We made it, everyone! We made it to the Gregorian year 2020, a year I’ve mostly associated with cyberpunk and dystopian futures… bad news, this is pretty much the dystopian cyberpunk future William Gibson warned us about. But there’s still some cause for hope. At least, I still have hope.
I rarely do “resolutions” because they are sources of stress for me when I fail to keep them. The only resolution I made for the past two years is one I’ve learned from Dave Gonzalez, podcast host of The Storm: don’t fall down. It’s simple, straight-forward, positive in nature, and there’s no big stakes riding on its success or failure. And for 2019, I made it! I did not fall down at all last year. I’ll repeat the intention this year, with hopefully successful results, and no great shame if I don’t.
However, there are things I would like more of in my life this year. Wanting more of something good is normal, and since it’s vague enough, I can just keep these in the back of my mind, and use them to direct me towards better and more enjoyable experiences.
In 2020, I would like more:
More reading – Goodreads tells me I read 15 books in 2019. I can read 16 books this year; that seems doable.
More writing – On my blog, I published 91 posts in 2019, for a total word count of 52,892 words. That’s enough to win a NaNoWriMo, spread out over 12 months instead of one. And that’s with a huge gap in posts at the start of the year. I can write more, and the more I write, the more I seem to have to say.
More movement – I miss running. If you go back in the archives, you’ll see posts about running on a regular basis; both training runs and races. I want to move more in 2020 than I did in the last year. The Lose It! app on my phone tells me I took 1,352,414 steps last year. Is that a lot? Seems like a lot, but it’s just walking. It’s an average of 3,696 per day. I can do better.
More cosplay – I enjoy dressing up in costumes to connect to media and entertainment I enjoy. I only really have two costumes at this point: my Fallout Vault-Suit, and my Old Luke Skywalker costume. I have plans for more, and dreams to improve the ones I already have. I am going to Emerald City Comic Con in March, so I have a goal to get started. It’s fun, creative, and social! I want to do it more.
More travel – I love road trips, I love seeing parts of the world I’ve never seen before, I love getting out of my home town. Last year I think the farthest I traveled was to the coast and back, a couple of times. Travel costs money, though, so that’s a limiting factor. But there are ways to cut down on the costs of that: traveling with someone else, for example. As mentioned above, I’m already planning to visit Seattle in March, so that’s someplace I haven’t seen in a while!
More live music, more karaoke – I’ve gotten into listening to podcasts a lot, especially when I’m home alone or in my car. I think it’s because I’m a little lonely; having the voices of other people in the background helps me feel less alone. I would like to replace some of that time with listening to music because it stimulates a different part of my brain. In addition, though, I want to go out and sing in public — my birthday last week was spent in a karaoke booth at Baby Ketten Klub with my friends, and I loved it. And some of my favorite memories of 2019 were attending concerts with my friends. Want to do that more. Maybe just wandering from club to club in Portland and finding new music… about which I can also write and post here.
More kindness – The world needs more of this. We are all connected to each other, in many ways. This seems touchy-feely, but I would much rather push back against the darkness with kindness and compassion than with hatred and anger. Sure, anger is often justified, but can we use that passion for the protection of the vulnerable, and punishment of the abusive powerful (and maybe more of a focus on the former than the latter)?
What do you want to see more of in 2020? I’ll leave my comments open for a few days. Feel free to say hello and drop a note!
I would like to see if fewer people scamming others. I just got off the phone with Turo trying to cancel a reservation for somebody that appears to be trying to scam me. I got rerouted in Turo several times And I still have one more call to make before it’s all done.
Oh no! That’s no good. Hope you get it all sorted out, friend. (Also, hello! This might be your first comment on my blog!)