Goals 2024: Update #1

Whenever I get ready to write my goal updates I always hope that there will be positives to write about, and this year did start off well but then depression snuck in in February.  And then it lingered.....and lingered.......and lingered some more.  I tried to deal with it whilst carrying on with everyday life and working towards my goals, but it was getting worse and, in the end, I decided to just stop.  So I stopped doing my budgets for a while, and I stopped trying to practice new skills, and crafting, and trying to eat healthy, and I even stopped doing as much housework.  I just let myself be.  Am I 100% better?  Not a bit.  Do I feel less overwhelmed?  A little.  At least enough to start doing some things again and to start looking at my goals for 2024.  

Financial Freedom.

• Saving another third of our four-month emergency fund - this has been one of the big positives so far this year as we're already very close to completing this goal already.  Even though we have been spending more than we should, we've still managed to keep all our bills and spending down enough that we've been able to put a good part of our monthly wages into our savings.  We might actually complete this long-term goal before the end of the year.  Which makes me want to give us both big gold stars.  
• Sinking funds - at the beginning of the year we concentrated mostly on putting money into our Christmas sinking fund and we've now got a fully funded Christmas fund.  As it looks like we'll be reaching our emergency fund goal much earlier than we had expected we'll be able to start putting money into our holiday sinking fund this year as well.  We still haven't quite decided where we're going, other than it'll be somewhere on the African continent.
• 12.5% of earnings towards my pension - I did change jobs at the beginning of March and with that job comes the company pension scheme.  I'm just waiting for my details to come through and then I can change my payment amount to fit the 12.5% that I want for this year.  The good thing about this job is that they will match pay into your pension up to 10% and I intend to make full use of this.
• Secondary income - this has gone completely on the back-burner for now, but hopefully, I'll be in the right mindset to think about it again soon.
• Changing my bank account - still to do, but again I'll come back to this at another time.

Learning New Skills.

• Skateboarding - I have given this a few tries and I do feel more comfortable than I did before.  However, I'm still nervous about hurting myself so maybe I just need to bite the bullet and buy all the protective gear.  Then I can just get on with it.  I haven't done much of this recently though as I've just been letting myself sit instead of trying to do things. 
• Surfing - I had started the process of looking into hiring surfboards for us to practice with, but that fell to the wayside when the depression came along.  But we both enjoy this so it's definitely time to get back to it again.
• Drawing - this was one of the first things to go when I started feeling low.  I don't mind though, as I had already managed to fit some practicing in and that gave me a bit of an idea as to where my skill level is.  I will bring this back, but as an 'every now and then' thing instead of a 'must do regularly' thing.
• Flute playing - I did get quite a few practices in for this and it did feel good, though I'm not sure how far I'll be able to go without having a teacher guide me along.  As with everything else, I stopped for a bit, but I will start it up again.  I'll see if I want to carry it on once the year is out, but for now, it's been enjoyable when I do play it.
• Reading - this one hasn't really gone to plan, but it'll be easy enough for me to pick it back up again.  I just need to make the decision to.
• Learning another language - funnily enough, I haven't even looked at this.  Future George decision I think.  For now, I'm just going to concentrate on getting back to where I was at the start of the year.  This can wait a little.

And that's it.  Depression has meant that it hasn't been quite the success I was hoping for, but then it hasn't been a complete disaster either.  Especially when it comes to our financials, which we have managed to do pretty well.  We are already a third of the way into the second quarter, but hopefully, I'll be able to pick things up for the next couple of months, though I'm not going to push too hard just yet.  I'm going to take it slow. After all, I have plenty of time this year to achieve what I want.  No need to try and get it all done now.

Goals 2024

The goals this year are going to be pretty much the same as last year, mainly as our long-term goals haven't changed.  There are a few ones that I've added at the end, but I will put less effort into those ones.  It's not that they are not important, it's just that we are trying to concentrate on our finances first so that we have more freedom to do other things in the future.  This is what we'll be working on this year.

Financial Freedom.

• Saving another third of our four-month emergency fund - we did really well last year with saving up for this, but that was partly helped by the money I got to keep after doing my taxes as a self-employed person.  However, I'm not self-employed anymore, but hopefully just means that I can put aside that additional money straight away with each wage I get.   So that'll be £2500 into savings in 2024.
• Sinking funds - we need to save up for Christmas again and this will be one of the priorities at the start of the year.  It works out at about £73 a month to get us back to where we can have a financially stress-free Christmas, but I'm hoping we can put more in at the beginning to get us there quicker.  We also want to start saving for a holiday abroad, something a bit bigger than what we've been doing before.  It possibly won't be this year, but hopefully next.  We're still working on where we want to go and what we would like to do, but once we've worked that out can calculate how much we'll need to save and start putting money aside for that.
• 12.5% of earnings towards my pension - this is basically the same as last year and I'll need to see if I can do it all through my work or if I'll need to keep putting away additional sums as before.
• Secondary income - this is the same as last year as well.  I'm starting to form more of an idea about what I'd be comfortable doing so we'll see what happens.
• Changing my bank account - yep still haven't done this yet.  To be honest, it's not as high on my priority as it probably should be.

Learning New Skills.

• Skateboarding - this is still something that I want to learn to do and what I've learnt over the last couple of years is that I just haven't been very disciplined when it comes to sorting this out.  I plan to practice at least twice a month, usually with my husband who wants to get back into it.
• Surfing - now that we know that we don't need any more lessons just yet but just need to practice we can just hire some surfboards, which I can book in advance when I know what Ed's work hours are.  Again we just need to be more organised and disciplined so that we do this whenever we're both off.
• Drawing - this is something that I wrote about in my new hobbies blog.  It's really just for my own enjoyment and to keep my brain nice and healthy, but there is a possibility that it could play some part in getting a secondary income.  I'd like to practice at least once a week.
• Flute playing - again this was in my hobbies blog and this is also just for my own enjoyment.  In fact, there is absolutely no way I'm playing the flute in public.  This isn't high on my list of things to prioritize but I would still like to do this once a week if I can.
• Reading - another thing that's just for my own personal enjoyment.  I plan to do a little reading every night, just before bed - at least on a weekday.
• Learning another language - this is something I've put in but I haven't really made any decisions on or plans yet.  Ed has said that whatever I learn he would like to learn with me, but what language that is I'm still not sure about.  Sometimes I think it would be good to learn French as some of the countries we want to visit have it as their official language, there's also the possibility of learning Welsh seeing as we are now in Wales, but it would also be good to get back into learning British Sign Language again and that's more where I'm leaning.  There's no way I'd be able to learn multiple languages at a time, so it'll just have to be one for now.  We'll see.

So that's all of them.  There are quite a lot that I've written down, but as I said we'll prioritize the top ones to begin with and see how the year goes.  In a way, it's good for the way my brain works to have a few different ones going so that I spend my time bouncing between things the way my brain does.  I actually find it hard to concentrate otherwise.  I wasn't really that organised with my goals last year and I feel like that showed in the outcome so I want to be more organised this time around, starting by breaking the goals up into quarters again.  Having something more concrete to work toward means I'll be much more likely to accomplish them.  Let's see what we can actually do this time around.

Goals 2023 Update #2

This year definitely feels like it's going by very quickly and I am a little surprised that we've gotten half way through half it already.  It has been a bit of a mixed batch when it comes to me completing my goals for this year, but now that I'm looking at them it has actually gone better than I originally thought.

Financial

• Four months emergency fund - this fund took quite a beating at the start of the year and I really thought we were going to struggle with getting it back on track.  However, we've not only managed to catch back up, but are actually over the half way mark I had planned for us for this year.  We should still be able to keep putting in a good amount for the next four months, but I'm not sure how it will go once my current contract is over in November.  I would still like us to reach our goal this year, but to do so we'll probably have to do some real saving this coming quarter.
• Sinking funds - apart from the 'pie in the sky' sailing lessons sinking fund, we have reached our planned amounts for all our sinking funds for this year.  I have of course already spend all of my craft sinking fund.  We will hopefully be spending our surfing lessons one soon, but the rest will sit there for future use.  One hopefully never (the car repairs) and one a little closer to Christmas.
• Pensions and personal spending - I'm still putting 12.5% of my wage into my pension.  I had hoped that, now that I'm employed, this would be done through my wage but at the moment it hasn't been set up that way so I'm continuing to just pull out that amount myself.  We haven't done as well on our personal spending as we have with all our other financial goals.  We were being good for a little while, but then a whole lots of needed things came up and then not so needed but definitely wanted things.  We are financially stable at the moment so the spending isn't putting us in any financial difficulties, but it would still be good to get control on this for this last half of the year so that we can do better at reaching our financial goals and we don't know how our finances at the end of this year.
• Changing my bank account - I'm still to do this.  There isn't really any reason for me to not have done this already, it's just putting aside the time to sit down and do it.
• Secondary income - this is also something I still haven't done.  I just can't decide which way I'm going to go.  If I'm honest I'm also a little bit nervous about it, but I should really just give it a go.  Even if I fail at least I tried.

Learning New Skills

• Skateboarding - this was something that I had planned to do about two times a month, but so far I haven't even done it once this year.  The reason is completely that I'm nervous about doing it.  I think I've found somewhere to practise that is relatively flat and that doesn't have too many people using it.  It's unusual for me to let my fear stop me in this way, so even if it's just for that reason I need to just go and do it.
• Surfing - we now have the money we need to book some more surfing lessons and I've been researching where we can go to have these lessons.  All we need to do now is book them, which I will do once I've found out what my husbands next rota is.  Quite excited to be getting back to it and hopefully, after a couple more lessons, we should be able to start going surfing on our own.  I might also look at joining a women's surfing group just so I can build my confidence a little more.  
• Sailing - this is obviously on the back burner at the moment, but it's still in my mind as something we would like to do in the not so distant future.  I will need to research where we can get lessons from, etc, but for now it would be nice to just get to know the coast line near us a bit better.  That of course means sorting out some walking and beach days - what a shame.

So, a mixed bag of achievements.  We've done really well in some things and, mostly I've done, really badly on others.  There's still another six months to go though, which is still plenty of time to pull everything around.  Skateboarding is really the one I want to concentrate a bit more on, specifically because it's fear that is holding me back here.  It would also be good for my mind and body to learn something new and that I haven't done before.  So, the plan for the next quarter is just to keep doing what we're doing, but to put a little more emphasis on the skateboarding and controlling our personal spending.  That seems very do-able.  

Goals 2023 Update #1

Things didn't exactly gone to plan this quarter with a move across country has been the main reason why not, but I have to admit that not being very motivated has also played a part.

Financial

• Four Month's Emergency Funds - this went down this quarter instead of the intended up.  There are a few reasons such as we had an overlap of the properties we are renting so we had to pay two different rents at the same time and a deposit before our other deposit has been returned.  However, this is what this fund is there for so I don't feel too bad about it.  We'll just need to start building it up again.  It does mean that for us to reach our goal of saving a third of the savings this year we'll need to put aside £835 this coming quarter.
• Sinking Funds - our car repair sinking fund is now back to £500 and we should hopefully not need this for our new car, but it's always good to have it just in case.  We have managed to put the £75 a month into our Christmas fund this quarter and will need to carry on doing this over the next quarter.  We have also been putting money into a surfing lesson sinking fund and we only need about £60 for this.  Once I've done my tax return this year we should hopefully have some money to put toward these funds and our emergency fund.
• Pension and Personal Spending - I did manage to put 12.5% of my income into my pension whilst I was earning, though now that I'm jobless there hasn't been any more going in these last few weeks.  Hopefully, that won't last for much longer though as I am job hunting at the moment.  We have also been pretty good at keeping our spending to just £25 per week, apart from in March when everything just went south.  Next quarter we will need to get our spending back into control again if we're going to reach our 2023 financial goals.
• Changing My Bank Accounts - I haven't gotten around to this yet as I haven't set aside the time to make the change and to double check how this new bank account will work with my other financial accounts I have, such as my savings and credit card.  I also need to have an income coming in as well as the new bank account does have a monthly standard fee.
• Secondary Income - this also hasn't been done yet as I just can't get my head round what I could actually do for a secondary income, skill wise.  Though this coming quarter I need to concentrate on getting a primary income first and then think about a secondary income after that.

Learning New Skills

• Skateboarding - we haven't done any skateboarding yet this year and that's a shame on our part as we had a perfect park beside us to do it before.  Now that we've moved I'll need to find somewhere new for us to go and make it one of our priorities whenever we have time off together.
• Surfing - we were going to book to have lessons where we had gone the last time, but now that we've moved to Wales it would make sense to find somewhere here instead as it would be a bit costly to travel to Devon every time we wanted to go for a surf.  Once we're completely settled in that's what I start researching.
• Sailing - this is still something that's just on the back burner for now, especially as we're now further away from the sea.  We need to get our finances in order first as well before we can start spending it on this quite expensive little dream.

And that's it.  It actually hasn't turned out too badly despite everything.  Next quarter it would be really good to concentrate on getting our finances back on track so that the rest of the year can be a bit more relaxed and enjoyable.  It is possible, but it will definitely be easier to do if I can get work and soon.  That is my main focus now.

Goals 2023

To get straight to the point, the goals I have this year are going to be pretty much the same as the goals for last year so this it's going to be a particularly long post.  However, we are still aiming for the same long term goals and this year should see us carrying on in that same direction.

Financial Fitness

• Four months emergency funds - with the cost of living going up and the added monthly payments for the car we needed to buy our four months emergency fund has now gone up to £7500.  This is going to be a long term goal and, having looked over all our incomings and outgoings over the last year, I know we won't be able to reach this in a year.  I would like us to get a third saved in 2023. That seems more realistic.
• Sinking funds - we need to build up our original sinking funds again.  The Christmas fund has been put up to £800 this year, so we'll need to put aside £75 a month to reach that goal.  Thankfully we only have to put in £50 to get the car repair fund back up to £500 so that'll hopefully be one off the list of things I have to worry about.  I've also added surfing lessons, which we want to do two more of so need to save up £240 for that.  We did however ask for money for Christmas for that so we're almost there on that also.  The last sinking fund is for sailing lessons, which I've worked out for both of us to be around £1400.  This isn't a priority though and we'll only put money in when we can.
• Pension and personal spending - to help with out financial goals I've decided to reduce my pension payments to the recommended 12.5% of your wage.  This does mean that the payments will be about half what they use to be, but at least that means there will still be some money going in.  We've also decided to budget our own personal spending to £25 a week.  That means if we want to buy anything that is more than that we'll need to save up a few weeks before hand.
• Changing my bank account - I didn't get around to doing this last year so I want to do it this year.  I know which bank I want to move to so it's just a case of sitting down and getting it sorted.  It really shouldn't take too long.
• Secondary income - if we're going to reach our financial goals a little quicker it would help if I could get us a secondary income coming in.  Unfortunately it can't just be a case of picking up some extra hours as my responsibilities have remained the same, so it needs to be something I can fit in around the other things I do.  As I'll be spending less time crafting this year I'll hopefully be able to work out what that might be.

Learning New Skills

• Skateboarding - this is still something I want to learn to do.  It's not like I want to be able to do stunts or anything like that, I just want to be able to ride along on one comfortably.  The truth is, I'm getting in my own way here and being lazy about it, so I'm going to put in a goal of skateboarding two times a month and go from there.
• Surfing - we already have some money to take another lesson and are saving up for the second lesson this year.  My brother has also said we can borrow his surf boards whenever we want so we don't have to spend money there (though I do need to work out how we're going to attach them to our car).  After that it would just be a case of getting out and doing it on our own.
• Sailing - unfortunately I don't think we'll get round to this this year as it requires us to save up enough money to get the lessons.  However, it is something we need to do before we take this long term goal any further as we might be terrible at it.  However, if we get the opportunity we'll be there.  I do want to carry on researching boats etc as well, just so we're ready when it comes.

And that's it this year.  It doesn't really feel any different from last year, though for some reason it does feel like I'm trying to fit less in.  Hopefully that'll make them easier to achieve and I am mostly focusing on finances this year.  Wish me luck or maybe just motivation - wish me motivation.

Goals 2022 Update #4

Well this quarter rushed by quickly, along with the good intentions I had to catch up on all the goals I had planned for this year.  I did have other things on my mind this quarter, such as trying to get everything ready for Christmas and dealing with multiple car issues.  I'm sure if I'd really put my mind to it I could have come along much further, but where's the fun in that.

Financial Fitness

Getting our two sinking funds sorted out early on in the year couldn't have been more of a blessing for this quarter as we were able to do Christmas shopping for all our family without having to stress about money.  The sinking fund for the car also meant we were able to get the tyres fixed without too much bother, deal with a couple of breakdown costs, and have money to help with the deposit for our new car.  It definitely meant that an already stressful situation wasn't made even more stressful, especially around this time of year.  They will need to be saved up again, but it's been worth it.

Unfortunately our attempt to save up our four months emergency savings went out the window.  This was partly due to me working less hours and my husband not having the extra hours available at his work over the winter.  However, it would be true to say that our spending on food and other things we didn't necessarily need also played quite a bit factor in this.  I've definitely spent more money on crafting than I probably should have and whilst it has produced items that I use all the time I could have done without them to reach this goal.  

I also haven't managed to work out an additional income as I had planned to do.  I would have needed to dedicate some of my free time towards it to get it to work, but I was too busy crafting to do that.  I had set myself quite a few crafting goals this year, which I'm not doing next year which might make it a much better time to get that done.  I also haven't gotten around to changing my bank over to a more ethical one, though I have done all the research into it that I wanted to do and have decided that Triodos is going to be the best one to go to.  I still have a little time before 2023 arrives and I'll be off for part of that so that'll probably be the perfect time to make this change as it shouldn't actually take that long.

To end this section on a plus I have managed to pay a full year of pension this year and we've managed to end the year with our credit cards being zero.  In the last week of 2022 I'm going to have a real in depth look at our finances to get an honest idea at how we've been doing and where we've been sending our money.  There will need to be quite a few changes next year even just to ensure that we can pay our bills.

Sailing Around the World

We haven't been able to take any sailing lessons this year, but we knew that was going to be a bit of a long shot anyway.  However, I have been doing more research into electric motors on sailing boats.  Do I completely understand how they work - not really.  Do I at least have a better understanding - definitely.  Maybe sailing lessons could be one of our sinking funds for next year, but we'll see how that goes. 

Long Distance Walking

I've done everything on this that I had planned to do.  Our finances and fitness levels means that this won't be anything we can do anytime soon.  Good to have a distant carrot to work towards though.

Learning New Skills

We haven't managed to get any more surfing in this year, but we have asked people to put money towards surfing lessons for our Christmas present so hopefully we'll be able to get back to that soon.  Possibly another sinking fund.

The skateboarding has gone right out the window.  I am annoyed with myself on this one as I seem to get better at it each time I practice, but I'm just being lazy when it comes to getting up and giving it a go.  I'm not going to let this one go though as I'm still keen to learn.  I just need to make it a habit that we do.  At least my husband is also wanting to get back into it so that's a partner in crime now.

I'm aware that this year I did give myself a lot to do on both the goals and crafting front.  In fact, I probably gave myself a little bit too much to do and, though I'm disappointed I didn't get more done, I know that what I have managed to do is still good.  I am at least a little bit further forward than I was last year and that's the most important thing to me.  

Goals 2022 Update #2

And just like that half the year is over.  Seriously, this year has gone by so fast.  I must be getting old, mainly because I've started talking about how fast time is going.  There's been a few not great things going on in this quarter, though at least we had a nice thing in our wedding, which has made concentrating on reaching our goals a little less of a priority than they might otherwise have be.  That being said, we've still managed to make some progress and I still feel that things are going pretty well.

Financial Fitness

The plan for this quarter was for me to have paid into my pension every pay day for six months, which I've managed to do, and for us to have saved up half of our four months emergency savings, which we have also managed to do.  I'm very proud of us for that and hopefully we can keep this going for the rest of the year.  It definitely feels like we're actually doing well on this front.  I've also put a lot of thought into what type of secondary income I could do.  It's mostly crafting type of things, but I now really need to experiment with these so that I can work out what would actually suit me best.

My plan for the next quarter is to have a good look at more ethical banks to move my own current account to.  It really is time that I took this step.  I also want to use this quarter to really look at the secondary income ideas to see how much of a possibility these could be.  It will entail me having to find the additional time to do it, but it should also be fun and hopefully worth it in the long run.  The last goal for this quarter financially is to have paid into my pension every pay day.  This could be the first year that I actually manage to do this for a full years pay.

Sailing Around the World

The plan for this quarter was to research what type of boat we would like and what would be suitable for just two people to sail and live in.

This coming quarter I want to research about electric motors for sail boats and all the components that you need to have to make this actually work.  Whilst electric motors on boats aren't common they're also not completely rare either so it should be easy to find out about them.  I also want to look at actually booking our sailing lessons so we can see if this really is a viable thing.  However, we will have to see how the finances are doing first before we think about that.

Long-distance Walking

There wasn't anything for us to do on this goal this quarter as we're not really going to do any of these until our financial goals are reached.  However, we have started looking at Offa's Dyke as something for us to do next year.  There aren't any goals for this next quarter either, but if we do have any spare time I think I'll keep researching Offa's Dyke.

Learning New Skills

I was meant to have practiced skateboarding at least twice a month this quarter, but it really hasn't happened......at all.  It really is just getting myself out the door that's the problem.  If I could just get myself to do that it would be fine, but it's just so much easier (with less possibilities of breaking something) to be lazy.  I'm not giving up on this yet though, so next quarter I want to aim for at least once a month.  You never know, it could happen.

The last goal was surfing.  I had no plans on this for this quarter either, but I do want to at least start lessons in the coming quarter.  For my birthday my husband brought me a gift card for a local surfing school, so I'm going to use this to book us a private lesson.  We can then take it from there.

All in all it's been a mixed bag when it comes to reaching our goals.  The main one this year was the finances and we're doing well on that front so I'm happy.  If we can get the other goals to follow that would be good and, seeing as there is still half a year to go, that is entirely possible.  I just need to concentrate a bit more and maybe 'relax' a little less.

Goals for 2022

I don't think I'll be alone in saying that 2021 didn't exactly go to plan.  In fact, if you read my last blog you'll see that my financial goals really didn't go to plan at all.  This was partly because I just got tired in the second half of the year and couldn't motivate myself to carry on with these goals, but I also think that it was partly because they weren't connected to any long term goals, which meant I didn't have much of an incentive to complete them.

So, what are my long term goals:

• Financial fitness - which is basically the same goal I've had for the last few years, but, whilst we've been very lucky in being able to work these last couple of years, this pandemic has made me very aware of how important building some financial security is.  It would also allow us to carry out the other long term goals we have that are much more enjoyable.
• Sail around the world - I've always wanted to do this and it is very possibly a goal that will never happen.  However, I thought it might be worth aiming for something big and at the very least we might be able to sail to some other countries.  With the way travel is at the moment (and even how it had become before Covid 19) this has also now become a much more enticing option.  It would be good if we could sail to New Zealand and back - and yes, technically that would be around the world but not if the return journey was the same as the outwards journey.  I had always had the attitude before that this would basically be an impossible goal, but now I'm thinking I should just give it a go.  If it doesn't work out it doesn't work out, but at least I can say I tried.
• Long-distance walks in the UK - there are so many multiple-day walks in the UK we really want to do and will hopefully be filling our future with. Not only is it something we love doing, but I feel that it's a really good way of getting to know the different areas of the UK.  
• Keep learning new skills - I've put this in firstly because I enjoy learning something new, but also because it's important for brain health to keep it as active as possible.  It can also come in handy if you learn something useful.  What I have in mind for this year isn't exactly helpful, but it should hopefully be fun.

And that brings me to my 2022 goals.

Financial Fitness.

I'm going to attempt this again, but this time I'm going to keep in mind not only the long term financial security but all the other things this will help us achieve.  By the end of 2022 I want to have:

• Gotten rid of my credit card debt (again)
• Fully paid up our sinking funds for Christmas and car repairs.
• Finally put together our four months savings
• Found additional sources of income, at least one
• Paid into my pension on a monthly basis
• Find an alternative, more ethical bank (not strictly a financial fitness thing, but it's connected to my finances and I would like my money to do positive things whenever it can)

This is pretty much the same as last year, but if we get these completed it then gives us room to start saving up for our next long term goal.

Sailing Around the World.

This is very unlikely to be something we're going to be able to accomplish in one year and if I think about all the things we need to do it's actually quite daunting.  But baby steps.  This year will be the very basics:

• Find out about and hopefully start sailing lessons.  It's been a very long time since I've done any sailing and even that was only on a dingy
• Research the type of sailboat we'd want and also look into the possibility of an electric motor
•  The additional incomes would also come into this as well so that we can carry on earning as we travel

Long-distance Walk in the UK.

Theoretically, I would be looking to organise a walk this year.  However, now doesn't quite feel like the right time with things still being as unsettled as they are with Covid and our finances still needing a reboot. So this year will be more about getting information about these walks instead so we can start organising them from next year onwards. This will be quite a simple one this year:

• Build a folder to 'collect' all the walks into
• Research what multiple days walks there are in the UK
• An odd one is to find another sleeping matt.  I'm finding when I camp now my hips hurt in the morning, which is fine for just a two-day walk but not if I'm doing anything long distance.  

Learning New Skills.

Attempting to learn how to skate was a bit of a disaster last year, basically, because I didn't put any time into it.  It was entirely my fault. So this year:

• Learn how to skate
• I'd also like to start learning how to surf

There are a lot of goals I've given myself this year and realistically I won't get them all done by the end of 2022.  On top of this, I'm also getting married and there's all the organising that needs to go into that.  But I wanted to aim high and actually start working towards some long term goals that we have.  Even if I don't complete all of these goals, I'll have at least started in the right direction.