Tag new years

To Do in 2022

thisiskrys 1 Comment

I think that even if I wasn’t born in the same month that people usually set their yearly goals I would still choose to do so in whatever my birth month was. Beginning my own personal next trip around the sun just feels like a good time to set intentions for myself, which is why I always wait until the end of January, closer to my actual birthday, and have a god long think about what I want (and need) to achieve instead of rushing to decide the first week of the month.

When I look back at what I wanted to get out of 2021 the results are pretty mixed. I carried over some goals from 2020 and those in particular went especially poorly, but I’d like to focus on successes instead because there are good reasons for (most of) my failures. For instance, while I still have games in my backlog, I did in fact play games there were not Red Dead Online. I did clear the backlog of physical books I owned and even (shocker) started getting books from my local library again after several years of not doing so. I managed a whole year of bullet journaling (which you can read about here). The various weekly online game nights that started during the pandemic are still going pretty strong and are some of the highlights of each of my weeks.

This year is my “golden birthday” (turning 31 on the 31st) and while part of me wants to declare grand intentions re: my job, my living situation, or my love life, the ongoing pandemic has me hesitant to reach out in those areas. I know I shouldn’t let it hold me back because covid is probably going to be part of the rest of our lives, but somehow the situation still feels too precarious. I somehow don’t feel too bothered by the idea of getting sick myself, but I am terrified of the idea of being the one to infect my loved ones. I will likely slowly, casually try making some progress in these areas (especially on the job front because WHOO BOY it’s been rough there lately), but I’m not formally declaring them major goals.

So what am I hoping to accomplish in 2022? Well, there are two really significant bad habits I’ve been grappling with, especially over the last several months, and there’s no time like the present for squaring my shoulders and starting to deal with them.

The first thing I need to do is divorce myself from my fucking cell phone. I don’t even want to think about how many nights I’ve lost to tapping back and forth between Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube and I feel really awful about myself when I realize I have yet again wasted an entire evening to that nonsense. I could be using that time to pursue my hobbies instead, and yet I’m not! My idea for accomplishing this is simple: when I go up to my room after dinner, my phone goes into my pajama drawer until I take it out at bedtime to charge. This way, I should be able to hear it if it rings or if my messages start blowing up, but if it doesn’t then it is basically out of sight, out of mind and that is what I need.

The second thing I need to do is to stop revenge procrastinating everything. You may have heard of the concept of revenge bedtime procrastination, which is basically staying up way too late to do more of the things you don’t get to do during the day. My issue is that I do not just revenge procrastinate at bedtime. Sleep is probably the most significant thing I procrastinate, but I am messing up my own life all day long by just not doing things when I am supposed to do them. Turning up a few minutes late for work is a less consequential one because we don’t clock in/out and my bosses don’t seem to notice or care, but I’ll put off cooking myself dinner until I’m so hungry I forget to put butter in the pan before I crack an egg in it (a real thing I did this week and it was a minor disaster, fml). Dealing with my phone issue will help immensely with this, because my phone is my number one accomplice in this procrastination.

If I can just get these two bad habits under control, I should be able to more successfully do some of the other things I want to this year, because I will simply have more time on my hands. Keeping up with both my daily journal and the one where I write little notes about the books, shows, and games I’m consuming is relatively simple. I did it last year and I’m confident I can do it again. But I want to write more, and try getting better at art, and maybe get back to playing music. I want to play more with photography as well. I did a couple of photoshoots of myself 2021 where I played around with different lighting setups (the photos in this post are from one of them) and it was pretty fun!

I also want to actually post 12 blog posts again. I only got 10 done in 2021, although one of them was a video so it took more time to put together than writing and editing a normal post. It was the first video I’ve made since quietly quitting YouTube a few years ago and I’m quite proud of it. I’d like to make more videos in the future if I have ideas, but I’m not putting pressure on myself. And speaking of proud, I’m actually especially proud of some of the writing I did in 2021. The first one that comes to mind when I think back to my favorite posts of last year is the post I did in June about my biological father, but if I were to call out two other favorites they would be the one I wrote in February about being touch-starved and the one from the beginning of May about how lonely and isolated I’d been feeling that winter/spring. I reread my 2021 posts while writing this one and I can honestly say I still like all of them, which is its own accomplishment.

So that’s what I’ve got cooking for 2022. Is there anything you’re trying to accomplish this year? I hope you can get it done! And I hope I can succeed with mine as well.

New Years I Have Known

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(My first selfie of 2020!)

1. When I was a child the high school in my aunt’s town would hold a First Night event on New Year’s Eve, filling the school with activities and performers. My aunt would bring my brothers and I over to check out a few acts before decamping to her apartment in the building across the street where we would enjoy junk food and struggle to stay up until midnight. I didn’t always make it, but on some of the years that I did the town set off fireworks as the year changed that we could see from the apartment building’s parking deck, the blasts sometimes setting off car alarms in the area, much to my amusement.

2. Most of my New Year’s Eves from the time I could drive have taken the same course: a simple get together with whoever of my friends is in town and available. These gatherings are much like our normal hangouts – video games, takeout, maybe a movie. But around midnight we find a feed of the ball dropping in Times Square and maybe pop open a bottle of sparkling cider or (rarely, we’re not big drinkers) having a little champagne or prosecco if someone has brought it, although it is usually far too dry and bitter for my taste. Low key hangouts like these with my friends are probably the thing I’ve missed the most during the pandemic.

3. I’m not sure what year it was, it was either while I was in college or just after, my friend B invited our group to a New Year’s party at his parents’ house that he and his brother were having. I was a little apprehensive because I knew there would be a bunch of people there that I didn’t know, but enough of my friends were going that I decided it would be fine. It was interesting to see someone else’s traditions. Despite the fact that B and his brother are not Hispanic, they insisted we had to find a Spanish language broadcast of the ball drop for midnight. (I forget the reasoning behind this.) Just past midnight we huddled together outside in the cold to smash a pinata that B’s brother and a friend had built that day. We didn’t have any place to hang it, so someone tall awkwardly held it while trying not to get hit in the process. There were a few little other party games and some good food. All in all, a good, memorable New Year’s Eve!

4. Last year, 2019, my younger brother and his girlfriend hosted a New Year’s Eve party at her parents’ house. I had already been to a game night they held earlier that year, so I already knew the other guests a little and I knew it would be a good time. I don’t often drink, but decided I was in the mood for it (only to be reminded after I sobered up and drove home, that while I love prosecco it does not love me). There was a lot of delicious garbage food to eat and we played Jackbox games and laughed until we cried. Also, the family’s dog was there and ready for attention and pets that I was only too willing and excited to provide. At midnight we found a ball drop on the tv and the party did continue, but I left shortly afterwards because I had sobered up, but was starting to get sleepy. I went home that night very content, having enjoyed myself thoroughly.

5. I thought that this year would be one in the series of New Year’s Eves that I have spent on my own, watching the clock tick past midnight and feeling lonely, but the universe has deemed that that should not be the case. Obviously I’m staying home, but I’ve somehow wound up with invitations to multiple virtual parties. One of them is a session of Red Dead Online that my younger brother plans to stream. The other invitees are members of the D&D group we became part of this year. We’ve had a lot of fun playing all kinds of games together this year. The other invite is to spend an evening with my Massachusetts/upstate New York/college friends playing Among Us (aka “sussin’ and stabbin’”) and chatting on Discord. Usually I’d have seen at least some of them at some point this year, but, again, the plague happened. I’m going to buy myself some good snacks and maybe some alcohol even though I’ve been a bit wary of booze since my ER trip for a kidney stone in September. I’m just going to try to relax and have a good time trying to drown out the dread in my head that 2021 will just be more of the same awfulness that 2020 was, because the calendar flipping over to the new year is not a reset button, but a continuation.

(My last selfie of 2020, snapped when I had to unfortunately go to a mall for the first time since March because I have emergency need of a new winter coat. I was unfortunately unsuccessful.)