Tag: new year

New Year’s Resolutions 2021

I do my New Year’s Resolutions at the start of April. When the financial year begins. This is when the party truly kicks off!

It also gives me 3 extra months to think of my resolutions. I have still left it to the last minute, though, obviously.

Here are this year’s resolutions/some of last year’s rolled over.

2020 Resolution #1: Run 240 miles. I thought this might have been feasible at the start of lockdown last year. I was running a mile or so every day during my lunch break and was on for the best year of running ever! Each year I’ve tried to increase this number of miles, and each year I have failed. This is partly because I am not built to be a runner. I know people may say this but my body doesn’t physically want me to run. My left foot goes numb after about 15-20 minutes of running and I just really can’t do any more. This is getting dropped as a resolution. It just isn’t helpful to me.

2020 Resolution #2: Paint all my Blood Bowl models. This was unrealistic because the running joke in the Blood Bowl community is that no-one ever achieves this. I managed to paint 1 team and have made up a number of others ready for painting. Our house is currently in a state of disarray due to redecorating that has prevented me from doing any more recently but I will keep this as a resolution as I’ve been learning to paint a bit better, aided by advice from some friends and I’d like to be able to do it better and more. It’s quite a nice relaxing, creative, mindful thing to do.

2020 Resolution #3: Learn to juggle for 5 minutes. I’ve not timed myself but I can juggle quite well now. Blog and proof on this coming soon.

2020 Resolution #4: Practice singing for 1 hour a week. I was doing well and was having online lessons weekly until around last September/October time when I was diagnosed with acid reflux which has been giving me a lot of throat pains making it difficult to sing. I did manage to be part of this recording before that happened, though.

There are my new resolutions. There’s 5 which is a world record.

2021 Resolution #1: Complete painting 2 more Blood Bowl teams. In preparation for being allowed to play in real life again. 2 seems like a realistic number in a year.

2021 Resolution #2: Relax more. I don’t relax enough. I’m always trying to be busy and productive. My wife tells me this all the time and she is right.

2021 Resolution #3: Get well enough to start singing again. I was really enjoying singing when I was doing it. I have definitely improved since taking lessons and practicing, and I want to get back into it again. I will try to put aside some time to test out my voice/throat soon.

2021 Resolution #4: Read 20 books. This can tie in with Resolution 2. When I was commuting I was reading maybe a book a week on average. This calendar year I have only read 1 so far (but I blame George RR Martin for writing ridiculously long books).

2021 Resolution #5: Write in this blog at least once a month. I enjoy writing. Partly for the exercise itself, partly for the memories, partly to get things out of my brain, partly to share stuff I love. It has fallen by the wayside a bit. I’ve been wanting to write up about the first year of being a parent during a panedmic. This is currently 3 months late. Part of the issue is that when I’ve had the time and inclination to write a blog, I’ve written one for my company (I’ve done 7 this year). This helps me longer term in promoting my business and being able to direct clients to blogs rather than explaining the same thing in emails to different clients, but it doesn’t let me get my me stuff out.

New Years Resolutions 2020

For the last few years I have been setting myself New Years Resolutions to start on the 1st of April to tie in with the start of the new financial year (basically it gives me an extra few months to work out what they are going to be).

This year is going to be slightly different as we are spending our lives in isolation. Before I get on to this year’s I’ll review last year’s resolutions:

2019 #1: Run 200 miles
This was reduced from 365 the year before which was pretty difficult. In 2018 I managed about 120 miles. In 2019 I only managed between 70 and 80 (there’s still a couple of days to go). Part of this is due to the mini human that we created taking up a fair amount of my time, and part of it is laziness.

2019 #2: Get to a weight the NHS thinks is healthy
I haven’t managed this. I’ve dropped somewhere between 1kg and 2kg but this still leaves me about 2-3kg higher than the “normal” weight for my height. Part of this is linked with 2019 #1. Most of this drop has been in the last month when I’ve had the time to exercise pretty much every day.

2019 #3: Go vegan
Veganism? Completed it, mate. This was easy, enjoyable and has made me feel physically better (my insides don’t like dairy it seems – which I’d been in denial about for many many years) and mentally better (not hurting the cute wee animals).

So, a mixed bag for 2019. I came up with some of these new resolutions for 2020 prior to the coronavirus. I have amended them slightly in light of this, although some may be easier now.

2020 #1: Run 240 miles
This is a larger number than my target last year, and much higher than I actually completed. The reason is that I reckon I can run most days (at least while we’re isolating) and so 20 miles a month should be an achieveable target. I generally run just over a mile a day, so it gives me around 10 rest days each month. I’d also hope that I can start to increase the distance slightly, although the issues I have with my feet might prevent that.

2020 #2: Paint all my Blood Bowl models
There is a joke within the Blood Bowl community (and I assume the wider wargaming community too) that every player has masses of unpainted models. I would like to paint all of mine. I’m not very good at painting models but I’d hope to get a bit better and YouTube as well as all this time at home should help. I did have a schedule of what I wanted to paint by certian tournaments but those tournaments are now most likely not happening. Since isolating, I have managed to build 2 teams (3 more to go) and then I will start painting them in due course.

2020 #3: Be able to juggle for 5 minutes
For my birthday last year, some friends clubbed together to get me a lot of things on my bucket list. One of those was to learn to juggle. I have been practicing for 5 minutes most days and I’m getting better. I want to be able to juggle 3 balls for those 5 minutes without dropping any. Ideally this would be by my birthday so I’ve managed to achieve it within a year but any time would be good.

2020 #4: Practice singing for at least 1 hour a week
After my 5 minutes of juggling, I have also been practicing singing. My employer contributes £250 towards any lessons of your choosing after 5 years service. I opted to go for singing lessons as it’s always annoyed me that I can’t sing. And I want to spend the time required getting better at it with two goals in mind: singing backing vocals on The Cool Kids version of Firestarter (when we’re actually allowed to meet again) and singing a duet with a muppet version of myself which is an item on my bucket list.