Post #3274: 22 Goals for 2022 and my Word of the Year

In 2021 I made no new year goals, and I barely chose a word to guide my year (though I played with Renewal as an idea, I can’t say I really committed to it). Feeling disillusioned by my inability to plan around the pandemic which had blasted away all my goals for 2020, my general sense of well-being did not allow me to plan for the even the near future.

While I am not exactly able to see a path forward into 2022, and I am already tired by things to come, I have decided that rather than adopting a “let’s just get through this” mindset, I will work with the concept of fluidity and flow in 2022. As Lao Tzu and Lucretius (among many) have noted, water has the qualities of being soft and yet strong enough to erode rock. I would like to find the qualities of gentleness, strength, flexibility, and movement as I enter this new year with big and small goals. I am embracing “Fluid” as my word for 2022 as I seek to soften my approach to hard problems that have to be tackled.

Big Goals

1) Arrange renovations on my parent’s second home and move them into it. This is my biggest goal and part of helping them age in their community with less property to take care of.

2) Create my position at work and get appointed to it indeterminately. I’m currently on an assignment, but would like that to become permanent and am working towards that happening.

3) Staff my new work team once positions are created. That’s nine positions which come with a whole lot of work to create and fill them.

Fitness Goals

4) Run 15 km. (My previous record is 12 km.)

5) Complete one 30-day yoga challenge.

6) Increase on all my powerlifts: Deadlift 250, Benchpress 115, Squat 230

7) Complete one other fitness challenge (to be chosen later in the year).

Fibre Goals

8) Knit a first pair of socks.

9) Hand paint two warps.

10) Create some upholstery fabric and reupholster one footstool and a chair.

11) Weave a double-width blanket.

12) Organize community fibre meet-ups once omicron has passed.

13) Host an open studio where people can drop-in for a day of visiting and fibre discussion.

Writing Goals

14) Publish 10 issues of Comfort for the Apocalypse.

15) Make fifty blog posts. (One down, 49 to go!)

16) Complete one long-read essay.

Other Goals

17) Return to Zen practice and study. Attend one residential retreat in 2022.

18) Put $2000 in savings and leave it there.

19) Read 100 books (I did this challenge last year and got to 91). This includes War and Peace which I am reading right now.

20) Do the January Cure (The Apartment Therapy program for getting one’s house in order for the year to come, which started yesterday).

21) Get to New York for friend’s wedding and family visiting in June. This is covid-dependent, but it’s on the agenda and will be the first trip outside of BC in over two years.

22) Arrange one smallish house improvement project – laundry room, downstairs bathroom or tbd – in the fall.

Though I feel these goals are achievable because they align with where I am currently at, a lot of external factors will influence how and if they happen. While that is always been true, it just seems more obvious in the face of wave after wave of pandemic infections. While I hope that 2022 brings an end to Covid (or at least sends it into endemic status), I also know that I will continue to carve out a life in my small/local community and use the quieter pace of lockdown for generative creative and spiritual practice. I hope that you are able to do the same, finding a focus that works to stabilize your own place in this ever-emerging world and even discovering new pleasures amidst our days of uncertainty. A better world is still possible, but we have to believe it’s so in order to make it there.