I am setting my goals for 2021, and I’m using already-established headings that work well for me. First up for today’s post? Finances.

Finances

Overall, I would say I feel a bit guilty about our financial situation. Survivor guilt in a way, particularly given where we work and what we see some of the clients having to deal with during the pandemic and how badly certain sectors are decimated. Working for government, we’re probably immune to the cutbacks for some time since it is our groups that are responding to some of the needs, but a few years after, everyone expects the cuts to take effect then to get deficits under control. In the meantime, our finances are in pretty good shape. The down-side of the pandemic is we are not going anywhere or doing anything; the upside is we are not going anywhere or doing anything that costs much money, so we have some extra money saved for when the world does open up again. And overall, it’s not a big category. Things are going relatively well for us on this front, no “big” concerns.

But each year, I tend to do some pretty advanced social planning for attending potential plays and shows around town. Multiple theatres, multiple types of shows, etc. And when COVID hit, I had a lot of shows that were cancelled, leading to refunds and credits. For the credits, once the world opens up again, I can book new shows. Obviously not a short-term priority, but it’s on my list.

I also have some minutiae to handle under a general heading of “clean-up”. This includes a credit from Rogers that didn’t get processed properly. How excited do you think I am to deal with THAT mess, even though it means money for me? There’s also an old health claim where something “bounced” in the claim process, so I have to resubmit, and of course, some new health claims to submit for 2020. I also want to go through and clean up some credit card consolidation. We don’t owe anything on them, it’s just that we use one that gets us grocery store points (PC) but if I never really use them these days, is that really worth it? And why have other cards we never use? Eventually I’ll request an updated credit report and see if there are any gremlins in there. Two other areas for clean-up are updating my will (mainly for catastrophic loss if all three of us are killed at once) and better coordination of various gift cards that I haven’t used yet.

The real “work” to be done in this area though is retirement planning. We have a bunch of RRSPs, we have our big pensions with the government, but we haven’t done much else for sophisticated planning. We did a plan a number of years ago, and it was fine for what it was and for the time we did it. More about cost planning and general revenues than investment vehicles. But I also have a pension buyback to do so that I can retire in 2025. There are a number of ways to process that, including financing it through payroll deduction or transferring it from my RRSPs, but we’ll see which is a better configuration with some other options. We need to do a meeting with a new financial advisor, and while we did some initial reaching out at the start of the pandemic, we stalled back in August.

The reason was pretty silly, in a way. One of the obvious questions for retirement planning is what are we going to do in retirement, and so Andrea and I had a conversation during our vacation in the summer about a whole bunch of places we would like to go and live for a week, 2 weeks, a month, maybe 2-3 months even, during our retirement. Possibly while keeping our house, maybe renting it out, maybe selling it and being homeless while we rent in multiple short-term places. Some of it depends on when Andrea retires, our overall health then, etc. But we made a list. Or rather, I wrote down the list, put it away safe, and promptly forgot WHERE I PUT IT! Kind of hard to submit the forms to our financial advisor if I’m missing the major “abnormal” expense from our plan.

I couldn’t find it. I was convinced I wrote it in a notebook that I had with me at the time, but it wasn’t there. Andrea remembered me writing it on loose paper, so I thought maybe I stuck it in as a bookmark in some books. Nope. Not in 2-3 other notebooks that are frequent companions. Not in my big shoulder bag, not with my laptop, not with my obvious loose planning papers. Not with my financial stuff. WHAT THE **** did I do with it? Well, I put it away somewhere safe. I folded it over, small piece of paper, and put it in my small shoulder bag. The one that use when I go shopping or to a coffee shop. You know, the things I am not doing now. And I put it in a small pocket that I never use. Because that was a safe place to put it where it wouldn’t get lost or destroyed or misfiled. Well, I was right. It didn’t get any of those things. But I was cleaning out the bag the other day for pens or highlighters and things that don’t need to be in there since I’m not using it, and Bam! There it was. Son of a fudgsicle. Okay, back on track.

We can do the retirement planning and fill out the docs. We can have a retirement planning meeting. And I can decide how I’m financing my pension buyback. I even have a great book about types of activities in retirement to help me refine my thinking (The One Thing), with a nice cross-walk to the type of fitness needs that go along with them.

Organizing

So you often see a joke about to do lists that the first thing on the to do list is to make a to do list. And some of this category is simply that…a category for getting organized that lists how I’m getting myself organized. Not competely, but somewhat. In some years, it has literally meant doing this big list for the year. Doing my review of last year, focusing on the future for my goals, communicating my intentions to the universe. But that’s done as soon as I press publish, so hardly worth mentioning.

For those who are friends with me on Facebook, you have likely noticed that I regularly share some of my favourite comics. I get most of them through one specific site, and I never really feel like I’m well-organized for those feeds. I can make it highly personalized, even deleting or adding on a daily basis if I wanted to, or reading online instead of through my email, but I like getting the email feeds. And so I went through and reorganized them recently. It’s done, but officially I guess it was part of this year’s plan. To the extent it is a continuing item, the “to do” portion is that I continue to share them and file the old ones away in my computer. Just cuz I can, not because I need them per se. Although I did get behind at one point in my feed, and so I have a bit of a comics reading backlog sitting there that I can go through at some point too. I may just delete them, haven’t decided yet. Not exactly a priority.

Activities

This is a slightly weird category. It doesn’t particularly fit anywhere else, and it is about various activities that I want to do on a pro-active basic but more almost one-off things than tied to a category. I could count it as a “medium-term bucket list” of sorts, but perhaps more like “superficial bucket list”.

For example, I bought a Raspberry Pi kit awhile back and I am hoping to turn it into a portable gaming system or something cool like that. I bought a bunch of parts, but I never really made time to do it, thought perhaps J might be interested but he isn’t really. Instead, it is just a project for me to do by myself. Part of a new focus on crafting. I also have a robot to assemble, but I’ll do that one with Jacob.

Before COVID hit, I was thinking about taking archery lessons or trying axe-throwing. Not so much right now, obviously. I also want to learn how to play the piano, but I suspect that will be more online stuff with YouTube and books than taking formal lessons. It would be a good activity for the pandemic, just haven’t got around to it yet.

I mentioned above that I have a drone stored in my alcove, and I’m hoping to fly it properly at some point. The main challenge is getting it going without banging into a tree. I’ve tried 3-4 times, and what I really need is a bunch of open space to get the controls properly balanced. I have a friend who apparently flies drones and I’m hoping he’ll take me out some time to show me how to fly it. After that, the world will be open to me. Or at least within the range of the drone. It has a small camera in it, so I’m hoping to use it for practical things like checking out shingles on the roof as well as taking pics of the cottage and lake from the sky, or even some observing sites.

One thing in the list that seems almost silly to have on a list but I added it a long time ago from a list of activities for fun you could do in winter. It’s NOT complicated, requires almost no planning at all, and I hadn’t haven’t done it — make a snow angel. Stay tuned for an update on this one.

So what else is in this category? Plant something and grow it, possibly flowers, possibly vegetables. I’ve never really purposefully planned to plant something and grown it. Not really, little things here and there. More as a lark than a plan.

Way back when I got married, I tried to do indoor go-karts for my bachelor party, but the plan didn’t work out. So it’s been on my list for coming up on 13 years.

Another item is partly for interest and partly for research for writing, but I’d like to do a ride along with police for an evening or two.

A last one to include, and I’m not even sure what I mean exactly, is to run a 3D printer. I have an idea for some astro gear that I’d like to print, the files are available online (some free, some not), and I’d like to play with the files and print them. The reason I am not sure what I mean by doing this is I don’t know if I want my own 3D printer (which would allow me to print a whole bunch of parts for board games for Jacob as well as astro tools, some other crafting things, etc.), or if I just want to go commercial (I’ve printed a focus knob for my scope at a small industrial shop in Nepean, although not likely to be able to tweak it much nor do stuff on the fly), or if I want to get set up at one of the maker spaces. Sure, I would love to have my own 3D printer, and I *know* a guy with a 3D printer, I just don’t know if I would use it enough to make it worthwhile. I’m tempted when everything is all over to call the guy with the printer, go for an afternoon with some design ideas, and see how it all works.

As a small aside, I find the business model for 3D printers somewhat amusing. You can buy them all ready to go, OR, just for fun, you can buy a kit and assemble it yourself. I think this is one of those tests for irony. If you aren’t buying the kit to put it together yourself, maybe you shouldn’t be thinking about buying a 3D printer to make a whole bunch of things to make yourself. And yet, I’d rather buy it preassembled and ready to go than to futz around with leveling and particle nozzles the first few times.

I have a few other projects on the go too, but they fall under other categories I think.

What am I going to do in January?

So that’s my big list for the year. What am I going to include for January?

1. Start filling out the retirement planning docs
2. Sort out my comics feed
3. Make a snow angel

Do you have any plans this year for finances, organizing yourself, and/or one-off special activities?

I like the process of goal-setting, reconfirming my sense of “me”, what’s important to me, to think “how do I want to spend the next few months of my life?”. That’s not really true, though. Like the cliché that no battle plan survives an encounter with the enemy, no life plan survives encounter with, well, life. So, while I like planning, and it gives me an illusion of control, I also know that I’m really planning about 10% of my life. Most of it is already set by previous decisions — choice of career, marriage, having a kid, working for the government, working from home, where I live, etc.

My goal-setting is really about how I use about 2 hours of day of non-linked time. And sometimes it is just going to be about vegging out (like the Pretty Woman quote, “Yeah, be still like vegetables, lay like broccoli.”) or spontaneous side-quests. But other times, when I feel like being productive, I can choose what I’m working on, projects that are important to me or that I think I’ll enjoy.

I already have much of my goal-setting broken down into various categories, so I’ll use the headings that work for me. Note that they are not in a specific order of priority, this is from my tracker. When I have the full list, I’ll worry about prioritization then.

Health

This category is about specific health concerns, so obviously the first thing is to stay healthy. Following pandemic protocols, continuing isolation, keeping the family safe. But honestly? That’s part of life now, not really a goal. I mostly just have it on my list so I’ll remember that I’m spending time and energy on it. Or having energy sucked out of me by it.

More pointedly though, I’m worried about my spending too much time in a dark basement with no light, so I’ve bought a Seasonal Affected Disorder (SAD) UV light and need to get that going. I also need to get curtains on the windows down there so they don’t have to be completely blacked out. I also have a social worker that I use for occasional chats about mental health, which I may continue; I want to get into meditation; and I have a gift card for a small B&B that I had hoped to use for a weekend getaway by myself at some point, but that will likely need to extend past COVID, alas.

I’m also monitoring headaches/sinuses and a sore on my leg, but those aren’t really a priority. I’m hoping my fitness goals below will have some benefits for this part too, but I’m also going to keep seeing chiro to keep my back in shape, particularly given that I’m spending a lot more time sitting at a computer.

Fitness

My fitness goals are much more ambitiously detailed. I’ve restarted tracking my weight, and have a spot to do it on my iPhone which will be easier than what I had been doing (mix of tablet and desktop). While my weight has been holding steady during the lockdown, I’ve lost muscle. Which explains how my girth increased, my stomach is larger than it was as evidenced by how my shirts fit and some less-than-flattering photos in October to December. Just as building muscle can initially increase weight, since muscles weigh more than fat, I’ve replaced less muscle with more fat. Sigh. That just won’t do.

Initially, I’m going to make sure I get out of the house twice a day for a walk, hopefully with Jacob (11:00 and 3:10 are good times for his schedule). But even on days when he can’t make it, I still need to go. It’s a small step, hehehe!

I have a small workout area almost ready in the basement, and hopefully we’ll (all of us) be able to use it for yoga and stretching videos. I need to get a good stretching routine going. But the real “boost”? I need to assemble a BowFlex and re-assemble our exercise bike. My goal is to have both up and running by February 15th. When the weather improves, I also want to use my scooter more. Of course, once I get the Bowflex and exercise bike up and running, I can merge it with walking, riding, and other activities into a larger fitness regimen.

Jacob and I are also going to go to the driving range at Hunt Club. We may have to do a lesson or two to get J and I back into the “swing of things”, so to speak, but that’s easy enough to do as the Kevin Haime school is operating there.

Cooking

This category is a bit of a double-edged sword. While it obviously serves the overall section if I’m managing to cook and eat more healthy foods, the real goal for me is just to make more things from scratch (usually healthier) and to do more of the cooking rather than leaving most of it to Andrea. Recipes help me do both. However, not all the recipes, such as the desserts, are going to be about health choices. Some are just tasty. 🙂

I tried to get a baking and cooking challenge going last year to help drive trying out new recipes, but it kind of fizzled. So I’m deleting that group.

Beyond that, let’s start off the category with some good old-fashioned bread. While, maybe not old-fashioned. I have a new bread machine that I want to use more regularly as well as some other tools for doing bread by hand.

I also would like to do more for breakfasts, and that likely starts with re-finding a good recipe I had for crépes. I also want to make ice cream, tiramisu, and come up with a really good apple pie option, as well as my mom’s peanut butter cookies that I miss.

Beyond those, I am going to give an attempt at a really complicated cassata recipe that a friend gave me years ago. But most of my energy, I think, will be more around trying out recipes of certain types:

• More insta-pot recipes;
• A special short-ribs recipe;
• Some Dutch-oven recipes;
• Ground beef recipes;
• Some from the SEB Cookbook we did for GCWCC;
• Some from the Coconut Lagoon book, a gift from Andrea and Jacob; and,
• Some from a new subscription service for Jacob called Raddish Kids (i.e., “radical dishes for kids to cook”…we have a Thai one that is really good, we quite liked it).

I’m tying the “new recipes” in with family time with Jacob too, cooking them together when/where we can.

What am I going to do in January?

So that’s my big list for the year. What am I going to add to my plan for January?

1. Set up my UV light in the basement.
2. Go to Chiro every other week.
3. Track my weight.
4. Walk daily
5. Finish setting up the work-out area
6. Make bread.
7. Try one new recipe per week, hopefully with Jacob.

What are you going to start your year with in the area of health, fitness or cooking?