Looking Back on 2021

[€uroMeinke]

I used to record this stuff every year here, so since I'm about to renew the domain name again, I thought I'd return to some of my old practices.

So, stepping back for a moment, 2020 was a year where I threw all resolutions out around June, the pandemic pretty much put the kibosh on most of my plans and intentions. Coming into 2021 though I had some hope that I might be bale to do a few things and adopted a list of 21 things for 2021, here they are:

1. visit Death Valley or a place I haven’t been to before - Didn't make it to Death Valley but did visit a dear friend in Michigan this Summer and attended a wedding in Felton, so this is a win
2. Get a Long Beach library card - The Libraries finally opened again so I could complete the last task of getting a physical library card - win
3. Host a Salon - Yeah, nope
4. Host a fondue - Shared a fondue with friends for my birthday, not sure I can claim to have "hosted" so I give this one 75%
5. Indulge and share a curiosity at least once a week - Nice idea but never got it going - fail
6. Return to Palm Springs - Returned in October, it was lovely, win
7. Return to Joshua Tree - Did not make it back this year, still on my radar, but nope
8. Join a new online community - Kind of? Been subscribing to some philosophy podcasts and joining their socials, but not a lot of traction yet, so technically yes, but I think really more another 75%
9. Use Duolingo to learn French - Yeah, never picked that up again - I want to learn, but not there yet.
10. Rip 100 singles or other vinyl that never made it to streaming - I really want to do this but failed again this year, hoping it becomes an easier task after I clean up my desk and can have the turn table ready to spin.
11. Scan family photographs and artifacts - No, this one's just to vague
12. Clear clutter from the garage - Ha ha ha ha, I added more this year so this is sort of a double fail if that's possible
13. Explore ways to exploit my ministry - Became a minister to marry some friends, seemed like an opportunity to do more and have some fun with it - but no
14. Visit a local museum/gallery - became members of the new Academy Museum, so this is a win
15. Add something from an imaginary life to my wardrobe - fun idea but to vague to execute, will have to rethink this one
16. Attend a contemporary philosophy lecture - listed to podcasts? but that wasn't my goal - covid killed this one so fail
17. Reach out to any friend I haven’t heard from in a month - I still let too much time go between keeping connected, fail here but I'm trying
18. Write a thank you to anyone who inspires me - sent a note to Sandra Tsing Loh, & Overthink Podcast this year, could have done more, but I'll count this as a win
19. Find more ways to play in the office/studio - Again too vague, I did make it a little more functional but now thanks to the pandemic it is now primarily a work space
20. Read (and translate) my father’s post war journal - I started this, but didn't continue, will work on this some more this year and maybe brush up on my German
21. Complete our will - the folder sits on my desk right in front of me, fail for now, will try again in 2022

So that's how I did, still finalizing my list for 2022 so I'll try to post that later. How did you do?