2020. A year to be remembered by all. I think this year has been absolute proof that you cannot plan for anything in life. This time last year, I and many other people felt very optimistic about 2020. It would be a new decade and a new start. The virus has hung over everyone this year and life hasn’t been quite the same. So much of this year has felt the similar and yet so different. I’ve said myself with the amount of times I’ve walked around the local area it has felt like a real-life time lapse of all seasons as seen through my eyes. And now we are at the end of the year. It is mind boggling how fast the year has gone, despite everything that has happened. Oh, and I looked at my 2020 planner recently and laughed. I think I wrote about one thing in it. It’ll do for scrap paper at least…
For myself personally, things seemed bright at the start of the year as me and my partner were in the process of buying a house, something we hoped would have been completed in January 2020. By February due to issues with the house itself, we reached an impasse and the house fell through. In early March we saw another house come up literally on the next road from where we going to buy the previous house. Lockdown happened so nothing moved until June and then in September that eventually fell through too. To be honest, I had been desperate to move from where we currently are and as of writing we are no closer than where we were in October 2019 when we put the offer on the first house, just with less money in our pockets thanks to surveys and solicitors’ fees. I have no idea where we will look to next as in all honesty we are put off looking in the area we were going for. It’s that whole thing of ‘maybe the universe is trying to tell us something’. But maybe something will come up next year. I sure hope so.
20th March would be my last day at my old job. I had been put on furlough and then in June I got ‘the phone call’. I was being made redundant because of coronavirus with four weeks notice. To be honest I did see it coming so it wasn’t a surprise although it was very worrying as the jobs market has been terrible. Thankfully, I had one interview for a purchasing role in early July with a well-known logistics company and I got the job! I started on the 20th July marking exactly four months since being furloughed and I’ve really enjoyed being there. In all honesty, my last job had a very toxic environment which had been noted by several of us. I had been wanting to leave but stayed for the sole purpose of getting a house sale through (which is not a good reason to stay in a job, by the way). It did work out well in the end though as I am a lot happier where I am now and I know others who have also left and are now far happier. This is one example where when one door closes another one opens and I realise I am lucky here.
This year I’ve also tried to be more minimal where possible. When I knew I was being made redundant, I cancelled my subscription to Netflix. It’s not expensive by any means but I wanted to save any money I could with the uncertainty. And I realised I didn’t really miss it. I loved Netflix at the start and you feel like a kid in a sweet shop, but then I found myself scrolling aimlessly through different things. It was like there was too much choice. Actually, this year I’ve found myself watching YouTube a lot and got into lots of channels that I’d never watched before. A few of these are; Abroad in Japan (technically I got into his channel right at the end of 2019), Sharmeleon, SomecallmeJohnny, Caddicarus, ProJared, MilkyBokiTan and Beard Meats Food. Honestly, I love YouTube and the absolute breadth of things you can find on it. Physically speaking, I turned out a lot of my stuff during lockdown (mainly clothes) and sold a lot on eBay (clothes, books, games etc.). I’m still working on clearing stuff out, but I’m proud of what I’ve done so far.
The big thing this year and what got me through lockdown was videogames which of course has been written about on my blog. Particularly, I somehow ended up playing through all the mainline Final Fantasy games except for XI and XIV. Technically XV too but I have played through it before and this time I played the Pocket Edition, so I played it in some form. Though I plan on replaying the original version sometime next year. I love the genuinely shocked reactions of some people when I told them, because it is no short feat. I would say a lot of these games average on at least 30 hours of play. And when I worked out very roughly how many hours it took, well let’s say it took about 2 weeks of real time and in a general time scale I was doing it from around April to October. And I regret nothing. Though I don’t think I would do it again. It’s not just been Final Fantasy that I blitzed through though. This year I watched all 11 Star Wars films, watched the entirety of Benidorm and all series of Only Fools and Horses to give a few examples. None of these series are short by any means.
Another memorable point was quitting social media for my mental health back in June. I deleted the apps for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and I will admit more at the start sometimes I would log in on the browser just for a moment mainly to check notifications rather than to scroll. I re-downloaded Instagram at the start of September and posted a picture just to check in, I thought maybe I might have been ok after a break. But no, I regressed back to how I was with mindlessly scrolling, not being present and I didn’t feel any better for it, so after one evening the app went again. Social media is not real and the longer you are off from it the more you don’t feel like you constantly need to be doing something or comparing. When you take a step back you realise how narcissistic some of these people on these platforms can be and how their attitudes can slowly warp young people aspiring to be like them. I hate the word ‘influencer’ and it can get in the bin. That’s not to say everyone is like that, there are a lot of positive people too and if we could get more of them then social media would be a better place. Who knows, maybe I will return one day, but not for now.
Travelling this year is another thing! Well, the lack of it. Of course, it’s a minor thing in the grand scheme of what is going on but it is disappointing not being able to go far. At the start of the year, me and my partner were coming up with ideas for where to go, we decided on going to Germany as we had such fun there when we went to Berlin in 2017. But of course, the virus happened so that idea was quickly canned. This is the first year since around 2008 that I haven’t been abroad once and our last trip abroad was Prague in October 2019. We went to the Peak District in October which was lovely and hopefully we can do another staycation next year, going abroad would be great but I won’t hold my breath just in case. I also did a day trip to London at the start of January 2020 and I’m really glad I did. I usually go to London at least a few times a year and it’s weird to think I’ve not been there in nearly a year now.
I’ve also been getting back into language learning this year, namely French and Japanese. I did French back in school from the age of 11 and went up to GCSE level but I wasn’t as interested back then so I wasn’t amazing at it. Japanese was the opposite, I took it upon myself to take evening classes and I did so from the age of 16 in 2008. I then did three years of classes and sat the GCSE for it and gained an A*. It had been very on and off (mostly off) since then and I think I lost motivation because I have only been to Japan once so it’s not like I can really use it much. I don’t want to lose what I’ve learned but I am also recognising my limits. I had the three volumes of the Japanese for Busy People textbooks which I recently sold as I’ve decided I just want to focus on the first book to recap a lot of what I would have done in class. Annoyingly I had the Romanised edition of the first book so I sold that too and bought the Kana edition which is far more useful if you have existing knowledge of Japanese so I am currently going through that.
I’ve only been to France once too but at least it is a lot closer to the UK for holidays etc. Now that I’m older I have a greater appreciation for the French language and as I already have a basis I thought I would study it again. Plus, I like the sound of the culture and the way the language sounds, even if I do find it harder than Japanese when it comes to pronunciation. Again, I want to recognise my limits as I want to make language learning fun and not putting too much pressure on myself which easily happens. I’m doing it as a hobby so I want to enjoy it. Realistically if you want to be fluent in a language then you have to live in the country. I hope I can spend more time in France in the future but I probably wouldn’t be moving there, so my aim is to simply get a decent understanding of the language. I may also brush up on my Mandarin as I studied that at university as an extra module – I’d study no more than the basics though. I downloaded Duolingo back in January to do French and Japanese, though I would not recommend this to be your only resource. Nothing beats a good book for learning and these days there are more resources than ever.
Around November time I finally decided to weigh myself. I would avoid the scales like the plague so I really am not sure what I would have been at the start of the year but I wasn’t happy with what I saw. I was the heaviest I had ever been in my life. My weight has been gradually creeping up since September 2016 as that was when I started my first office role. From the end of November, I have changed up my diet somewhat and started moving more – getting in 10,000 steps a day minimum, usually I try to go beyond it. And so far, it does seem to be working which I’m pleased to say. I’m not one for diets as I would not find them sustainable, but I’ve just been making changes to my diet and trying to limit snacking. I’ve been tracking my weight twice a week so I can see if I am going in the right direction. Naturally I did put a couple of pounds on over Christmas which was to be expected but so far I have lost nearly a stone so I’m really pleased about that. It is absolutely something I will be carrying on with.
I’ve not really felt Christmassy this year, even with listening to Christmas music on the radio, having the tree out and the cards and presents. Because we have a small Christmas tree for the flat, it was pretty much a case of finding it in the back room and moving it into the living room, with all the decorations intact from last year. The one thing I get excited about every year without fail however are the Christmas Costa hot chocolates. This year I’ve tried two of the new ones for this year. One is a Quality Street one and the other is an After Eight one. Both were really nice in their own ways, the Quality Street one was like a normal hot chocolate but sweeter and the After Eight one was basically a mint hot chocolate. It was kind of refreshing but not in a disgusting way like when you eat something after brushing your teeth. You also get a Quality Street sweet or an After Eight to have with it. The other new one was a Terry’s Chocolate Orange edition but I didn’t get round to trying it. To be honest I’m not generally crazy about chocolate orange so I think I picked the best two.
Christmas Day itself was low key but nice. Then again, my Christmases generally are very low key so I didn’t feel as restricted as some might have. I decided for one day only I would definitely get into the spirit though, so I painted my nails red and green on Christmas Eve while watching the Gavin and Stacey Christmas special from last year. On the day, I put on my new Christmas jumper and spent the day with my partner, dad, aunt and uncle. It was chilled but really nice and we had the music channel on the background all day playing Christmas music. I was also designated driver which meant I was on the Nosecco, which was absolutely fine by me! The rest of my time off was pretty chilled as due to the restrictions you could only go round to someone’s house on Christmas day so the rest of the time was spent chilling in the flat watching numerous Christmas specials of comedies and watching A Christmas Gift From Bob – which is a sequel to the film A Street Cat Named Bob. If you’ve not seen it, I recommend it.
I’ve already touched upon this, but it is interesting to read back on my goals for 2020 which I described in a post from New Year’s Day. One was general mental health improvement and self-care, a big part of this was quitting social media and I think for the most part I have been in a reasonable place mentally. The second one was career development, well I lost my job and then I got a new job at a bigger and better company. The third one was personal development, fitness and studying French. I quit the gym in February but I am getting back on track now with my weight loss and as for French I have been learning bits throughout the year and nearly filled out my exercise book with notes. The last one was taking a minimalist approach. I got rid of a lot of stuff this year and I’m trying to minimise what I have where I can. I think for each one I have achieved these to varying degrees so I’m pretty happy with that to be honest. This is why I wanted to call these goals and not resolutions as goals are not as absolute and are more likely to be achieved. For next year I think I will just carry on with these goals.
I am cautiously optimistic about 2021. I feel that surely it cannot be as bad, the virus is still rampant but we are equipped with a lot more knowledge about it than we did a year ago. That, and generally the more time has passed so hopefully we are further down the line with it. I hope anyway. I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos (as always) and many have been reflecting on the year and saying how bad 2020 is and that there is hope for next year. Never in my life have I seen anything where we are all so collectively affected by anything. I’d be more shocked if somebody said they actually had a good year. But, there have still been things to be thankful for – I think we are generally more grateful for what we have and the moments we share with others. As things improve I’m sure we will all take that much less for granted. Hope everyone stays safe and wishing you all a brighter 2021 because everyone deserves it – certainly the fantastic people that I know.
On a final note, it had randomly started snowing today which has put a smile on people’s faces. It seems to have calmed down now but it was nice while it lasted…
Luci's Blog 