21 in 21 - Year End Review

An End of Year Review!

Back in January 2021 when I came up with this list I was very positive about it.  I'd tried to list things that could be achievable.  We'd had a year of the pandemic and there was hope on the horizon in the form of vaccines and an end to lockdowns and restrictions looked possible.

For a while there seemed to be a way out of the pandemic and then things changed, again.  With the discovery of the Omicron variant and the need for boosters it was clear the pandemic is not going to be over any time soon.

Throw in a spell in hospital and anxiety rearing its head I lost a lot of motivation for doing anything.  Truth be told I was probably depressed too.  Joining the club of all the other people struggling to cope with all that's been thrown at us.  I know that I'm in a fortunate position but the glass still wanted to remain half empty.

I've made comments on the list below as to how I did but overall it was a gigantic failure.  True there were a few successes but 2021 was definitely not a good year.  It doesn't make for great reading so feel free to skip it.

However, because of how badly it all went there will not be a 22 in 22 list.  There are definitely things I want to do in 2022 but I'm going back to one of the things on my 2020 list which was to be kind to myself.  Of course when I prepared the 2020 list the pandemic wasn't a thing.

I'm going to try and build better habits for both my physical and mental wellbeing but judging myself against targets isn't working for me right now.  One thing I do want to do is blog more regularly and if you've read my previous post you'll see I've committed to the Just Jot it January challenge.  Yes, despite feeling anxious and demotivated I can still rise to a challenge!

I'm also going to try very hard to get some normality back in our lives however scary that may seem.  2021 ended on a high with all the family together for Christmas so I'm going to try very hard to carry that feeling into the New Year and keep my glass half full.  Oops, I agreed to do a Dry January this year so it will have to be full with water but drinking more water is part of the improving my health plan!

I hope you'll follow me on this journey.

Thanks for getting this far, if you want the gory details of how 21 in 21 really went, read on.

1. Fill out weekly/daily planner. This should keep me on track with things I need to do. I did reasonably well with it last year but there’s always room for improvement. 

I did better with the daily planner than the weekly one but I was often going back and filling in several days worth of entries.  It did help though.

2. Pamper myself each week (e.g. take a relaxing bath, paint my nails etc.) Too often I just shower, dry my hair and go. This is what I meant by nourishing my body.

This was a monumental fail.  Probably because we weren't going out much or doing much that warranted making a lot of effort.  The anxiety and lack of motivation didn't help.

3. Weekly date night with Nick – set aside one evening to do something together e.g. watch a film, play a game. Hopefully later in the year we’ll be able to do things outside the house too.

And another fail.  I can probably count on one hand the number of times we had a "date" night.

4. Raise my average daily steps over the year to 6800. Yes I know everyone goes on about 10,000 steps a day but according to my Fitbit my average for 2020 was about 6300. I think increasing it by 500 steps a day is a realistic target.

Well according to my Fitbit my average daily steps over the year in 2021 was 5885. So another fail.

5. Complete a walk each week. Upping the step count is one thing but some weeks I haven’t got very far out of the house. That needs to change.

I definitely had good and bad spells of this but more bad than good - Fail.

6. Do a session on the exercise bike once a week. I have used it about twice since we acquired it from my daughter. As it’s unlikely that exercise classes will be running again any time soon, or that I’d want to join one even when they are, I need to take matters into my own hands – or legs!

I'm not even going to talk about this one - Fail

7. Read 12 books on my TBR pile. I’ve not added many books to this pile in 2020 so hopefully this will continue to reduce the pile.

I read 6 that were definitely on my TBR pile but I also bought more books which I then read.  There are still probably more books in the house now than there were at the start of the year - Fail

8. Complete my reading challenge (52 books for the year)

At last something completed!  I actually read 67 books!  Success!

9. Do the Friday’s Fave Five meme on my blog each week. I went for keeping a gratitude diary last year and it just didn’t happen, but I did manage to do this 43 weeks out of 52 and it does make me think about the good things in my life.

Oh no!  I only managed 30 FFF posts this year - Fail.

10. Blog at least once per week. (This means an original post not jumping on the back of a meme.)

Guess what?  Another Fail - in September I didn't blog at all, not even a meme!

11. Take a photo each week and blog about it. I managed 38 photos last year so room for improvement.

This was going really well until August - and then it ground to a halt. - Fail

12. Complete the A – Z blogging challenge.

Yay - another success!

13. Try out a new recipe or do a bake each month. This didn’t go too well in 2020 but I’m looking into a baking subscription my DIL uses where they send you a kit each month to do a bake. Yes that might sound like cheating but my challenge my rules lol.

Didn't set up the subscription, did very little baking although I did make a banana loaf recently and made gingerbread dinosaurs with the older Grandsons but yep it's still a fail!

14. Lose 12 pounds. Last year my target was to maintain my weight and I more or less did that, although a few pounds crept on at the end of the year. This year I’ve decided I need to be a few pounds lighter at least. (Despite #13 on the list lol)

Ha I maintained my weight.  Oops another fail.

15. Buy a new car. This should be a certainty. We live just outside the London wide area which, from October 2021, will be known as the ULEZ (ultra low emission zone) and our car, which is fairly old and has a diesel engine, will not meet the emission targets being set. This means that every time we enter the zone we would have to pay a fee. No sense in that so we’ll be looking to change our car for one that meets the new requirements before October.

Yay! another success. (Mainly because we couldn't afford not to.)

16. Visit/see Noah & Miles as much as possible. Visits were very limited in 2020 and we’ve only seen Miles once! We have to do better this year, pandemic permitting.

Well we did see more of them this year but still not as much as I would like.  Will this pandemic ever end?  I'm going to count this one as a success though.

17. Visit the beach. I’m sure we can get there at least once in 2021 even during a pandemic!

Fail!

18. Have a weekend away with Hubby. Of course a week or two would be even better but again this will be pandemic permitting.

Well we had a night away that was a present to us - success right?

19. Make a plan of what needs to be done in/bought for the house and put into action. This will need to be done with Hubby and needs to be Covid safe to do.

Well we've got a few jobs done so I'm counting this as success.

20. Garden projects: Make a list of things to do/buy, prioritise and action.

Fail.

21. Be positive! Typically I’m a glass half empty sort of person but I’ve decided I need to try and be more positive about things. 2020 was a horrible year but we came through it relatively unscathed, in a new house and with 3 more grandchildren. Not easy to quantify this one but hopefully it will help overall with all the other things on the list!

Hard to quantify this one.  I've definitely felt up and down this year.  Bouts of illness didn't help and then just when we thought we were beating this virus it gave us Omicron!