2021 Resolutions

I’m beginning to think New Years resolutions should almost be like birthday wishes: you should keep mum or else they won’t come true. At least, not immediately.

That’s actually something interesting to think about. What is the “due date” for any New Years resolution? It’s hard to say, unless a time stamp is specifically part of the resolution (like a few years ago when I wanted to save $x by dd-mm-yyyy).

Then there’s the whole 40-before-40 list I slowly have been chipping away at. That’s basically a whole bunch of resolutions. I did join a bookclub this year, and we’re four or five books in at this point. I did meet people outside my colleagues and in the few months I could I started socializing; even had a friend over for dinner. I finally got to a dentist (hell, I even found one I LIKE!). Ironically, once gyms closed I got in shape and am wearing clothes that haven’t fit in over 5 years.

Book club pick, Vivaldi on vinyl, and chai tea latte. Not bad for a pandemic.

But were any of these “resolutions”? And did I complete these goals in a reasonable amount of time?

With at least the beginning of 2021 my biggest challenge by far is going to be “time management.” Honestly the pandemic and whole work from home thing has been (knock on wood) highly productive for me. Here’s a typical pandemic morning for me:

• Wake up at 0530 or 0600, get coffee and maybe breakfast. Do the NY Times crossword puzzle, read some articles.
• At 0630, get dressed. Make sure all technology is charged and ready to go. Respond to emails, pull up worksheets, assign homework for later. Get all my waters, etc., lined up for…
• From 0730-1100, teach solidly with basically no break.
• 1100-1200, do 30-45 minutes of yoga and take a quick shower. Maybe grab brunch if I didn’t grab breakfast.
• 1200–? Meetings, office hours, etc.

This is great. Not only do I get to relax and do the crossword puzzle, but I also get to work out for 30-45 minutes daily as a post teaching “treat.” Now what’s going to have to happen as we return to “normal”:

• By 0630, I will need to be in my car, with a bag packed with any and all technology, etc., needed for the entire day. If I have to teach at 0730 and commute, I don’t just need commuting time. I also need time in case the commute is long for some reason. I will need time to scrape my car. I will need time to trek on potentially icy cobblestones from my car to my office. Walking and driving will eat at least an hour that I’m not getting back, and where I’m not really able to work.
• That time between me arriving on the safe/early side and me starting to teach is going to be different. My workplace tracks sites that I go to; they save passwords and user names. So there will be no crossword. I can’t even check CNN for fear that that’s somehow too political. I can check work email and assign homework. That’s about it.
• Go ahead and laugh, but staying hydrated will be a challenge. There are no water fountains functioning due to COVID restrictions. I also probably will not want to take off my mask/shield to drink while in the classroom. And I will have to speak louder and enunciate more in a mask/shield.
• After teaching…depending on how “normal” things are, that hour in before times was typically spent with colleagues walking to a local coffee shop. That’s nice and I do miss that interaction. But spending an hour going to a coffee shop is not going to help my waist or budget. I’m not going to be able to workout until I’m home for the day, and practically speaking…when you leave home at 0630, do you really want to work out when you get home at 1500 or later and there’s no dinner, and there’s laundry to do and PPE to clean, and you have to do this all over again tomorrow? It will be hard to find the incentive.

So I guess that’s my main resolution for this year: do not let a change in schedule ruin the progress made in the pandemic to my mental and physical well-being. Do not let a return to “normal” ruin the positives I’ve managed in the “not-normal.”

Then, of course, there are the other desires which I realize in stating them may not come true this year including:

• Keep getting slimmer. This can be accomplished by cutting back on alcohol (something that did pick up in the pandemic). Or by continuing to eat fresh every day, or not frequenting coffee shops and sports bars. Maybe I should add a specific workout goal of conquering the eight angle yoga pose.
  

How bad-ass would THAT be?

• I would like to reorient myself with foreign languages. At one point in my life I was almost fluent in German, and would read Le Monde regularly. But like anything else, if you don’t practice, you lose what you had. And I’m beyond rusty. Hell, the last paper I had to translate for work was in Russian, so even work isn’t helping on this front!
• I’d like to save enough money for a healthy down payment on a (town)home. It’s time I start growing that kind of personal wealth, and not throw $1500/month away on “rent.” There’s also the whole foreclosure/eviction moratorium thing, and the nontrivial likelihood that rents will increase next year. This may be a level of adulting I need.
• I feel like I need to push myself intellectually and in ways my profession doesn’t naturally accomplish. I have so many books that are ones I feel I “should” have read, in part because I own them, but which honestly I haven’t finished. Infinite Jest, or really anything by David Foster Wallace (and I’ve got multiple titles), immediately springs to mind. Or Knausgaard’s My Struggle. Or Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night (bonus points: I have an English translation as well as the original French).

Anyway, that’s more than enough to keep me busy. Who knows when it’ll get done but…as history has shown…it will eventually be done.