Review of 2021

I spent much of the year in a paralysing state of incertitude, endlessly rewriting the same cursed document, and got burned out towards the end. The first few months of the year were spent in lockdown, and looking back at my calendar there are entire weeks which come up blank. I almost gave up writing to this site on a few occasions; there just wasn’t anything to talk about. It was a frustrating and unhappy time, I’m glad it’s over.

Still, looking back at my 2021 resolutions, here are the things I did:

• Got into film photography, if you've noticed the pictures on here looking a lot more grainy.
• Started properly using AVIF images on here, with the responsive picture tag. Related to the above point, I'm now a lot more relaxed about posting photos on this site.
• Got plants for my flat, and looked after them carefully, although they're not looking too green at the moment.
• Did more exercise, especially once lockdown was over. I don't think I've lost weight, but I feel a lot healthier in general.
• Watched fewer television series, and went to the cinema more instead.
• Wrote about comics, I wrote a critical review of the first republished collection of 'Third World War' from Crisis. This was probably the most enjoyable thing I read and wrote about this year.
• Went to a few big protest marches, went camping, walked up a some big hills, met a lot of online people in real life.

And a few other personal achievements I hadn’t planned:

• Organised a campaign for a city council by-election.
• Edited and published a pamphlet which a friend wrote in LaTeX.
• Got more involved in UCU, and became a delegate to the Leicester trades council.
• Did some teaching, and found it far more rewarding than I expected.
• Learned a lot more about server administration, networking, and Nginx. I configured the backend infrastructure for two websites this year, in addition to this one.
• Interviewed a former Afghan politician about the situation in his country. At this point it's all done and waiting to be published.

A few things which don’t really count as achievements but deserve a mention:

• Went to Spain, and Belgium, and Scotland. Very nearly returned to Venezuela for election monitoring at the beginning of the year but the flight was cancelled due to Covid.
• I started (or continued) a lot of projects which I never finished.
• Writing a pamphlet on gentrification.
• Publishing my MSc dissertation.
• Writing a book review.
• Writing an academic article.

In the past I’ve been through periods where I just dropped a lot of projects and had to focus on just one or two things. I have a growing todo list and a large drafts folder, and that situation needs sorting at some point.

In a similar theme, one of my goals for this year was to limit the number of things I get involved with. I got active in my union, and I’m glad I did, but it’s another layer of meetings and emails and things to do.

Finally, here are a few things I should have done, but didn’t:

• Get into the habit of using a tiling window manager.
• Learn to code in Ruby.
• Learn to drive.
• Start using my Raspberry Pi as a proper server.

After encountering an error with pacman, which I never took the time to fix, I gave up on using my Pinebook Pro. I always intended to reinstall Manjaro but it was always more convenient to fall back on my old Lenovo Ideapad.

I’ve now ordered another new laptop for next year. I’m looking forward to receiving that, but while I’m doing this self-criticism, there was a personal failing here. I had this relatively new laptop just sitting on my desk for at least six months, and through that whole period I never attempted to get it working again.

I ended 2020 with a feeling of misplaced optimism, and I feel much the same now. A bit worn down, hopeful for the future, but not sure what’s coming next.