Goals 2020 Update #4

                                                 

And this is it, the final update of my goals for 2020.  What a funny old year it has been, but at least I have a pretty good excuse for not completing all of them.  Unlike the last few years.

British Sign Language Learning

Apart from this one, I don't really have an excuse for this one.  After all, I had a whole lot of extra time to work on this, but as I said in my last post I just lost the motivation.  It's a shame really as this is a great language to learn, but I have time still and will probably roll this over to next year.  I should also be able to concentrate on this more now that I have work, at least temporarily, and all the work that I can do on trying and get my money back from the airlines and travel agents is done - it's just a waiting game now.

Financial Fitness

I did manage to get my pension sorted out and rolled into one pot this quarter, so that'll make things easier moving forward (you can read more about that here).  I also now have a job (though it's closed down for the two weeks over Christmas and New Year) so at least there will be money coming into my account again.  However, we did have to buy a car for work and that, along with needing to keep aside six months rent to try and entice letting agents to rent us a flat when self-employed and with a zero-hour contract (it's turning out to be very difficult at the moment), has meant having to go back into debt.  It's upsetting but fixable with a bit of grafting.

Being a Tourist

I haven't been able to do as much exploring as I had hoped, but now with the car, this should become a lot easier to do.  We had a nice little walk on Dartmoor, which entailed getting slightly lost in the fog, and I've earmarked a number of other walks to do in the near future.  The biggest issue this last month has been getting the work schedules to match up and may mean that I just need to go out and do some solo walks in the future.  I have been a little unmotivated to go outside recently, but getting to work outside again has reminded me how much I enjoy it giving me a nice little kick out of the rut.

Paperless Productivity

I won't go too much into this here as I've already written a blog about it.  However, it's been quite an interesting time testing out all these new apps and, after a year of it, I've decided that OneNote has been the best note-taking one for me, and Cute Notes and Teux Deux have been the best apps for keeping an eye on my tasks.  I'll be making the full move next year.

That's it.  This really hasn't been a great year for getting goals done, but I still managed a couple and so I'm still going to classify this as a win.  It might not be a lot, but it's something.  I've decided that I'm going to end this year by really sitting down and deciding on some actual long term goals.  Normally I just make goals for the year, but really, if I want to actually get to where I hope to be, I need to plan a little more in-depth than that.  I'll let you know how that goes.

Goals for 2020 Update #3

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.

Goals for 2020 Update #2

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.

Goals for 2020 Update #1

What a beginning to 2020 it has been.  Whilst we knew about Covid-19 at the end of 2019, I don't think we realised just how bad it was going to get or that it would have the affect it would on everything that we now do.  It's easy to get overwhelmed about things like this, but there are things that I've been doing to help me feel calm and lead as normal a life as possible in these situations.  Part of that has been keeping up with my goals.  So this is how they've been going:

British Sign Language Learning

This has been a pretty good one for me.  I managed to finish my online course and got a lovely certificate for it (always pleasing).  I've been practicing my sign language as best I can since this has finished but, funnily enough, finding actual people to practice this with hasn't really been an option at this moment in time.  As soon as I can I'll be looking for a group I can join to keep practicing this skill and hopefully I'll be able to move to a fully fledged BSL speaker in the coming years. 

Financial Fitness

This first quarter has been quite slow, which is to be expected with not being able to work whilst in New Zealand. However, payments towards the credit card debit has still been paid and I'm hoping this will increase in intensity over the next few months.  Of course, this all depends on what work I can do during the lock downs right now.  I still think there's a possibility I can pay it all off by the end of June, but I'm just going to have to be a little bit stricter with myself over the next few months.  The plan is to do what I can to stay on tract with this and I have even registered with some side hustles to help reach this goal by the end of the year.  Having some of my work be online work should also hopefully mean that I'm not too affected by Covid-19 and can carry on earning whatever changes it brings.

Being a Tourist

This has been a pretty easy goal to do this quarter whilst I've been in New Zealand and whilst the corona virus hasn't been too bad.  Obviously it's entirely different now that self isolation is such an important part of keeping this virus as bay.  Looks like I'm going to be spending the next quarter planning what I'm going to be doing once I can finally leave these four walls properly.  Bit travelling around New Zealand has been pretty amazing, even if the virus did stop le from seeing two places I really wanted to see. 

Paperless Productivity

This one I've been keeping a monthly update on as I test out different types of productivity software.  So far I've tested Google Keep, Microsoft To-do, and Todoist, and you can read up on what I've thought of them through the links.  I'll keep testing throughout most of the year and will keep this blog up-to-date with what's been suiting my personal needs when it comes to being productive.

And that's been my first quarter.  Not as badly affected by Covid-19 as it could have been and it's still been satisfying to get as far forward on these as I have done.  A little bit of positivity for me at least at a time that's looking a little bleak.  How are your goals going?  I hope, despite everything, you've still been managing to tick things off your list to help you move yourself forward.  It's always good to keep yourself busy, even in times like this.

Goals for 2020

My inspiration photo.

As we all know from my last goals post, 2019 didn't exactly go according to plan.  At all!  But 2019 is over now so I'm drawing a line under it and resetting for 2020.  There are some basic habits that I have developed over the years through goal setting and which I will continue to do in 2020, running along in the background.  These are making more sustainable choices in my purchases and lifestyle decisions, getting rid of things I do longer need / use, and keeping my diet as healthy as possible and low in things like processed sugar.  But there are four larger goals I want to work on this year.

British Sign Language.

This is the roll over goal from last year and I really want to do this language the justice it deserves in 2020.  As the subscription to my online course finishes at the end of the first quarter it seems like finishing the last three lessons in the next couple of months is a good place to start.  Once I have finished the course I want to spend the next three quarters finding people I can practise sign language with.  To begin with this may have to be in New Zealand and I'm hoping that the connection between New Zealand sign language and British sign language should make it easy enough to cross over between the two.  Learning a new language (or at least attempting to) always makes me nervous and a bit stressed, and I think I've been letting myself make excuses to not do the lessons because of that.  But it's time to stop doing that and look the scary new language in the proverbial face.

Financial Fitness.

This was my goal a couple of years ago and I did pretty well in getting myself sorted, but I've kind of let things slide a little over the last couple of months (okay a lot - not helped by needing to buy a second-hand car).  I let some emotional decisions take over the more sensible ones and now it's time to get back on track.  I have some credit card debit to pay off, an emergency fund to rebuild, and I really failed last year at putting the amount of money I should have been putting into my pension fund.  The pension fund is especially important as I'm in my late 30s now and have never really had much of a great track record when it comes to contributing in the first place.  The time is now ticking and I really need to make sure I have financial security in my old age.

This isn't really a goal that I can break into quarters but, roughly, I would like to have paid off the credit card debt (including my partners) by the end of the first half of the year.  I then want to build back up my emergency fund and have started paying good amounts into my pension fund in the last half of the year.  This is going to be a little bit more difficult than normal as I only really know what's going on in the first three months of this year.  After that jobs and income amounts are all a bit up in the air, but I'm going to keep the goal and do my best to work towards it.   

I actually want this goal to carry on for a few years until I have gotten myself into a real sound footing when it comes to finances.  I think that'll take 3 years to do, as long as I'm sensible, and a long term goal should stop me falling off the wagon again.

Being a Tourist.

This one probably doesn't seem like it really fits with the goal above, but when I talk about being a tourist I'm not necessarily talking about travelling to new countries.  I'm talking about being a tourist in your own area and country.  When I look back on last year in Scotland, when I had the van I'd sort of converted to live in, I really didn't see as much of the country as I had intended or wanted.  Now, when I think about it, I'm a little angry with myself for not taking the opportunity that I had and really going for it.  I don't want to make that mistake again.

So, here's the plan for 2020.  When I move to a place I'm going to work out what the local attractions are and actually go and see them.  I'm also going to travel a little further afield and make sure that I really get to know the area.  And here's why it won't really affect my financial fitness goals.  Pretty much everything I'm interested in are based within the three overlapping circles of nature, trekking, and local history, most of which don't really cost anything to do.  The main cost will probably be fuel and possibly accommodation (though I do really enjoy camping so that reduces that considerably), but these won't eat too much into my budgets and will probably save me a lot of money on the boredom spending I do when I'm stuck at home.

Paperless Productivity.

I've already written about this in a previous blog, but as it's one of my goals for  2020 I thought I should probably give it a quick mention here.  I'm going to see if I can take all the paper I use when planning out my time, to-dos, and even work for this blog and make it digital.  The plan here is to reduce my paper waste and have a system that is a little more compact and portable.  I'll be testing out different types of software over 2020 to see if I can find one that really suits me and will probably do separate updates on each one as the year goes on rather than waiting to do a quarterly update.

And that's it.  Those are my goals for this year.  Most of them are going to be pretty doable, but I know my financial goal is going to be a difficult one to do and I didn't want to overload on too many challenging goals in 2020 that would be competing for my time and energy.  Especially not after last year.  I'll do quarterly updates as before so that I can see how I'm progressing, but I definitely feel better and more optimistic about this year's goals.  I think I'm going to actually manage it this time.

There is one other little goal that I'll be doing this year that I thought I would quickly mention here.  It's a pretty simple one that doesn't require too much planning or work.  And that's giving up the fizzy, black stuff. Wish me luck!

Goals for 2019 - Update #4

Okay, so my goal achieving this year has been a definite fail. Other than doing the drystone walling course I probably haven't achieved any of my aims for 2019. But then, it's just been one of those years where life happens and unfortunately the happens were rarely good. I also decided, pretty last minute, to travel to New Zealand for four months and most of this quarter has either been me here in New Zealand or getting myself ready to go. Here's how I did this quarter.

Healthy Eating

This one's been a little strange since I've moved to New Zealand as the heat here (especially after leaving Scotland mid-November) has been so hot I haven't been hungry. It fact I've been having to force myself to eat most of times and there have been many days were lunch hasn't even been a thing. This isn't great really, though I haven't actually been doing much strenuous activity to actually need all the energy I would get from recommended three meals and, on the plus, I have been drinking a lot more water. The main worry here is that I'm not getting enough of the nutrients I actually need from just the two meals and some snacks so I am going to really need to look at were I can improve just for my general health. I do take multivitamins (when I remember) but I really don't like relying on that for my nutritional intake. I'd much rather get it from my food and my main focus really is getting enough iron as that has always been a problem in the pass.

As for when I have been actually eating the meals have been pretty healthy and basically made from scratch. They've mostly been overnight oats for breakfast, nuts and corn gluten-free crackers with Marmite for snacks, and a big rainbow salad for dinner. Even before I travelled to New Zealand and was still working in the Scottish Highlands my meals were healthy and mostly made from scratch. I am, however, eating a lot less chocolate and weirdly less ice cream since moving to New Zealand. So that's been a plus a least and I am, of course, completely ignoring the blip of the couple of weeks we used to see family in the UK before heading south of the equator. There definitely wasn't a lot of healthy eating there and even some sneaking in of fast foods. Though my Mum's home cooked meals tend to be on the healthy side, we'll just ignore all the cream teas we had as we were in Devon......so it doesn't count.

The one very large polka dot elephant in the room is of course my consumption to the black, fizzy stuff. I would even call it an addiction. I'm not even sure I enjoy it when I do have it, but there it is calling to me. I think 2020 should be the year I just stop with it all together. Using it as a 'treat' just isn't working and I probably won't miss it when it's gone.

Having written this out I have to admit I am probably doing a little bit better than I initially thought. My diet is relatively healthy on the whole and I have gotten rid of most unhealthy snacking and eating habits. Treats now and then are not something I'm going to hold against myself or are something that are particularly bad for me when done in moderation. I just need to keep an eye on it so they don't sneak back in and I definitely need to break the lure of the black juice.

Reducing Waste

I had already managed to get my waste levels pretty low in the UK before travelling out to New Zealand, but with the life style we're living here at the moment (which is basically living in Airbnbs, camping, and house-sitting) we've managed to reduce the waste even more as we're basically living out of our car and don't really want to buy any more stuff than we really need. Every purchase has been really intentional, and that has led to much less waste. There is one thing I do really need to remember to do though, and that is to carry my usable mug with me everywhere as I have been caught out a couple of times now and, as I have the thing, I have no excuses for that.

As for Christmas presents, I did my best to reduce the packaging in this area as much as possible by buying items together buying from actual shops, and selecting as ethical products as I possible could. And when it came to wrapping the presents I used recycled brown paper which were then stamped with snow flakes stamps I had brought a few years ago, and finished with re-usable gardeners twine. I also made all my own Christmas cards this year using cross-stitch patterns, but this is an area I think I can improve on waste wise next year.

The one area where I am still struggling with waste reduction is groceries and the plastic they have wrapped around so many of the vegetables. I really don't understand it and I've found that even the grocers here still wrap things unnecessarily in the shiny stuff. It annoys me and I do try and make decisions on the food I buy based on whether or not the plant has plastic around it, but it's not possible to do all the time. I definitely don't bother putting multiples of the same loss item into a plastic bag myself. I really don't see the point in that. They'll find each other in the cooking pot.

As with healthy eating, I'm going to keep trying to reduce my waste and I think this is something that is never going to stop for me.

Learning Skills

Work

Since travelling over to New Zealand I have done a fair amount of walking, but in all these walks I haven't actually needed a map or a compass as all the paths are well marked and each junction is signed. This has meant that the opportunity to practise any orienteering skills hasn't really been there. I have, however, noticed that there are some orienteering groups in the area of New Zealand where I am based and I think I'm going to research what they are actually doing and whether or not it's worth me getting involved in the time I have left here.

Home

This is probably the area where I have failed the most this quarter. Since the beginning of November I haven't done any more of my British Sign Language lessons at all. Which is a real 'shame on me' and I'm a little worried that I've forgotten some of the signs I've already learnt. I have done four lessons out of the seven this year and I still have some time next year before my year's pass has run out. This gives me time to actually get the course finished and properly practise the signs until they become a little more instinctive.

The only real issue for me at the moment is not being able to practise signing with someone else as this is a really important part of learning a new language. One option would be to practise here in New Zealand as I've read that their sign language actually stems from the British sign language, so there is bound to be some real overlap. I think this one is definitely going to be a roll over goal for 2020. I want to get it done before my holiday ends in March.

As I said earlier, this year has been a bit of disaster when it comes to achieving my goals. But you know what that's fine. It happens sometimes and this year is coming to a close with a new one about to begin. I just need to look at where this year went wrong, learn, draw and nice line under it and move onto the next. I have an idea of what I want my goals to be for next year but I want to really flesh them out and make sure that they're what I want for myself moving forward as I think one of the problems for 2019 was I didn't really see how the goals fitted into my long term plans. So bring on 2020, I'm going to work on making it a much better year than 2019.

Goals for 2019 - Update #3

 
I wish that I could say that I completely turned around my goal achievements this quarter and am now on the road to completing all my goals by the end of 2019.  This is, of course, completely untrue. 😂 To say that I've been a little preoccupied would be an understatement and some of the goals I had set for myself have drifted off to do their own thing.  Needless to say, the outcome hasn't been particularly healthy or good for me and I now have one more quarter to finally get them on track.

Healthy Eating

On the whole my eating has gotten healthier this quarter, with me putting even more vegetable into my diet and, overall, reducing the amount of gluten I've been consuming.  I've actually lost a little bit more fat and, more importantly, my body feels much stronger than it did before.  This is most definitely helped by the work I do, but a good diet is really important to keeping your body healthy when working it hard.

Where I've fallen down on the healthy eating is with my usual nemesis, sugar.  I haven't really been paying attention, but when I actually started keeping an eye on what I was eating this last month I realised that I had definitely fallen back onto having quite a few sugary treats.  Not just that but it was happening more often and the amount of sugar each time was increasing.  You might think that, with the very physical job I do, this extra sugar wouldn't really matter too much, especially as I'm still losing fat.  But sugar does more bad things than just help you put on weight and I know how important reducing my sugar is to increase my bodies general well-being.  So, I'm going to give reducing it yet another go again this quarter (if at first you don't succeed and all that), but might need to bring in some helpers again in the form of fizzy water (totally ridiculous I know) and crunchy snacks. 

I'm going to let myself be a little bit more relaxed about it over the weekend, but I don't want to slip too far the other way and just binge on sugar for two days a week.  Time to start showing some real restraint.  I know I can, I've just been being lazy and let the little sugar monsters reign in my brain.

So, I failed on my mini goal for this quarter, but I'm going to roll it on to the next.  Sugary treats only on two occasions a week.

Reducing Waste

On the whole I have managed to reduce my waste quite a bit these last few months, and that's predominantly due to me doing even less shopping than before (if that's actually possible).  The one place in which I am still struggling, which surprises me a little, is food shopping.  My diet is predominantly plant based and you would have thought that that would have meant that there would be almost no packaging at all in my basket.  However, in a number of shops I've been to there is plastic wrapped around every vegetable.  I don't really understand why this has now become the case and I really don't understand the hygiene argument a lot of shops give seeing as you wash your veg before you eat them anyway.  

Co Op seems to be the worst offenders of this at the moment, which is frustrating as it's one of the shops I end up having to go to most often.  I have been keeping an eye out for farm shops as I travel around, but these mainly seem to only sell meat and eggs with not a lot of vegetables, so they haven't been the help I was hoping they were going to be.  

Whilst I did try to carry out my mini goal for this quarter there is definitely more work needed as it didn't exactly work out.  I'm going to keep looking for other options and possible solutions to help reduce the amount of waste I produce, but if you have any suggestions please let me know.  They would be greatly appreciated.

Learning New Skills

Work

I took the dry stone walling course in July and have already written a post about it, which you can find here.  It was really interesting and gave me a good insight into a different way of using stones to build structures.  It is definitely a future job I would like to look more into, but as it requires a lot more training than I have time for at the moment it'll probably be something I come back to later on.  

As before, trying to learn the names of different flowers is something I keep coming back to whilst at work.  This is a slow process, especially as it can only take place during breaks or the walks to and from the work sites, and will probably take a while before I feel really confident about it.

I have also found someone who may be able to help me with having a refresher on my navigation skills, and I'm going to contact them and see what they say.  I figured this was a much better option than just winging it on my own in case I'm making some very serious mistakes that might need rectifying.

Mini goals is definitely a tick for this quarter and I'm planning on getting the navigation skills sorted for the next.  Then this goal at least will have been a success.

Home

I now have a new, well second hand, laptop which means that I now have the software I need to carry on doing my BSL learning.  It's been great getting back to learning this again and I've been enjoying it, despite the fact that we've now moved onto more complex, scary stuff like stringing a sentence together.  This does mean that I am having to learn a new form of grammar, which I have to admit is freaking my brain out a little.  But it's all part of keeping your brain active and healthy.

My mini goal here was to try and do one BSL learning section a week, but I've actually managed do more than that and have noticed a difference in the amount I've managed to take in.  My mini goal for the upcoming quarter is to finish this course and I've put a timetable in place, as if I was back at school, which makes it pretty likely I will achieve that my the end of the year.

So, the learning new skills goal has gone pretty well so far, but the other two not so much.  I'm trying not to be negative about this as it won't help and I still have three more months to ensure that I get back on track.  Whilst the sugar goal is probably going to be the most difficult personally, the reducing packaging goal is probably going to be the most frustrating as it is the one least under my control.  However, my aim is to end this year on a high note and I'm now more determined than before to do that.  Onwards and upwards.

Goals for 2019 - Update #2

So there goes June whizzing past us and that's half the year gone already.  Here's how my goals went in the second quarter.

Healthy Eating

I have found that I don't find eating healthy particularly difficult when I'm at work. Mainly because I'm stuck up a mountain away from the temptations of the shops and can only eat the food I've taken with me.  All I have to do is make sure it's healthy.  Also, when I'm at the hostel I tend to only eat the food I've brought along as well, which is made up of mostly fruit and vegetables and only one 'bad' item.

At home I've been good at making large, mixed salads which I can munch my way through throughout the weekend.  This is because it occurred to me that salads are pretty easy to make, healthy and tasty (and yes I do mean that), and really not much more work than getting a ready meal from the shop.  There is also a lot less waste when you make it yourself.

I am definitely still eating a lot more high sugar food than I should be, even for the little treat you should really allow yourself now and then.  It's not necessarily a problem with the work that I do as I burn so much energy, but I still want to work on reducing this to just a treat once or twice week.  Regardless of how much physical activity you do processed sugar really is something you can do without.

Next quarter's mini goal is to get my sugery treats down to two occasions a week.

Reducing Waste

I think it's safe to say that I've been pretty good at reducing my waste in almost every aspect of my life bar food.  And it's not just the snacks I've been buying. It has been unbelievably difficult to get vegetables without a whole lot of packaging wrapped around them.  Fruit has been a lot easier to deal with, but vegetables seem to require it for reasons I don't really understand.

I have been looking into this and have found a few online stores that sell dry food in bulk and plastic free packaging.  So that will be my first port of call when I next need some dry goods.  For fresh food I think it's going to have to be farmers markets and stores.  At the moment I have quite a long drive from home to work and I have noticed a couple of places on route that I think will definitely be worth having a look at.  I'm not sure if they'll have all the food I need with my dietary requirements but it's definitely worth a look.

Next quarter's mini goal is to buy food either in bulk or from a farmer's market wherever possible.

Learning New Skills

Work

As I put in the last goals post I have a drystone walling course booked for July and I'll write more about that then.  The walking that I do during my work day has increased quite dramatically since I started work at Glencoe and that means that walking and practising navigation during my time off is much less likely, just to give my legs a rest.  However, I have been given a few chances to go off route a bit when at work and this has been helping me get to know more about the terrain in the area and what challenges there are when navigating through it.

My current boss is also big on identifying mountain fauna and often shows me the vegetation we pass as we are doing our work so that has turned out to be a great unexpected opportunity as well.  If only I was better at learning names.

My mini goal for the next quarter is just to get the most out of the drystone walling course that I can.

Home

Lastly is my attempted to learn BSL at home.  It started off well and I had gone through the alphabet and numbers, and had begun to look at the signs for different colours when I got into some technically difficulties.  Neither my phone nor my tablet have the software needed to view the video footage showing you the signs.  However my laptop did until it stopped working.  At the moment I am laptop less, and probably will be for a while, whilst I work out exactly what I want to get and can afford.  I did manage to use my local library's computers a couple of times to do the classes but I haven't been able to get there as much as I would like.  That is still an option though and is probably just something I need to block in on a weekly basis.

Next quarter's mini goal will be to get in at least one section of BSL learning a week.

This year has definitely been a less successful year then last when it comes to achieving my goals.  But it's alright to have off years and as long as I keep moving forward I will be happy with what I've achieved.  I may not be as far as I would like but it's still better than where I was at the start of the year.

I hope all your goals are going well.  And, if like me, they're not quite working that your still moving forward the best that you can.

Goals for 2019 - Update #1

I can't believe that the first quarter of the year is over already.  Where did the time go?  It hasn't been the best start of the year with a little bit more emotional stuff happening then I was expecting (like we can ever expect that), but I'm trying to see it as a positive.  After all, if the year has a bad start it can only really go up.  So here we go.

Healthy Eating

I'm just going to put it out there - I comfort eat.  In fact it's my main way of dealing with unpleasant emotions and stress.  I can even use it as a warning light that something might be bothering me more than I realise at the time and will probably be rearing it's ugly head in the near future.  So my attempt to healthy eat didn't set of to a good start.

However, I didn't want to let this put my whole year out so I drew a line under it in March and crawled back onto that wagon.  Since then I have made almost all my breakfast, lunch, and dinners from scratch (including sort of making my own gluten free bread) and doing my best to only snack on fruit, nuts, and pop corn.  

I still have my little sugar addition, mainly Coke Cola and ice cream (which has the added minus of containing dairy), but I'm working on that and this will probably be my focus for the next quarter.

I also found out during this time that I was iron deficient.  This is definitely an issue that can happen when you are a vegetarian (or vegan) but the symptoms I've been having started long before I started that journey so there is clearly something very lacking in my diet.  I had thought I was getting all the iron I needed, but I have obviously miscalculated somewhere. I am now off the tablets I was given and have started taking a good hard look at my diet to see where I can make the improvement I need.  This is another good incentive to make my diet as healthy as possible.

Reducing Waste

As I said at the start, reducing my waste is closely connected to eating healthier as my groceries are where most of my waste comes from.  I have noticed this especially when it comes to the unhealthy snacks and ready meals that I have brought when not making my own food.  I have also noticed, in this last month, that as I've improved the health of my food the amount of waste I have produced has reduced dramatically. 

There is still a major issue with plastic being on a lot of the vegetables that I buy, especially as there's not always an option of picking up plastic free fruit and vegetables.  However, I'm going to carry on looking into this so that I can keep improving as the year goes on.  I will also continue to look at other areas of my life to see where I can make improvements there too.

Learning New Skills
Work

I decided at the start of the year that the first thing I wanted to look into was learning drystone walling and, after being in contact with the Drystone Walling Society, I found some training in my area.  I unfortunately missed the training at the beginning of this year (my fault entirely, things got very busy and I let it slip by), but have booked myself on a course in July.  I really can't wait for that to happen.  

I have also been starting to practise my very rusty navigation skills when out on the mountains and this I want to keep developing until I feel very confident out in the wild.  This is definitely a good skill to have based in the amount of time I spend outside.

Home

The British Sign Language (BSL) cause has been brought for a mere £19.99 and I've already started the first few lessons.  It has been as challenging as I was expecting it to be, but I am really enjoying learning this new skill and have been practising whenever I can, even when just pottering around my home.  Hopefully I will start to get the hang of it very soon.

So it has been a little bit of a bumpy start, but it's a start at least and I'm still happy that I managed to get done the amount that I did.  I now have another three month to keep improving.

I hope your goals are going well too.