and I’m signed up. Just gotta hang on and knock these out. Finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel!
4. Clean financial house. A lot of the financial stuff hasn’t gotten the level of attention its deserved since we moved (and moreso since Covid). It’s past time to start adulting and budget again. Goal for this year is to track expenses for the first couple months and start working from a budget midyear.
5. Read one book every other month. I think every month was a bit too much with trying to also complete grad classes. This one really depends on the level of work w/ grad classes. If I’m already reading too much, that might have to count as the books.
6. Replant and expand the flower garden. I had / have some ideas on building a small rock garden across from the flower garden. This should be a nice spring project and upgrade.
7. Cut (roughly) 10% weight. Don’t want to get into exact number here, but the doc says I need to lose a bit of weight. Fortunately, while I gained a bit of weight during Covid, it’s been fairly consistent for the past several months. Unfortunately, it’s higher than it should be.
8. Build out the home network. There’s a lot to do here – running wire and setup. I’ve collected a lot of parts and there’s now at least one bit of wire run (and some stuff setup in the attic).
9. Continue my personal Julia Child project. I’ve been working through some random recipes with Fin and doing a bit more cooking. The goal for this year is to cook one “big” recipe every other month and try to hit a minor recipe / learn a new quick dish every month.
10. Contribute and grow the vegetable garden this year. We’ve done a bit more each year. I’m hoping to pick out some seeds and actually grow some stuff again this year. As a stretch goal, I’d like to get some fruit trees planted and maybe even consider starting my own Christmas tree line.

It’s a bit late to get this all out, and I’m already feeling a bit behind on a few of these – but there it is. I didn’t include it as a goal for the year, but as I’ve stopped being on social media as much, writing and blogging is a nice return to less complicated days. I’m going to try to keep this updated, but time will tell how it goes.