2022 Goals

I live with these two anti-vaxxers / anti-maskers. I’ve tried talking to them, but they won’t listen to reason.

Last year was rough, and some of that spilled into 2022.

We caught COVID at the beginning of the year, at the peak of the Omicron wave. We’re fine. Nobody got super sick. Nobody is in the hospital. But managing two toddlers while working was hard.

An underreported side-effect of COVID is delayed blog posts. Without further delay, here are some goals I wrote a month ago:

Physical

• 4 hours of circus every week for at least 8 weeks. I took my first trapeze class a decade ago. Soon after circus became a key part of my life. At my peak I practiced over 10 hours a week. Increased work responsibilities and injuries meant that I’d all but stopped by 2019.  Over the holidays, a friend convinced me to take a silks class. I realized I still love circus. But now I’m older, weaker, and less flexible. I’ll hopefully get stronger by going regularly.
• Address recurring knee and shoulder pain: I developed sciatic pain last year, and started physical therapy a few months later. It worked. It made me realize that maybe I don’t have to live with chronic knee and shoulder pain. Physical therapy also showed me that I have structural weaknesses that I need work on to prevent further injury. My goal is to go to physical therapy for my knee and progress to my shoulder once I have a handle on my lower body.
• Log food for 6m. Part of getting in shape is diet, and building a good diet requires awareness. When I log my food, I’m more aware. I have better portion control, and I eat better food.

Personal

• Take a break. With all the work and life changes last year, I need a break. A real break, on the order of months, not weeks.
• Spread dad’s ashes. Originally, I wanted to visit India with the kids and Cat. But traveling that distance with toddlers sounds difficult. Instead, we’ll go to Myrtle Beach, a place he loved, and spread his ashes in the ocean.
• Two family trips to visit folks. Last year, while we were in NC, we often saw folks that we hadn’t connected with in years. Connection shouldn’t be limited to tragedy. I want to find a way to manufacture the urgency that we had last year. I want to find ways to visit people we love when things are going well.
• Organize clothing. Create a plan to purge by setting limits. Adhere to those limits. Store sentimental clothes. Declare sock bankruptcy.
• Move into my house. We still are not using our house well. I am planning to set aside some money to make changes to the house that are needed. That means buying new furniture, cleaning out objects in storage, fixing minor annoyances, and purging sentimental items.
• Pravin can bike on a pedal bike. We have this awesome pedal bike. We haven’t used it. Pravin is ready.

Creative

• Create something that makes my life better. The ability to make an object bespoke to your needs is freeing. I want to create something I use, something that dovetails into the rhythm of my day or week or even year.
• Create something just because it’s beautiful. Another aspect of creation is making something just for it to be. Maybe the object is a manifestation of the journey itself. Maybe it connects you to an aspect of yourself that is core to your being. Maybe it allows you to express an emotion you can’t express in any other way.
• Read 26 books. Same goal every year. This year I didn’t add any fair. I do have a few graphic novels on my list. But I don’t need much prodding to read them.
• 100 simple observations. One-line journaling works for me. I thought I’d try expand it. This simple observations journal seems like a good next step. It’s a series of prompts that range from probing to light-hearted. It might be a great way to expand what I think about.

Two notebooks on a table. One is titled Simple Observations, the other is a sketch book.