Another year has gone by. And what a year it was. Kinda terrible actually. Even though 2020 was a bad year in many aspects, I was feeling kind of good. Not so in 2021.
Not sure why, but the depressing reality of pandemic life caught up with me. Working from home for so long finally took its toll. What did not help is that my running came to a halt and I did not have any big goal to works towards.
Still, it doesn't help dwelling on the bad. Last year had some good things, things I enjoyed:
- Together with my girlfriend we learned how to ride the unicycle. It's definitely the most inconvenient form of transportation possible and you look dorky as hell, but it was fun 🤓
- Made the transition to "barefoot" running. Well, mostly. The transition is a slow process and it is still impossible the run as far or as fast as before. But, it's getting there. Currently I run most miles in my Xero Z-trek sandals.
- Launched a side project: AboutNextMatch (Dutch only). It's an app for sport teams that want to keep a shared calendar and track attendance.
- Spend quality time with friends. Looking back at my calendar, we have been having diner with friends a lot. Since getting together in bigger groups was forbidden for most of the year, these evenings were a real highlight and something to be grateful for.
- Started birdwatching (and listening!) at the beginning of the year. For Dutch readers who want to give it a try, the first season of the Vogelspotcast was very enjoyable.
- In the last days of the year a new version of this blog was published. Smaller and faster, simpler and waaay more up-to-date. More details will follow in a separate post.
Recommendations
A short list of things I enjoyed over the last year and would like to recommend:
- 📺 A Mile an Hour by Beau Miles.
- 🎧 Bring Me Your Love by City and Colour.
- 📖 The Last Day by Andrew Hunter Murray.
- 🎙️ Stephen Fry's 7 Deadly Sins.
Goals for 2022
My main goal for next year is to pick up where I left off in 2020: try new things regularly. Mixing things up gives new perspectives and new energy.
Trying out something new every month will be the aim. Some of the themes on my list are:
- Cutting down on my news consumption.
- Trying intermittent fasting.
- Try a new sport (most probably swimming).
- Reading books by new authors and listening to new music.
- Spend some more time birdwatching this spring
Some other goals that are on my list:
- Keep running ("barefoot" or on minimal shoes). I want to be able to run a sub-20 minute 5K again and want to be able to run 20K long run. Maybe even try my own "Mile an Hour" marathon.
- Programming-wise I'd like to try some my hand add a static site builder (like Jekyll) and a headless CMS (like statamic).
- Crowd-source more of the content I consume, be it news, music or books.
That's it. Wishing you all a healthy and good 2022! If you have any good recommendations for me, let me know in the comments.