First, a review of last year’s goals.
- Run 500 miles: At 400 miles, I fell well short of my goal. But I learned a thing or two by it. First, you don’t run 500 miles; you run one mile 500 times. Or five miles one hundred times. Or four miles a hundred twenty five times. Or whatever. Need to make those one hundred or two hundred or however many runs happen. Each one. Individually.
- Read Classics: Read enough to form an idea of what was going on with those ancient Greeks and why they influenced Western thought so much, for better and for worse.
- Master beginning Italian: I picked up a bit, but not nearly as much as I wanted to. One has to be able to do more than count up to twenty and ask about the train for Naples. I have gotten somewhat past that, but not far.
- Buy a sailboat: Done. “Four O’Clock” is mine, now, although her name will change. Have not decided what her name will be, though. She’s a twelve foot cat boat a “Beetle-Cat” from Wareham, Massachusetts. Needs to have her keel repainted, which I will do this winter.
- Learn to sail her: Only managed to get her in the water once. This spring I will sail her much more and take some course or another in sailing.
- Submit a book for publishing: Didn’t even come close to finish writing it. Probably should have made the goal to finish writing it, instead.
- Povitica for all my siblings: Done. Even got some useful feedback from Rudy. Dough needs to be thinner. Something to work on.
I blamed 2020 on the pandemic. 2021 was my own doing.
So, what are my goals for 2022? How do I plan to achieve them?
Let’s start off by recycling one of my 2021 goals, run 500 miles. If I really learned something by falling short of that mark in 2021, then I’ll have to put that lesson to use this year. It’s not 500 miles a year, it’s 42 miles a month, 10 miles a week. When will I run this week’s 10 miles? That is the question to ask myself each week. The year will take care of itself.
Reading, even classics, is a pleasure for me, something I do as a matter of course, and probably should not qualify as a goal. So this year, classics or any other type of reading is off my list of goals.
While I did manage to pick up some Italian, attaining some fluency in the language remains one of my unattained goals. By the end of this year I aim to be able to carry on at least a simple conversation in Italian.
Sailing was another area where I set out a goal that was unmet, largely because it was poorly defined. “Learn to sail” is too vague of a goal to measure for success or failure. Attainment of some certification in sailing is much more definite and included in this year’s goals.
Finish that novel AND submit it for publishing.
For my final goal I am going to choose something that might appear to be too vague, as other goals have been too vague, but this one really is not. When I look back on my life thus far, some of the remembrances that bring me the most satisfaction and happiness are the ones where I did something unplanned, spontaneous. This year I want to do one thing that I have not planned and, perhaps, have not yet even imagined. It needs to be something that will, when I look back on it ten years hence will leave me with that same sense of gladness that I did it as I have with some of the other things in my life. Big enough to look back on a decade or more later and something I did not expect at the outset of the year, which is now.
Now is when I start.