Usually in the middle of the year, I do a post to see how I’m getting on with my new year plans and goals. This year I was expecting it to be hilariously bad since I had no idea I’d be spending 6 months mostly at home, on furlough from my part time job and adapting to life in a pandemic. Surprisingly, that’s not the case though, so here’s how I’m doing.
Read 52 new books
I’m currently on track with 34 of 52 books read despite a lot of comfort rereading. Some of that is short comics but I also read a few huge books that took weeks to finish. Pretty confident of completing this.
I did laugh at the bit about having 37 unread books on my Kindle and trying not to buy more. I now have 50!
Do more crafts
While I didn’t set aside specific making time, lockdown made me very crafty. I would call this a success already but I’d like to keep it going so I don’t fall out of the habit again.
Make more zines
I wanted to aim for a zine a month and I made 3 in the first 5 months. That’s slowed a lot now though and I’ve been spending more time writing blog posts for here and SCK than zinemaking. I hope I can manage a couple more before the end of the year.
Experiment with video
This hasn’t really been possible being at home all the time but I did made a video of my Animal Crossing island, and learned how to use iMovie, so that’s a good start and I can build on it when there’s more interesting things to film.
Make some business plans
This is the only one that has been thrown out because it is impossible to make long term plans during a pandemic! I’ve learned an awful lot about my business this year though so I’ll definitely be coming back to this once we get through Christmas.
Spend less money
Nothing like fear of the unknown to keep your spending in check. I hardly spent any money for the first half of the year, instead squirrelling it away in my savings. Things have been less dire than I feared though so I’ve started spending my self-employed grant from the government on new tools and products. I do still need to catch up on my accounts though.
Overall, this year has been going a lot better than expected and I don’t need to make any big changes. We’ll see how I feel about making plans again in January.
