I re-read my 2020 post before I started writing this one. If nothing else, I can say that 2021 was better than the year before it. Not as much better as we had hoped, of course, but better. There was that brief, heady period back in June when we were 4/5 vaccinated here, and it seemed like the end was in sight, and then… well. Not really surprising that I slid into a funk over the summer. That seems to be lifting, although we are now staring into the maw of an unnervingly warm winter.
So what did we do this year?
Finance: Savings are steady. We are moving our money out of Bank of America for climate reasons. Hello, credit union!
Home: We got a lot of stuff fixed and got rid of some stuff we aren’t using (I have rediscovered Freecycle). It’s far from a “room of one’s own,” but I do at least have a workspace now. House ownership seems as far away as ever, so I guess we should continue trying to make this place comfortable in the meantime. Got some new bookcases this month, that’s always fun. I experimented with a bunch of sustainable products this year, and enjoyed my little driveway garden.
Work: No-longer-new job is going fine. I have divested myself of two volunteer obligations. Hopefully the result will be a less frazzled me in ’22.
Writing: My goal this year was to treat writing like a serious thing, which I did pretty well until the summer pandemic spike and attendant mood crash. A lot of activity went on here, but not much got finished. Much of the year was spent in querying, editing, and preparing for self-publishing two projects next year; these things don’t happen entirely on my schedule. I did work on a couple of drafts for new books, but did not get as far as I had hoped with those. I have written dozens of letters, however, since I discovered Penapalooza.
Knitting: Very nearly the entire year was spent on one project, which is now done and gifted– yay! I also bought a shameful amount of yarn to power me through ’22.
Reading: As of this writing, I read 39 books in 2021. I might add one or two to the total still. 22 of those were new reads, most of the remainder a Terry Pratchett binge I went on this fall. 14 were non-fiction, two were epic poetry, one was whatever you call The Secret Commonwealth, and one a novella. My favorite non-fiction read was How to Do Nothing, which I still think about regularly as I walk around the neighborhood, and my favorite new-to-me fiction read was The Dispossessed. Nothing like catching up on books the same age as me!
Media: We still haven’t been back to a movie theater since Onward that last weekend before everything shut down. The eldest child and I watched a lot of TV this year, much of which I liked (Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts was my favorite) and some of which I did not care for (Centaurworld). We seem to be in a grand period for animated shows. This month we’ve been working our way through the Ghibli catalog, most of them old friends, but there were a few I either hadn’t seen at all or haven’t watched recently.
There was a bunch of other stuff, of course, but looking back on the year, much of my activity seems to have happened in fits and starts. I did yoga off and on, running off and on, languages on and then decidedly off for months now. We saw friends a handful of times before gathering started to seem like less than a good idea again (although at least the youngest is vaccinated now). There hasn’t been much continuity anywhere except for hiking. I am so happy to have found hiking this year! It’s gotten to the point where I am cranky all week when I don’t get out on the weekend.
Could have been a lot worse. Next up: 2022 planning.
R Jean Stevenson 