New Year’s Goals 2022: How They Went

It took me a little longer this year, but, like I said, here’s how my goals for 2022 shook out! As I wrote after New Year’s, I purposely gave up on a lot of these, because I realized I didn’t want to do them anymore. That’s OK–and I hope, if you’re struggling to feel like doing something similar is OK for you, parts of this recap (and/or reading about Marie Kondo) will give you the social support you need to take that step!

1. Enough German to understand most of what I hear on Tatort instead of just the general gist… without subtitles.

Upon consideration, I defined my goal here poorly. The way I’ve written it, it seems like I expect myself to follow spoken German as well as I follow spoken English, my first language, which isn’t a realistic target. I can’t follow spoken French as well as I can follow English, and I learned that language as a child and took French immersion in high school.

I did start watching Tatort without subtitles. It was more difficult, but I know the challenge helped me learn more.

2. Enough Spanish to get at least 60% on an online level A2-ish test.

17/24 = 70.83% Even better, when I looked at the answers, I understood what I’d got wrong and why (among other things, I’m bad at remembering where accents go… sigh)

3. Enough Arabic to pass an online beginner-level Arabic test.

Nope, not even close, though I’ve been diligent in my lessons. Meta-lesson learned: it’s much harder to pick up a new language when you also have to pick up a new alphabet. Still, the occasional resemblance to a language I already know (Hebrew) does help. I sometimes wonder, though, if my skill at taking tests is leading me to find shortcuts to getting the right matching/multiple-choice answers on Duolingo without doing any deeper learning. I guess only one way to find out, as the lessons get harder.

4. Enough tae kwon do to (re-)earn my orange belt.

I got my act together after term ended and sent in my exam video mid-May. The 10-minutes-training-session-every-day strategy really did work well for me. By the end of May, I learned I’d passed!

5. What my next major writing project is.

On January 1, 2023, I didn’t know, yet. In part, I didn’t feel the drive for any new big idea, and, in part, I was waiting to learn whether I should keep working/how I should keep working on some older, big ideas. But I did learn that that’s fine.

Now, a little later in the year, I finally have some sense of the new story I want to work on and what I want to do with the older big-idea MSs. Maybe there’s something to patience after all!

6. Whether this blog is still right for me.

Taking the pressure off myself to produce a new blog entry every couple weeks really supported my mental health throughout the year. It also helped ease my social anxiety about putting my words and not-always-fully-formed ideas out there for anyone to see.

But I do sometimes like blogging–I think I’m happier doing so at my own speed. I don’t want to end this blog forever and ever, but I do want to keep managing my energy in healthier ways going forward. So I’ll keep my more sporadic posting schedule for now.

7. Whether I can write a short story per month.

First half of the year: nailed it! Sometimes, writing felt tedious and difficult, but, overall, it was really fun to write six different short pieces, developing a bunch of ideas.

Second half of the year: aaaaah everything is too much! No more short stories or writing of any sort for a while! Okay, maybe at the end of the year when I finally started to recuperate a little.

So, um, I guess technically I did learn this one. I just found out that the answer for this year was “no, I can’t.” But that’s OK; it’s better than “yes, I can… by destroying my health.”

8. How to deadlift 225 lb. (aka two 45-lb plates on each side of the bar), and

9. How to do 1 dip (at a dip station).

I realized in the first half of the year that I was no longer interested in doing these two things for their own sake. I had trouble convincing myself to do strength training for fun and finally figured out that maybe it was all right to leave it alone for a little while. My goal is functional strength for the activities I enjoy, and once more of those activities started up again, I had more time to enjoy that strength in context instead of setting arbitrary quantitative goals.

10. How to carve/whittle something out of soapstone or wood.

My sister, my SIL, my mom, and I did some soapstone carving kits together over Zoom for Mom’s birthday. (We bought them from this Etsy store.) I think they turned out great! I use mine as a fidget turtle all the time.