Onward to 2022!

I’m carrying on a theme for my blog, of at least one post reflecting and looking forward every new year, and for once I’m keen that we move onward to 2022 and what it will bring! At the tail end of 2020 I made a few suggestions for 2021 (I didn’t go as far as labelling them resolutions, for reasons I explained in last year’s post).

• Always make sure that there is something to look forward to.
• Keep the scale of ambition realistic (given what I know I can control)
• Keep up the exercise/activity.
• Make the most of the situation, whatever it is.

Reflections on 2021

Despite everything 2021 has been a good year for my family and me. Looking back through my pictures we’ve had a lot of fun times.We had one good snow day early on. We all went out and had a snowball fight and then built a snowman. Birthdays and Wedding Anniversaries were marked with festivities and days out. I got promoted at work, and we’ve decided to move to Scotland.

Health

On the whole I’ve been pretty healthy across 2021. I managed not to need direct medical attention for anything. I got my covid vaccination in the spring/summer, and a booster just after Christmas. I kept my exercise levels fairly constant, and I’m within the usual +/-2lbs of the same weight I was at this time last year.

We’ve had covid in the house, the autumn of 2021 has seen a higher level in our area than any of the previous waves. In my scout troop most of the scouts have had it. In early December my daughter’s class at primary school had a wave of infections. She tested positive two weeks from the end of term. The following day my son also tested positive when we were about to send him back to school. He’d been off unwell for a couple of days, but his PCR came back negative. On the Thursday morning he did a lateral flow test before just going into school. So I went to a PCR testing centre for a third time in the same week for his second test.

For about ten days my wife and I expected covid to catch up with us. My son had one dose of the vaccine when he turned 16, and was waiting for his second dose in the early 2022. We kept the windows open, turned the heating down a bit and wore warm layers. I spent a week on a camp bed in my daughter’s room because she wanted to sleep in my bed. Either the vaccine worked or we got lucky, but neither my wife nor I caught covid. Daily lateral flow tests have all been negative (and thankfully remain negative past Christmas).

Reading & Writing

I didn’t publish much in 2021.

A lot of my writing was for job applications in the first half of the year. In the second half the time I might have spent writing blog posts and stories has been spent getting up to speed with my new job, looking for houses and thinking about the handover of my scout troop. This is very much likely to continue well into 2022. I don’t expect to move house until around June 2022 (we need to wait until GCSEs are done). We’ll need a few months after that to get unpacked and sort out schools, clubs etc for the kids.

Reading has been similar this year, although I’ve developed less tolerance for ploughing on with things I’m not enjoying. I’ve read more than 20 books, but only finished off 20. I’m keeping the target for 2022 short as well. It might go back to a book a week in 2023 when we’re all settled.

Onward to 2022!

Goals for 2022

Some of these are the same, but others are different from previous years. I still intend to keep making the most of the situation, whatever it might be, and ensuring that we have things to look forward to.

• Find a new house for the family to live in, and get us settled over the summer
• Make some new friends, and keep in contact with our current ones
• Keep on having things to look forward to
• Climb some munros, and take my family on the hills with me