It's definitely been a strange three months for everyone, especially as pretty much all of it has been in lockdown. It has had some effect on the goals I had set for this year, but not in the way I was expecting. In fact, working towards most of my goals has been a good way of having some normalcy to my life during these times of change so I've actually appreciated them being there.
British Sign Language Learning
Now, this is one of the goals which I expected to do more of during this time than any of the others, but the truth is that I really haven't. I gave myself a number of tasks to do whilst we had to remain inside and this one kept falling to the back of the queue. I'm not entirely sure why. Possibly because I was enjoying doing some hands-on activities again that I hadn't done in a while and possibly because of the difficulty in finding groups to talk to when you live on the opposite side of the world. Whatever my excuse is this goal has fallen behind and I really need to play catch up now.
So, the plan moving forward is this. Whilst I still can't be part of a group to help bring my learning forward I'm going to go back through the original course I learnt from and practise the words that we were taught there. This will give me time to really get used to signing some very simple sentences and to using all my expressions to help when communicating information, which is important in sign language. To be completely honest, I'm not a very animated person and it's important I learn to get over that if I'm going to pick up this language properly. Once I'm back in the UK and able to meet up with a group to learn more I'll start looking into ones that are near me. Hopefully, by that point, I'll have the basics under my hat.
Financial Fitness.
This goal is the complete opposite to the BSL learning in the fact that I was not expecting it to move forward much at all this quarter and yet it's done a lot better than I was expecting. In fact, I've managed to finish paying off the credit card debt I incurred buying the car here in New Zealand and have managed to build back up my Emergency Fund. Whilst I have managed to find some online jobs they haven't really been paying much and the main reason for me being able to do this has been due to some money I got back after doing my tax returns. I have to admit I wasn't sure about whether to use it this way or whether to keep it in my current account in case I needed it in the near future, but I decided it would be better off making more money in my savings account and reducing the amount I would have to pay in the long run on my credit card. I could always dip into these again if I needed to later. Obviously getting a tax return isn't something everyone gets to have, but I almost see it as putting away savings every month during the year and then getting to use it once that year is over.
I am hoping to be returning to the UK by the end of this quarter and find a job pretty soon after that, which means that the next goal of building up a 6-month fully-funded emergency fund is still a possibility as long as we live quite simply and spend as little money on expenses as is possible. I'm also looking to find some side jobs as well which will bring in some extra money and get us to that goal a little quicker.
Being a Tourist
Obviously, this hasn't been quite as easy as it should have been due to Covid-19, but we've been lucky in New Zealand in the fact that we've been given a bit more freedom earlier on than most countries have due to the low numbers of Corona cases here. We've already managed to do some walking as the levels were dropped to 3 and then 2, you can read about them here, and then a drop to level 1 meant we got to visit the Sky Tower and Rangitoto Island. Two locations we hadn't planned on visiting originally. We're also looking at doing the trip to the South Island we had planned before it was cancelled due to Covid-19 at the end of March. I'll keep you posted on that.
So the plan for next quarter is not only to, hopefully, travel south, but also start researching places in the UK we can visit once we've actually returned. This will mainly be in the Devon area to begin with as that's where we'll be located when we first return to the UK, but we hope to go further afield in the not so distant future.
Paperless Productivity.
Still testing different apps to see if I can find the one that works best for me. This quarter it's been Teux Deux, Actions by Moleskine, and TickTick. Right now Teux Deus and TickTick are on the top of my list, but there are still a few apps to go before I can decide if using an app instead of a physical diary really works for me and if it's one of these.
And that's it. Still working my way through the goals as best I can. Whilst I do have plans for them this next quarter I have to admit that my main priority right now is actually listening to what's going on around me in this long-overdue civil rights movement and to learn as much as I can whenever I can. So maybe my own goals won't go as far as I had hoped at the start of 2020, but I'm absolutely fine with that as long as I keep moving forward.
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