Time to check in on the progress of my 2021 Intentions. Accountability is one of the best ways to motivate yourself to stick to your goals. So let’s review what I am hoping to accomplish this year. Starting with personal health goals, which are my main goals for the year. There are two areas of personal health I discussed in my new years intentions: physical and mental.
Mental Health
The coronavirus is almost behind us. The CDC is relaxing it’s policy on masks and many states (including my own) are beginning to lift all the health restrictions. Stadiums are slowly filling up again and stores are removing their “mask required” signs. These actions, alone, are already helping my mental health. I feel the stress and anxiety fading away. I think, in the weeks to come, it will all be gone (although I’m sure it will be replaced by something else, because anxiety is a bitch).
The “get organized” goal started out well, but kind of fell to the side. My technical projects suddenly took over (more on that later). I was doing well reducing how much I use Facebook and Twitter. I even gave them up for Lent this year. However it seems I’ve fallen back into old habits. Although, I haven’t seen too much whining and complaining. Twitter is easy for me to ignore when the butthurt gets too much. I think the fact that things in the US are starting to get back to normal has probably calmed the tits of most people on Facebook, which has made it more tolerable.
Physical Health
My running goal this year is to improve my daily running distance to 6+ miles; basically a 10k a day. I also want to improve my push distance to 9 miles. I have not reached these goals yet, however, I do have a strategy in mind for my 6+ mile daily run. Another fitness goal this year, although I didn’t say it in my intentions post, is to add a pre-workout to all my running workouts. Therefore three days a week I work on exercises for strengthening my core and the other two days (because I only work out 5 days a week) I work on strength training. This has become habit now, although I do have to skip them from time to time depending on my work schedule.
The past couple of weeks I realized I need to add something to my workout routine. Leg day. I’ve noticed my legs are getting sore and it’s affecting my endurance, which I need in order to improve to 6 miles a day. Therefore I will be adding exercises to my pre-workouts or I need to add a “leg day” workout. I may actually pick one of the days of the weekend to be leg day; most likely Saturday depending on the intensity of the workout. If you have some leg day workouts please send them my way.
Professional and Technical Development Goals
I have begun development of the new website. In the process of redesigning I am also learning a new website framework; I’m using React. There is still quite a bit of work left to do before the different components are fully functional. I have started researching new themes for the blog since I have to replace Suffusion. I haven’t picked anything yet nor have I found any themes I’m even considering. This one might take a while.
Development slowed down for a few weeks when my NAS machine died. Thankfully I didn’t lose anything, however I had to spend a bit of money to get it back up and running. We bought a system from TrueNAS (formally known as FreeNAS) as well as upgraded all the drives to 8 TB Seagate Ironwolf. When we finished the server is now running from an SSD (instead of a thumb drive) and now has 16 TB of mirrored space.
Reading Challenge Progress
The reading challenge is coming along all right. Last month I was 2 books behind but I recently finished a book and I’m already a quarter of the way through another book. Currently I am only 1 book behind; I expect to be on track before the end of this month. I am 13 books into the Dresden Files, I hope to be as close to “caught up” as I can be by the end of the year. The Dresden books are so much to read. In fact I’ve started collecting them all in print and I plan to start reading them again as soon as I’m caught up. I’m not sure if I will get to reading the Inheritance Series again. We will see how the rest of the year goes.
How are your New Years goals coming along?
I could accomplish so much more if I only had minions!
I’ve been lazy. Actually I’ve been busy with a few real life things and I’ve been learning a new programming language. When I start something new like that, I get a little obsessed and I lose track of my other hobbies and activities. I’ve also been rebuilding my NAS server. I will write more about that stuff at a later time. My birthday was a month ago and I’ll be honest, I haven’t completed a Bad Idea Birthday Challenge this year and I don’t know if I will do one.
This suffered the most from my mental state as a result of the shutdowns. I did not make a lot of progress on many of my technical goals. I didn’t touch the Smart Things and Raspberry Pi integration. Honestly, I don’t know if I will get to it this year or not. I have a higher priority to update the Gift List web application I wrote. While I didn’t make a lot of coding progress on the gift list revamp, I have spent a bit of time designing the changes and making a list of updates and new features. I hope to begin this development immediately.
I’m setting my reading challenge goal to 15 with the hope that I will exceed it. Last year I was 40% away from finishing my 15th book so with a little more diligence I think I can easily meet the goal, and surpass it. The Dresden Files will, again, be the books that help me reach my goal. I’ve started book 11 so it’s possible I may catch up this year (there are now 18 books).
In 2020 I was supposed to complete a 15K at the Flying Pig. Obviously that was cancelled but that didn’t stop me from setting some new goals. I tried to run as often as possible to keep in good health. The doctors were telling me that one of the best methods for staying healthy amid the virus was to keep exercising. I improved my daily running distance to 5+ miles a day. On my push days I am exceeding 8 miles but I have not reached 9 miles yet (a 15K is approximately 9.3 miles).
Why in the world would I want to review 2020?? Without a doubt it has been the worst year for everyone. God willing none of us will ever experience another year like 2020. It has been a cruel year for all. We’ve all experienced grief, fear, anxiety, denial, selfishness; but we’ve also experienced hope, perseverance, kindness, and heroism. While we praised the heroic efforts of some we spurned the foolish and parochial choices of the “I won’t live in fear” crowd.
I know this has been an awful year but, personally, it still feels like Christmas; albeit it a little different. We are doing virtual Christmas this year but the families on both sides are really awesome about it. They are participating in the Christmas-from-afar with every ounce of joy and excitement. I am equally as excited to celebrate this joyous time despite the terrible year.
I’ll admit, back in March, I never would have believed our Thanksgiving would be affected by this pandemic. I know it sucks but the responsible thing to do, to keep family and others safe, is to take proper precautions. The responsible thing to do is put aside your fear and bullheadedness and set an example for the kids. It is more important than ever to be thankful this year. We should be thankful that we still have our health; not everyone still has that anymore. Some folks are missing loved ones this year because of the poor choices and selfish actions of irresponsible “adults”.