I know a lot of people don’t like the idea of New Year’s resolutions as they think of them as a way of setting yourself up to fail.
Colin always has small handful of resolutions. I’m a lover of a list on the other hand, and come January 1st can find myself with up to 25 resolutions, or intentions, covering every aspect of my life. I always see them as something I’d like to try to do though, and if I get to the end of the year and realise that I didn’t achieve them, which is usually the case with about 50% of my intentions, I’ll either shrug my shoulders and forget about them or add them to my list for the following year.. I see them as suggestions – a could-do list – rather than something that I need to beat myself up about if I get to December 31 and haven’t done.
For example, every year since I can remember I’ve written down an intention to listen to new music and discover new artists in the year to come, and I never ever manage. I’ll download a playlist on Spotify of new sounds for that particular year and then forget to listen to it. The only new artist I discovered in 2021 was Olivia Rodrigo, courtesy of our kids!
I also promised myself I’d do Duolingo every day this year as I’ve been brushing up on my stale Russian and trying to learn Swedish. I did it quite often, but every day just didn’t happen. And I had a huge, ambitious list of podcasts I was going to listen to by the end of 2021, that didn’t happen either.
With that in mind, here are my intentions for 2022 –
Swim 25 lengths at our local lido, Jesus Green Lido. And it’s 90m long, so those are quite big lengths. I’ve done lots of outdoor swimming in the past twelve months, in wonderful locations, but I need to work on distance. I’ve set myself this as a goal, and am also thinking of signing up to a swimming challenge later on in the year. Being in the very fortunate position of having an outdoor swimming coach as a husband, I’m hopeful I’ll ace this one.
Run 5k without stopping. Confession – I don’t really like running. I got quite good at it years ago, but it was never something I enjoyed doing in the way other people seem to. I enjoyed the sense of achievement afterwards though, and loved doing it with Colin who was always great at encouraging me to keep going and not stop. This morning Colin went out for a run and I wished I’d joined him – he’s always saying that if I persevere I’ll end up enjoying it, and I would like to be able to run 5k as I was once able to do without having to stop and walk. Will be starting this week!
Continue to try and find ways to cut down on our plastic use and live more sustainably. I think we do OK on this as a family, but there are always ways to cut down further. Here are some of the changes we’ve made so far – and in 2021, we improved on that again by cutting down on car use and cycling more (moving to Cambridge helped a lot!), switching to a veg box delivery, getting smarter about waste and making consumer choices that favoured sustainable companies. In 2022 we want to build on that. We’ll be looking out for local events to get involved in, and continuing to share plant based recipes and stories of sustainable living with our growing audience.
Take our camper van to Europe! We’re trying not to get too excited about this one as we’ve been here before (in January 2021!) Back in the pre-pandemic era, when we bought our camper van, we planned an amazing two week European holiday with the van for summer 2020. Of course, we ended up cancelling it, and then didn’t take it in 2021 as a multi-country visit juggling the entry requirements of various countries didn’t seem feasible. This year, we really hope that it will finally happen and that we’ll be able to take our tour of some of Europe’s best hiking and swimming spots this summer. Watch this space!
Creating and maintaining good boundaries – when I look back at moments of stress and unhappiness in 2021, many of them were down to not having good boundaries in place, and I’m going to make sure that these are better, and stronger in 2022. One of the things that has helped me in 2021 is a regular digital detox – switching my phone off for a couple of days or longer over holidays, ensuring that the important people in my life know how to get hold of me if they need me. A firm boundary between real life and the online world is a really important one to maintain and one I’ll be working on this year.
The most important thing for me with all of my 2022 intentions, though, is to see them as just that. They’re not written on tablets of stone, they’re simply suggestions – so I won’t beat myself up if they don’t happen. I’ll update on our progress via this blog and Instagram – looking forward to getting started 🙂