2022 review
Following last year's model...
Some things I've enjoyed this past year:
- Everything Happens podcast of lovely conversations between Kate Bowler (author of "Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved", among other books) and interesting people.
- Mayday: Air Disasters videos, which I probably ought to take a break from until *after* I return from my next visit to Arizona, LOL. But it's fascinating to see how various things in the air industry have changed over time in an effort to make things safer.
- The Kitten Academy livestream has been frequent viewing. KA is among the channels/people that I started supporting on Patreon this year, so I've also joined their Discord server (if any of y'all are on Discord, I'm Lime#1035 :) ). I even met up in person with a handful of those folks to go to a local cat cafe at the end of October, whee. It appears I never mentioned that on here, oops.
- I spent a fair amount of time playing games on Steam (I was going to say "way too much time", but I'm trying to not be so judgey to myself!). My current faves are Wingspan (I just got myself the European Expansion) and, more recently, Ticket to Ride. I also just got Chuzzle and Bejeweled (from a sale), which are major blasts from the past and bring back memories of college, haha.
- And, of course, Yoga with Adriene. This year's 30-day yoga journey started today, woo. I started doing that in 2018, which I guess makes this my sixth (!?!) consecutive year (omg, how is that even possible).
Books I really liked this year:
I Didn't Do the Thing Today: Letting Go of Productivity Guilt, Madeleine Dore (I even got myself a copy so I could re-read it and underline things, ha.)
You Don't Owe Anyone: Free Yourself from the Weight of Expectations, Caroline Garnet McGraw
Also A.J. Hackwith's Hell's Library trilogy, which I specifically posted about a while back.
And my revisit of last year's intentions...
1. Continue doing yoga and/or other intentional activity daily.
I continue to be more or less successful on this. The biggest struggle is claiming time and/or space to do yoga or anything when I'm visiting Bro. The days I'm down at his place are pretty much the only times I miss on this.
2. Read at least six of the books that I own but haven't read yet.
Official total for this: eight, with a total of 46 books read for the year.
3. Revisit/revise at least one of my original works (story/poem)
Hahahahaha, nope. Still haven't touched this.
4. Finish something fannish./4a. Finalize the FrodoHealers archive project.
The FrodoHealers archive project is done! Otherwise, I don't think I even touched anything fannish.
5. Post here at least once per calendar week. :-)
. . . not even close. Moving right along.
6. I'm going to try again: Reply to comments more frequently!
. . . *sigh*
7. In place of my usual "go to at least two local events" idea... Finish finding my resources in my new area. This includes a vet for the girls, a mechanic for the car, a church, etc. I'd also like this to include some sort of social component outside of work and church, but that will at least partly depend on how the whole pandemic thing goes. Finding a new musical outlet of some sort would be fantastic.
I did the things!! The girls have a vet, my car has a mechanic, and I have a church. I even joined a local orchestra *and* joined the church choir. \o/
8. Spend some time taking stock of my financial situation and figure out what I'm doing now that I've changed jobs and everything, how I'm going to deal with the remaining amount of my student loans, my car is doing well but just passed 106,000 miles...
I got started on this, anyway. I talked to the financial person who does my Roth IRA and we're going to be rolling my old 401k money into that account (I'll have to pay taxes on it, but that should be fine since it'll have to happen over at least two tax years due to contribution limits). I'm eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program for my remaining student loans, so I'll be filing the official paperwork for that very soon. There's probably more I can do with the money I have in savings while I bide my time until my car dies or whatever (just passed 110,000 miles this weekend and still chugging along *knocks on wood*), but eh. It's not my top priority.
Knowing I needed to do the yearly update on my intentions, I've been thinking about this year's. After I post them, I basically don't even think about them until it's coming time to do the update post. Which is interesting, in a way, to compare what I was thinking about in early January with what life ended up looking like over the course of the year, but it doesn't seem particularly useful? I guess?
I'm not sure how best to put it into words, except to say that I'm leaning toward not setting intentions for myself this year. Things will happen if they happen, and if they don't happen, well, there's a reason for that. But at the same time, I am very list-driven when it comes to getting things done. XD And so there's some benefit to at least enumerating the things as a way of reminding myself what I'd like to accomplish, especially since my fortieth (!!!!) birthday is right around the corner. (People have started asking what I'm doing for my birthday, what I want for my birthday, etc., and I truly don't know. It's a problem, lol.)
Some things I've enjoyed this past year:
- Everything Happens podcast of lovely conversations between Kate Bowler (author of "Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved", among other books) and interesting people.
- Mayday: Air Disasters videos, which I probably ought to take a break from until *after* I return from my next visit to Arizona, LOL. But it's fascinating to see how various things in the air industry have changed over time in an effort to make things safer.
- The Kitten Academy livestream has been frequent viewing. KA is among the channels/people that I started supporting on Patreon this year, so I've also joined their Discord server (if any of y'all are on Discord, I'm Lime#1035 :) ). I even met up in person with a handful of those folks to go to a local cat cafe at the end of October, whee. It appears I never mentioned that on here, oops.
- I spent a fair amount of time playing games on Steam (I was going to say "way too much time", but I'm trying to not be so judgey to myself!). My current faves are Wingspan (I just got myself the European Expansion) and, more recently, Ticket to Ride. I also just got Chuzzle and Bejeweled (from a sale), which are major blasts from the past and bring back memories of college, haha.
- And, of course, Yoga with Adriene. This year's 30-day yoga journey started today, woo. I started doing that in 2018, which I guess makes this my sixth (!?!) consecutive year (omg, how is that even possible).
Books I really liked this year:
I Didn't Do the Thing Today: Letting Go of Productivity Guilt, Madeleine Dore (I even got myself a copy so I could re-read it and underline things, ha.)
You Don't Owe Anyone: Free Yourself from the Weight of Expectations, Caroline Garnet McGraw
Also A.J. Hackwith's Hell's Library trilogy, which I specifically posted about a while back.
And my revisit of last year's intentions...
1. Continue doing yoga and/or other intentional activity daily.
I continue to be more or less successful on this. The biggest struggle is claiming time and/or space to do yoga or anything when I'm visiting Bro. The days I'm down at his place are pretty much the only times I miss on this.
2. Read at least six of the books that I own but haven't read yet.
Official total for this: eight, with a total of 46 books read for the year.
3. Revisit/revise at least one of my original works (story/poem)
Hahahahaha, nope. Still haven't touched this.
4. Finish something fannish./4a. Finalize the FrodoHealers archive project.
The FrodoHealers archive project is done! Otherwise, I don't think I even touched anything fannish.
5. Post here at least once per calendar week. :-)
. . . not even close. Moving right along.
6. I'm going to try again: Reply to comments more frequently!
. . . *sigh*
7. In place of my usual "go to at least two local events" idea... Finish finding my resources in my new area. This includes a vet for the girls, a mechanic for the car, a church, etc. I'd also like this to include some sort of social component outside of work and church, but that will at least partly depend on how the whole pandemic thing goes. Finding a new musical outlet of some sort would be fantastic.
I did the things!! The girls have a vet, my car has a mechanic, and I have a church. I even joined a local orchestra *and* joined the church choir. \o/
8. Spend some time taking stock of my financial situation and figure out what I'm doing now that I've changed jobs and everything, how I'm going to deal with the remaining amount of my student loans, my car is doing well but just passed 106,000 miles...
I got started on this, anyway. I talked to the financial person who does my Roth IRA and we're going to be rolling my old 401k money into that account (I'll have to pay taxes on it, but that should be fine since it'll have to happen over at least two tax years due to contribution limits). I'm eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program for my remaining student loans, so I'll be filing the official paperwork for that very soon. There's probably more I can do with the money I have in savings while I bide my time until my car dies or whatever (just passed 110,000 miles this weekend and still chugging along *knocks on wood*), but eh. It's not my top priority.
Knowing I needed to do the yearly update on my intentions, I've been thinking about this year's. After I post them, I basically don't even think about them until it's coming time to do the update post. Which is interesting, in a way, to compare what I was thinking about in early January with what life ended up looking like over the course of the year, but it doesn't seem particularly useful? I guess?
I'm not sure how best to put it into words, except to say that I'm leaning toward not setting intentions for myself this year. Things will happen if they happen, and if they don't happen, well, there's a reason for that. But at the same time, I am very list-driven when it comes to getting things done. XD And so there's some benefit to at least enumerating the things as a way of reminding myself what I'd like to accomplish, especially since my fortieth (!!!!) birthday is right around the corner. (People have started asking what I'm doing for my birthday, what I want for my birthday, etc., and I truly don't know. It's a problem, lol.)