{"id":1800,"date":"2020-12-31T09:30:05","date_gmt":"2020-12-31T17:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/?p=1800"},"modified":"2020-12-31T09:30:05","modified_gmt":"2020-12-31T17:30:05","slug":"2021-lets-do-this-i-guess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/?p=1800","title":{"rendered":"2021: Let&#8217;s Do This I Guess"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/2021-mood-board-1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"700\" height=\"525\" src=\"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/2021-mood-board-1-700x525.png\" alt=\"collage of pictures including a garden, a goat in a sweater, a woman lifting weights, a girl with an owl and a cat wearing sunglasses\" class=\"wp-image-1826\" srcset=\"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/2021-mood-board-1-700x525.png 700w, https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/2021-mood-board-1-300x225.png 300w, https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/2021-mood-board-1-768x576.png 768w, https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/2021-mood-board-1-1536x1152.png 1536w, https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/2021-mood-board-1-2048x1536.png 2048w, https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/2021-mood-board-1-800x600.png 800w, https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/2021-mood-board-1-80x60.png 80w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>2021 mood board<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I know that all of our troubles won&#8217;t magically disappear at the stroke of midnight on January 1, but I wish they would. I&#8217;m thinking about what I want to do in 2021 with present conditions in mind. I hope that, by the end of the year, we&#8217;re all vaccinated and living our best covid-free lives. I know I&#8217;ll be last in line for a vaccine since I don&#8217;t have to talk to the public or care for anyone. I&#8217;m thinking about the year with that in mind and with nine months of pandemic experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hobbies and Other Witchery<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Books<\/strong>. My private goal in 2020 was to read 100 books. I didn&#8217;t make it, but I got close. This year I am making it a public goal: I want to read 100 books. This is mostly just to say I did it and see what it feels like to read that much. Besides, I don&#8217;t have much else going on. I also want to do my part to keep independent bookstores alive because they always have the best stuff. Something fun I want to do for myself is buy a book from a different bookstore each month. I can&#8217;t go anywhere interesting so I have to bring things to me.<\/li><li><strong>Music<\/strong>. Make a point of listening to new (or new-to-me) music and finding stuff I like. Kirk bought me a lovely blue tooth speaker for Christmas so that will help.<\/li><li><strong>Knitting<\/strong>. Knit a sweater! I&#8217;ve knit many small things (and one top), but I have yet to knit a sweater, which is the quintessential knitting activity. I have yarn and a pattern picked out for a big, chunky sweater and I&#8217;m looking forward to making and wearing it.<\/li><li><strong>Baking<\/strong>. Expand my baking skills and try new things. I know in the not-too-distant future I want to try making croissants, donuts, and a babka. I&#8217;ve got my bread game going strong so now it&#8217;s time to branch out.<\/li><li><strong>Cooking<\/strong>. I have a lot of great cookbooks and a number of them are about cuisines from other places. I can&#8217;t travel so I want to try travel by cooking. My general plan is to try a few recipes from another place every month, but we&#8217;ll see what my energy levels are like. I have already marked a few recipes to try from <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/books\/peru-gastronomia-peru-the-cookbook-spanish-edition\/9780714870045\">Peru: The Cookbook<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/books\/feast-food-of-the-islamic-world\/9780062363039\">Feast of the Islamic World<\/a>. <\/li><li><strong>Composting<\/strong>. Maybe this is weird, but I want to start composting. Why throw away all these food scraps when we can turn them into soil?<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Languages<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Spanish<\/strong>. I have talked about taking the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/DELE\">DELE<\/a> exam before and, in fact, had planned to do it in 2020. This year I&#8217;m going to do it for really real. I mean it. I&#8217;ve even sent in a registration form already. I&#8217;m trying to register for a date in November, when, one hopes, things will be fairly safe.<\/li><li><strong>Icelandic<\/strong>. I want to get back into learning Icelandic this year. I have been thinking about it a lot without actually studying. I&#8217;m hoping my teacher will be available again, or perhaps she can refer me to someone else if not.<\/li><li><strong>French<\/strong>. I started learning French again on a whim, so my plan this year is to keep at it as long as I&#8217;m having fun. I also want to find something to read or watch in the language that makes it more interesting for me. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Intangibles<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Take it slow<\/strong>. It&#8217;s hard for me to relax and not fill all my time with activities. That&#8217;s a little bit because I get bored easily and a lot because of how I cope with anxiety: be too busy to worry about it. This year I want to work on taking things as they come and not overfilling my schedule for the sake of it. This is also going to be important when\/if we can start living that non-pandemic life again. I know I&#8217;ll want to do everything at once, but I also know that will quickly overwhelm me. I don&#8217;t have to make up for &#8220;lost time&#8221; or anything like that. I want to ease back into things.<\/li><li><strong>(Re-)establish routines<\/strong>. The most difficult part of 2020 was that basically all of our routines were destroyed. Now that pandemic life is more of a known quantity, I want to focus on resetting some routines and establishing new ones to get me through all this at-home time. I&#8217;ve particularly struggled with exercising regularly since exercise used to be an activity that happens outside of the house. I&#8217;m hoping to find a new rhythm for my days and work in some good habits. I&#8217;ve started flossing and have kept at it for the last two weeks so I know there is hope for me.<\/li><li><strong>Community<\/strong>. I&#8217;ve been donating to causes but I want to get involved in something that will better my community. I&#8217;m not yet sure what form this will take but probably some kind of volunteering. I&#8217;ve learned from the last few years that we are all responsible for making society and our communities not suck. Now I have to start putting in some work.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I know that all of our troubles won&#8217;t magically disappear at the stroke of midnight on January 1, but I wish they would. I&#8217;m thinking about what I want to do in 2021 with present conditions in mind. I hope that, by the end of the year, we&#8217;re all vaccinated and living our best covid-free&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[248],"tags":[385,90,344,91],"class_list":["post-1800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-update","tag-385","tag-goals","tag-mood","tag-new-years"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3ni6N-t2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1800"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1883,"href":"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800\/revisions\/1883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}