Okay, we all know what I'm going to say here - this year has been a funny year, nothing has really gone to plan, circumstances have meant that what I had originally planned to do wasn't possible.........I could go on but I won't. We know all of this already. So, I'll just get into the goals and how they're going or not.
British Sign Language Learning
I seemed to have completely lost the motivation to carry on working on this. It's not that I don't find it interesting or don't want to learn this language anymore, because I do. It's more that after doing the job applications and trying to get money back on my cancelled flights I don't really want to do anything else that requires this type of brain activity. For now it's taken a back seat, and that's okay as I don't want to make it into a chore I have to do. I'll get back to it at a later date when I can make it a priority again and it's actually something I'm looking forward to.
Financial Fitness
As someone who is a self-employed subcontractor I was able to get a little financial aid from the Government over this period and this has made being unemployed at the moment much less stressful than it could have been, especially with the whole issue with the flight cancellations. It did also allow me to get rid of the last little bit of credit card debt that I had from the car purchase in New Zealand, so that now I only have my student loan sitting there. I am still being careful with my money at the moment whilst I carry on with the job search, but once I'm earning again I really want to put a good amount of money into my pension fund, as it's been almost a year now since I've been able to, and build up a bigger emergency fund in case this all happens again in the future. Diversifying where my income comes from is also going to be really important as well. The one thing I am going to do this quarter, and which I can do regardless of whether or not I have a job, is to find out how much of a pension I have at the moment and which companies I have pensions with (I have a few employment pensions that I've never really looked at). Then I'm going to look at putting them all together in one place so I can really get a good idea about where I stand on this front and what I need to do in the future to research a good pension target.
Being A Tourist
This has obviously been put on a low burn right now as Covid-19 has meant too much movement in unadvisable if we're to reduce the spread of this virus, we're also experiencing a second peak here in the UK. We did get to go to the South Island in New Zealand before we left, during their lull period of virus infections and when movement was allowed (you can read about this trip in part 1 and part 2). We've also managed to do a little bit of exploring around where we are at the moment, but this has mainly been in urban areas and not the countryside walking we'd prefer to do. Obviously the options have become even less now that the lockdown measures have had to become more strict right now, and lack of money is also having an impact. But I am researching some day walks we can do and, now that I have a vehicle I can use, hopefully that gives us something to do to pass the time over the next few months.
Paperless Productivity
This quarter I looked at Journal It!, Memorigi, and Toodledo. These are pretty good apps, but a little bit too complex for what I need at the moment. S0, for now it's still TeuxDeux and TickTick that are at the top of my list, but there's a couple more for me to work with before I decide what is really working and if I'll move to the digital format entirely.
Of course, I have added other things to my day, mainly on the crafting front. It just seems the most logical thing to do when you have a bit more time on your hands, quite a bit of crafting equipment you haven't really touched in the last few years, and a requirement to spend more time in your home. One thing I do really need to add to this is exercise. Now that I haven't done any path building in quite a while I've definitely loss the strength and fitness levels I had previously, so I'll be upping the exercise I'm currently doing to help ensure that it isn't too much of a struggle when I do finally get some work again.
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