We are going to tiptoe quietly into 2021. No huge expectations. No big travel plans. Everyone just be cool, ok?
I will set a resolution or two. I know I don’t have to, I want to, this time of year pings the “resolve and renew” parts of my brain and they’re pinging, despite the oddness of our current situation. We will keep things realistic, however.
- Take a full week off, when the kids are in school and the spouse is also working at work and not here. I want a week for unlimited exercise, cleaning out closets, writing and reading, playing my new-to-me guitar and two (2!) ukuleles I got for Christmas! A week of re-set. If our case counts don’t explode and the kids are able to stay in in-person school I think I could manage this in February. If not, it has to wait until September (looking at my upcoming trial dates and dispositive motion deadlines).
- Some kind of steps goal. My sister got two fitbits for Christmas, and so I’m buying one off her. I’ve never been the fitness tracker kinda gal because it can trigger some anxiety, but now that I don’t leave the house I think it might be more important? A little reminder that I need to move. I do a dedicated workout just about every day – anywhere from 40-80 minutes – but that doesn’t make up for all the walking I’m missing out on as well. I also do have under-desk pedals that I spin lazily on through the day, and a sit-stand desk, but this would be just another tool in the arsenal to keep me from dying of arteriosclerosis in my fifties due to lack of movement. I’m feeling open to the fitbit. I’ll see how many steps I take on a normal day and then figure out a goal based on how much that scares me.
- Have curtains made for two windows in our main living area. We have a short, wide rectangular window high up on the wall in the living room, and a normal two sash single pane double hung further along that same wall (though that one’s in the kitchen, it’s all one open plan room), and both allow in absolutely brutal blinding sun at certain times of the day/year. Since we moved in this house in late summer 2016, I have wanted a valence or roman shade or something there. We have fabric to use that matches out dining room chairs (our dining room is also part of the open plan big room). I can sew but I don’t have the skill to make these, and I tried once to commission something but the person I wrote never wrote me back. We are going on FIVE YEARS HERE, of squinting and moving seats daily because the sun’s in our eyes, and this is just silly.
- I’m pretty pleased with my fitness at this time. Losing some of these lbs would help more, since doing Burpees at 195 pounds is much harder than doing Burpees at 165 lbs. But I don’t really have fitness goals except to maintain my current level of activity, if and when I get back to the gym to keep up the squats/deadlifts to get stronger, maybe do take up swimming again when I can. Perhaps the best fitness goal I could make right now would be to try something new this year. I’ve added Pilates and LOVE. IT. Such a big help to my back. And my instructor is an aerialist/pole dancer, so her core strength is GOALS. I’d love to find another exercise to love – variety is the spice of exercise, for me! The panic disorder does make it challenging as I have to really monitor my heart rate and keep it from going too high, but I can usually manage it with Propranolol and frequent short pauses. It helps that all my exercise classes this year have been via youtube video – I can just pause if I need to slow the heart down for a few seconds, and then press play again.
- Novel writing. I want to keep it up. I am loving learning and re-learning about Pompeii. It’s such a great time period for a story – just a few years after a devastating earthquake, the entire city (very socioeconomically mixed at the time) trying to recover with some areas having rebuilt more fully than others, and then the eruption. Did you know that the bulk of the city left the area well in advance of the pyroclastic flow? The people who remained were not caught unawares. They just decided not to go, underestimated the disaster that was coming. Many of the ones who died were caught by the flow running for their lives, recognizing the danger too late. We can imagine their terror and regret, wishing they had left earlier. It has real echoes of Katrina for me. In Pompeii, the post-eruption rescuers/looters even wrote on the doorways to indicate which places they had entered, and what they found there – reminiscent of the NOLA post-Katrina Xs. The fact that the Pompeiians suffered a terrible earthquake a dozen or so years prior makes it all the more compelling and heart-wrenching a story. They must have all felt so unmoored, attacked by mother nature. It also reminds me of coronavirus – you know all of us will experience the world differently forever, having gone through this, and it must be the same for the Pompeiian people. Never trusting their safety again, always ready to dash if needed. I also imagine the refugees, climbing into their boats to cross the seas. Life on Earth is so brutal, and terrible and wonderful, and humans are so resilient. We all just want to live and feel safe.
- Begin routine, monthly charitable giving (beyond church). We pay a committed set monthly offering to our church, not much but enough, and we’ll throw fifty bucks here and there as causes come up. I’d like to set aside some more $$ to make a monthly offering to something(s) else. One of my friends had a budgeted amount per paycheck for charitable giving, and some of it went to recurring donations while other parts of it went to whatever whim struck him, and I like that idea. It makes it more automatic, less subject to me remembering.
I feel good about these. Some inwardly focused, some outwardly focused, some physical and some spiritual. 2021 promises to be a somewhat odd year – with a likely dividing line between pre- and post- vaccine distribution. We’ll all just have to do our best to navigate the next steps as best we can. Happy New Year to all of you. I hope you can feel safe and loved, wherever you are.