What will I do different in 2022?

At the end of 2021, I am thinking about changes over the next year. There will be changes that I don’t anticipate…events requiring me change in some way; those changes I am not going to worry about; I’ll deal with them as they occur. What I’m thinking about for this post are changes that are intentional…that require my action to bring to fruition. Here are some possibilities I’m contemplating:

Releasing myself from some of my daily ‘metrics’ that have accumulated over the years. The one that has certainly gone ‘over the top’ during the pandemic has been book browsing; in 2021, I browsed over 2,000 books! The metric started back in 1985 with the goal of reading a book a week. Maybe some of the others that could be reduced or the metric allowed to float rather than always being a stretch goal for every day.

Look for the unique. Now that my blog has been going for over 10 years, I’m realizing things I repeat again an again…and need to force myself out of the rut more frequently. Sometimes it would be as simple as taking a totally different kind of photograph than I normally do…it would take more effort to go to places I have never been before…or to become more patient in locations where I go frequently to observe them in a new way.

Reverting to a cleaner/neater house. I’ve been gradually getting messier as I’ve gotten older: leaving things out on surfaces rather than putting them away…not vacuuming and dusting as frequently. I want to move back to my younger-self version of housekeeping in 2022.

Moving to live closer to my daughter…within a 30-minute drive seems about right. It would be much better than the current 2-day drive. The situation we’ve be in during the pandemic has made it more important to me. It will be a huge change to move from the house we have lived in for over 25 years and our first long distance move in almost 40 years. There would be a cascade of changes from this one: quickly locating service providers and shopping in the new location, picking new volunteer gigs, etc. There could be tweaks to a new house that would keep us busy for months. And selling our existing house would be a project that would enable the move. The time commitment for this change is higher than anything else we have done in recent years.

Of course – intentions are not sure things. It takes focus and sustained action; there could be events that preclude some of these. Time will tell - I’ve already made a note to follow-up on how these intentions are progressing in July 2022.