2019 Goals Recap

I feel like I was only saying this five minutes ago, but another year has come to a close. Linear time continues to amaze and terrify me. This year hasn’t been massively eventful for me, and has mostly been spent learning how to manage my life with a chronic illness. I’ve simply been too tired and miserable to have a meaningful time. I hope to change that in 2020.

Before New Year (and the start of a new decade!) is upon us, I wanted to go back to my goals for 2019 and review whether I’ve completed them or not.

✘ Get back into work

Unfortunately not. It wasn’t feasible for me at the beginning of the year, and also wouldn’t have been fair on potential employers when I was unreliable and unwell. As the year progressed though, I started thinking about it more. I do currently have a couple of open applications, so fingers crossed that I can get back into work in the new year.

✘ Get a tattoo

I probably could have ticked this off in 2019, but I’ve been squirrelling away as much money as I can possibly spare for another, way more exciting, reason. I’ll go over this a little bit later in the post.

✔ Go to the gym 3 times a week

The beginning of the year wasn’t so good for me and the gym. But, in December, I have established more of a routine. Barring being too unwell, I now go to the gym on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This was helped immensely by my Mum joining my gym and becoming my buddy. It makes it so much easier to commit to exercise when you have someone to encourage and chivvy you along.

✔ Save money as much as possible

I outdid myself with saving money this year. I made a lot of sacrifices and went without a lot of things I would have liked. This resulted in being able to afford something HUGE for next year – a trip to Tokyo with my oldest bff! I can’t even begin to describe how excited I am. In all fairness, I wouldn’t be going at all if we hadn’t managed to get both the flights and the hotel for half price. It was like fate talking to us through Expedia, and we seized it.

✘ Blog more

I blogged about my trip to Edinburgh, and that’s about it. It also took me three months to actually complete those three posts, which is shocking. I’ve been doing some drafting this year, to hopefully create a kind of ‘backlog’ of posts. I hope this will make me a bit more productive. I miss blogging regularly, and having perpetual writer’s block is depressing.

✔ Continue volunteering

Another year at English Heritage – I love my colleagues and the office I work in, and I’ll be sad to leave when I finally get back into paid employment. For the meantime, it’s been excellent experience and a real learning curve. I hope that the connections I’ve made there will last for a long time, and I think everything I’ve learned will greatly benefit me in my future career. I will continue to volunteer for as long as I have the time.

✔ Read at least 15 books

Predictably, I smashed this goal. It was in doubt for a little while though – I went through a few months of just not having any energy for reading. It was really out of character. I ‘only’ read 16 books this year and here they are, with handy links if you want to have a peek:

• Books 5-9 of the Surviving the Evacuation series (Reunion, Harvest, Home, Anglesey and Ireland) by Frank Tayell
• Th1rt3en by Steve Cavanagh
• The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker
• Only Dull People are Brilliant at Breakfast by Oscar Wilde
• The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
• The Chalk Man by CJ Tudor
• Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
• Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
• Don’t Wake Up by Liz Lawler
• Humans, Bow Down by James Patterson & Emily Raymond
• Killing Critics by Carol O’Connell
• Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham

✔ Do my Yearly Purge and Laptop Tidy

I completed my Yearly Purge in record time. Because I’ve been doing it for years now, I find that I have less and less to get rid of. Only the things I really want to keep stay and every year I try to minimise a bit more. The laptop tidy took longer, as it usually does, and my files are already a total mess again. Keeping my files and online stuff organised is an endless task, it seems.

✘ Go on more trips

I somehow managed to go on less trips this year. This is mostly due to illness and the fact that I’ve been saving, like, all of my money.

✔ Go abroad

Like last year, this was technically completed as Scotland is a different country. As I said before though, going to another country in Britain and saying I went abroad feels a bit like cheating. But I’m still counting it!

✔ Continue to track habits etc

This has become a habit in itself! Sometimes it can be a pain to draw up the charts that I use, especially when I’m feeling fatigued and listless, but I do like seeing how well (or badly) I’m doing from month to month.

✘ Finish travel scrapbook

I’m officially taking this off any future goal lists. Not because I actually got my shit together and finished it, but because I feel too much pressure to do it and end up just avoiding it. I’m sure that doesn’t make any sense, but that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. Hopefully one day I can feel inspired again and get it up to date.

***
I didn’t get as much done as I really wanted to in 2019, but I need to accept that I’ve been unwell and that that has really limited what I can get done. I’m feeling cautiously positive about the coming year, which I don’t set too much stock by as that’s how I always feel. Even so, I really, really hope that 2020 will be the year I get back to some semblance of normal and get my life moving forward again.

I hope everyone has a very happy new year! What are the goals you’ve set for yourself?