Like many folks, 2020 was a trying time for me because of the pandemic. I’ve stepped back and now realize everything I have to be thankful for personally and professionally. There were a few low points during the height of the pandemic, mind you. 

I leave 2020 full of hopes for 2021, including:

The end of this pandemic

Top of my list of hopes for 2021 is the end of this pandemic and having to wear a mask when I go out. I know I’ll land on my feet. Still, I can’t deny this has been one of the more stressful chapters of my life.

I had to cancel my Christmas plans this year which was quite a disappointment. When I catch the news, politicians on both sides of the aisle remind me why I became a political atheist. We need leaders who can put the common citizen ahead of themselves, side deals, and their bank accounts.

Put writing for myself back on the schedule

While a big part of my day job is creating content, I have ideas that I wish to pursue myself. 2020 didn’t see a lot of personal writing from me. My Medium account page is testimony to that. Writing LinkedIn articles feels like too much of a battle against the site’s algorithms. While I’ve had a lot of success on LinkedIn finding projects and jobs, I can’t seem to crack the publishing platform. Consequently, in 2021 my LinkedIn publishing plan is to focus on just short-form writing in the news feed and give up on publishing articles on the platform.

My hope in 2021 is to focus more of my personal publishing attention on Medium and this blog.

Make reading part of my schedule (once again)

When I tallied up the number of books read on my Kindle and iPad, it was less than of what I read in 2019. Looking back, there are some good reasons. One, I read a lot by the pool during the summer. It was too much trouble last summer with pandemic restrictions to join my local pool. Hopefully, that situation will change this summer. While I had big plans of reading a lot when my local area went into lockdown, keeping my hands on the keyboard in writing was the only thing that kept my mind off what was going on with the situation.

Get hands-on with technology again

I used to pride myself back in my technical writer days that I was self-sufficient to work with the technology I was writing about on my own. I didn’t have my usual hands-on technology time with technology in 2020. Reasons include timing, writing topics, and project needs. So I plan to pursue some personal project just to get back in the spirit of tinkering again. Starting with I’m tinkering with Raspberry PI over my Christmas break. After that, I plan to play around with Arduino.

Getting my workouts back on track

My workouts during the pandemic have been a gigantic bust if I were the sum of them up. It could be a while until the gym is my happy place again and a welcome break from the keyboard. So I’m changing up my strategy again for my own physical and mental health.

2021, in my sights

I’ve lived a life of having to pivot and look after myself through some personal crises. When I get knocked down, I’ve gotten back up. Getting through the Coronavirus until I get a vaccination is no different.