Revisiting My Goals for 2021

This morning I received an email from one of my favourite running companies reminding me that there are eight weeks left in 2021 and 48 shopping days until Christmas. Where did this year go?!

In early January, I wrote a post setting out my goals for the year and with two months left to achieve them, let's check how I am doing.

Goals I Have Met

"Hand with a quill pen" by Monceau is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

In my goals for research, reading, and writing I have made some fairly good progress! 

• I have submitted two long-overdue book reviews, now published in Speculum and History: Reviews of New Books. (There is also a review I remember submitting to Early Medieval Europe but which doesn't seem to have ever been published. I should check on that...) I then proceeded to add two new book reviews to my plate; one of which is a comparison of two translations, one in German and one in English. So two steps forward, two steps back.
• I submitted a final draft of my book to my editor in late August so my goal of editing my book is in hand.
• I haven't counted lately but am confident I've read more than 52 books this year.
• I successfully pitched a 'How I Do History' feature to Contingent magazine, sent them a draft, and am presently waiting for the editor's feedback.
  

Running has been relatively successful too.  

• I managed completed NYCRuns Subway Challenge II's Train Operator run: 691 miles in 26 weeks, which I did between September 2020 and March 2021.
  
• I have made some good use of Youtube as a resource to help me warm up for runs, cool down after them, and do some foam rolling. I haven't been as good about using it for strength training and have done a grand total of two abs workouts, so still some progress to be made here.

Lastly, in the kitchen things have been going well.

• While I was in Oxford, I expanded repertoire of quick and healthy meals to include stir fries with tofu (not in any way an 'exotic' ingredient but still one that is new to me).
  
• On average I have tried one new recipe a month. August through October were very busy months, so I did less experimental cooking--when you don't have a lot of time, it's easier to stick to what you know.
  

Goals Underway

"Stack of Books - 023" by Daniel Weber is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

 

In academic and research terms, the goal that was personally most meaningful to me was one I haven't fully achieved yet. I wrote in January that I wanted to   

Celebrate other people's good news. I sometimes feel that academic has a toxic culture of always finding fault, rather than celebrating achievements. Some of my most joyful moments as a historian last year came from celebrating others' achievements or having them celebrate mine. I want to be the kind of person who enjoys a colleague's article or book, hears about their grant or job success, and sends them a note of congratulations.

I can definitely point to some instances where I have done this but many more where I could have done and didn't. Still, with eight weeks left in the year there are definitely more opportunities to celebrate colleagues and friends.

Running-wise,  I still would like to try to use the local track for speed workouts at least twice. (I chickened out of running on the Roger Banister Track when I was in Oxford, though I went past it several times.) And Lincoln has a Santa Fun Run on Sunday 12 December; I may be running the virtual Honolulu Marathon on that date, but I could always run it in my Santa top and hat.

I set myself some ambitious goals for my writing and am hopefully about meeting these.

• Although I haven't quite been able to post on this blog once a week, I will have produced at least 52 posts during 2021, which feels like an accomplishment.
• I still have time to pitch at least one story to JSTOR Daily.
• I had forgotten that I'd set myself the goal to write an essay about long-distance relationships in the 1918 Influenza pandemic; it is technically still possible I could do so, but increasingly unlikely.
• While I probably won't submit a new draft of at least one academic article to a journal by December 2021, I have an article to redraft and a chapter to finish, both of which I want to get off by the end of this month, so I'm putting this one firmly in the 'doable' column!
  

In terms of my reading, I can still meet my goals to:

• Read at least three books in each of the following categories: history, short stories, and poetry. I'm pretty sure the short story and poetry categories are in the bag; the history category is still in progress. My own rules for this category is that the book has to be written for a general audience, not a scholarly one, so I can't count any academic books (or books I've reviewed!) towards this category.
• Share more books! I've just lent a friend Murder Must Advertise, and I'm hoping to write more about Dorothy Dunnett and Lois McMaster Bujold this month, so this one should be checked off my the end of the month.
  

My ambitious goals for my knitting, on the other hand, are not currently achievable. I wanted to make:

• six pairs of socks
•  a hat
• mittens
• a stuffed animal from the Dovestone Smallholding book
• and finish a large cabled blanket that has been in progress since 2015

Some combination of these is still achievable but at this point I'm not sure which it will be. The hat and mittens might happen, or just one of them. The blanket awaits a major blocking and sewing job before I can begin to tackle the border.

And finally, my charitable and volunteering goals are still achievable.

• I give a monthly donation to the Trussell Trust, a UK organisation that supports foodbanks, though I may need to top this up at the end of the year to equal my takeaway spending. 
• I am still trying to get registered to volunteer with Reenage Call Companions, though I have fallen somewhat behind on this.
•  AgeUK's Vitals for Veterans Programme seems to have stopped as the pandemic has changed, but there are other things I could volunteer to do.

Not Happening

"The Start and Finish Line of the 'Inishowen 100' Scenic Drive" by Andrew_D_Hurley is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

 

There are a number of things won't achieve this year. Probably the biggest was my goal to finish the 2021 Manchester Marathon, in under four hours, uninjured and if possible smiling--I ran the race in 4:20 and was NOT smiling as I finished, though I did so afterwards. I did managed the uninjured part of things, so that's good.

I will absolutely not be able to knit six pairs of socks by the end of the year, but might be able to finish at least another pair or two before Christmas.

In terms of trying to limit my takeaway consumption, there have definitely not been two months where I never ordered food delivery or picked up a takeaway; though there have been some months where I only ordered one, the overall average is probably over that. During the earlier part of the pandemic I got out of the habit of doing top-up shopping at my neighbourhood grocery store, but started doing this again while I was in Oxford and then while I got through the start of term madness here. Smaller, more grocery trips are a good strategy for avoiding the temptations of food I didn't cook.

Looking back through this years post, I see I have only produced five posts tagged 'late antiquity'; somehow I thought there were more! Possibly, because I usually take longer to write those posts, they loom a bit larger in my mind. While I could, technically, still write seven more posts on late antiquity to produce twelve for the year, my other writing goals dump this one pretty firmly into the 'not happening' box.

What are your goals for the rest of the year?

Whatever they are, I hope they bring you joy and fulfillment, and that you go easy on yourself for anything you are not able to do.