I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but I do do goals for lockdowns!
The government will impose restrictions of some kind on Ireland that will run until at least March, though later wouldn’t surprise me.
No matter what “level” they talk about I don’t expect much travel, domestic or international, to be permitted over the coming months. And forget about “gatherings”.
So I’m currently working on a few personal goals for the next set of lockdowns and restrictions. These aren’t “New Year resolutions”, though the timing might suggest otherwise!
So in no particular order:
- Reading. I read “content” all the time, but I haven’t been reading books much over the last couple of years. I need to change that. I’ve always loved reading but I just got out of the habit and I’ve been spending more and more time with other things like small screens! Not good. I need to come up with a “soft” reading target of some kind, but I’ll have to circle back to this. When I was commuting to work in Milan I always had a book in my pocket or bag. I think I read most of The Lord of the Rings on the Milan metro!
- Writing. There’s a few writing “projects” I need to really get done. Yes, I’ve always been writing, but most of the time it’s a little “random”. There’s a few things that I’d like to write about that would be a little more structured. I’ll probably post them here, as they’re mostly “personal” in some way.
- Exercise. Well this is a bit of a no brainer. I need to get more of it. Walking is the obvious choice. I tried to take that up back in November but it didn’t really “stick”.
- Cooking. This is ongoing. I’ve a few specific goals that I’d like to formally set for myself which are mostly around learning and perfecting certain techniques and trying to cook specific dishes. My Amazon wishlist has been dominated with cookbooks and cooking gear over the last few months and I suspect that’ll continue. As the weather improves I’ll be cooking outdoors more as well.
- Learning. I can’t see myself taking on some massive academic exercise with formal requirements, however I definitely feel that I could be doing more to learn new things or brush up on things I already know. So, for example, I’ll be doing some of my cooking and reading in Spanish, French and Italian. That may seem a little odd or possibly pretentious, but why rely on the translated text of a cookbook when you can go straight to the original source? The language of cooking is quite different from day to day language so I’m already learning new words and expressions.
- Socialising. In the current situation socialising “in person” is a problem and a lot of my friends aren’t even in this country. I’m sick of Zoom / Teams / Webex etc., but I definitely need to organise more “social” activities somehow.
- DIY and home improvement. Once the weather improves I really want to finish off painting the garden walls, both front and back.
Let’s see how well (or badly) I get on!
What do you have planned? Or do you make plans?
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