Hello, friends. Welcome to this side of 2021. Consider yourself lucky - as I do - if you’ve made it through the pandemic 2020 with your health and job intact. The onus is on us to give those that have lost plenty a helping hand. For example: those in a position to not really need the $600 stimulus check should donate it to a charity. Consider a local food bank, or the Barstool Fund.
Because I work in education, I got the week and a half between Christmas Eve and New Years Day off. The white-collar winter break, if you will. While it sucked that I couldn’t travel back home to China as it’s my usual during this time, it was still nice to have some solitude at home. The weather was rainy for the most part as well, which is just about the perfect backdrop for some quiet contemplation.
Of course, it seems to be impossible for me to do absolute nothing, even when I’m on vacation. I feel best when I’m productive, so over the winter break I kept on reading books and studying Korean for a few hours per day. I also wrote a personal reflection piece on 2020, and a December update to owning my BMW M2 Competition. Please kindly give those a read.
I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions anymore, preferring consistent processes and habits. Sometimes the end goal can overwhelm the brain into failed submission. A small daily habit is much more palatable. Read 100 books for the year seems like climbing Everest; read for a half hour every day is infinitely more doable. Let your daily habits compound, and by the end the year you might as well end up reading 100 books.
I have no new habits to make for 2021; not yet, anyways. One mental goal I am working on this year is to truly ignore the opinion of others, to not give a crap what other people think. Too often I’ve let how I think others will react dictate my actions. This doesn’t mean I’m going to be a narcissistic asshole to people; the point is to be completely myself. I’m not going to restrict who am I and what I do just because I’m afraid what people will say.
Most favored cat.