Happy new year.
Three words that indicate the winding up of the old and ushering in of the new. In this case, it’s winding up the crazy rollercoaster of a car crash of a pandemic-filled year that was 2020 and ushering in, well, potentially more of the same.
But the year is what you make of it, right? And all things considered, 2020 was a good year, pandemic restrictions aside.
We got to see our daughter through her first year in the world, making every day an adventure. Work was good, we cooked more, made more time for family and the rest of it. We were zoomed out, bereft of sport (bar the Belarussian Premier League).
Sure, it would be nice to have more money, more free time, fewer bills to pay, but as we kiss 2020 goodbye, I don’t want for anything.
I’ve got my health, family life is good, work-life is going well, I’ve got a roof over my head and food on the table.
If that continues through 2021, it will be been a pretty good year.
Being resolute for 2021
Now the title above may be a bit on the misleading side. Open a dictionary and you’ll find the definition of resolution as “a firm decision to do or not to do something”. One must be resolute, not sit on the fence.
Much like my plan for November, I’m setting January up to be a busy month just to get the year kicked off right. Plus I have a few weeks off to play with so it will help put a shape on things.
If putting things down in writing makes you accountable, the this is me kicking off my accountability in 2021.
Build a better me
This is a fairly straight forward plan on paper. It’s not about making radical changes too, merely getting back on track – with a goal in mind. Goals are important you see. Without them, what is there to keep your focus?
Building a better me for 2021 is equal parts physical and mental, and that’s where a lot of folk need to be looking this year.
Yes, I will train more. Have Zwift, have back, have lockdown, sorted. I work to carve out the time in the day that I need to do these things, even if it’s only 30 or 40 minutes. When it comes to working out, it’s a bit like Tesco – every little helps.
But to reap the benefits of that, I’ve got to balance things on the other side. Lifting well is great, cycling well is great, but if I’m not eating well, drinking right, getting fresh air daily and most importantly, sleeping right, then what’s the point?
Actually, I could scrap all of the above and just look to create a proper sleep habit. Sleeping will make you better. Fact.
Want to know more about sleep? Try this podcast.
No excuses
2021 should be a year of no excuses. In line with building a better me, there’s no excuse for not eating right and looking after myself.
There’s no excuse for not working to the absolute best of my ability and beyond. There’s no excuse for not being there for family.
As an addition to this year, there’s also no settling for excuses. Accountability all the way, on both sides of the divide.
Prioritise Projects
As I’m politely reminded again and again, I have a habit of starting off a project or two, then launching into the next one before the current one is finished or in the wild.
I think part of me enjoys the process of starting something up – ideas, execution, branding, design, and all the rest, sometimes forgetting you need to be able to put the time into something to sustain it, help it grow, nurture it along.
With blogs and Instagram accounts or ideas for sites and shops and projects, if they’re taking too much time, or can’t be resourced, or if I’ve not done anything with them in an age, they’re in the bin. I also need to stop buying domain names.
Instagram makeover
Which leads me to this one. For 2021, I’ve archived everything from my @kenmcguire account on Instagram and a few other accounts I’ve had in the background I have or will be shutting down.
The makeover is an experiment for my main account, at the very least for January in an attempt to put a particular style and identity on the account. Spinoffs for photography and design are bring trashed. You know you have a problem when you can’t add any more logins to the app because you’ve maxed out the current allowance.
Do something new for you
This year, I’m doing something new. That performance nutrition course I mentioned for November is still lurking in the background, so that’s going to be tackled starting 4 January.
I know I’ve got a new football podcast on the boil which records the third week of January.
While podcasting as a practice isn’t new to me by any stretch, the nutrition course is. I’ve got an eye on other courses across the year to upskill. You might have spent 2020 doing lots for other people, so don’t be afraid to reward yourself.
Slay the energy vampires
Again, I’ll thank 2020 for driving my tolerances levels for BS and dumbf*ckery to zero. They were close to zero before, but they’re zero now. A lot of it comes from so-called ‘energy vampires’.
These are the people in your life, neighbourhood, social circles, office, club – wherever – that wind up sucking the life out of you either as an offload, through persistent negativity, playing up problems without addressing them, you get the picture.
I’m talking emotional energy here, which can spill into you physical energy, leaving you drained, exhausted and overwhelmed.
I tend to keep a small enough circle of close friends and contacts (it will make contact tracing that bit easier, touch wood), and it has shrank in the last year. Slay the energy vampires. Get a good team of people around you, even if it’s only one or two, you’ll be miles better off.
Healthline.com has a good piece here on energy vampires.
And another thing
While they’re the key things I’m looking at for the year ahead, there’s a few things in the shorter term I’m looking at.
With new projects in mind, scoreline.ie has just kicked off – keep an eye on it. I’m aiming to write something every day between either here, here, here or here to get the content juices flowing for 2021.
I’m also writing more offline; the Moleskine and good pen are at the ready and there’s a copy of Day One on the go while I’ve still got the subscription. Maybe I need to crack open the old 30-posts-in-30-days challenge.
I’ll play more Football Manager and get Kilkenny City back to the big leagues. Books I’ve started will be finished and those waiting in the wings will be opened up.
I will fall down, get up, try, fail, succeed, rinse and repeat. Then in 2022 I’ll do it all over again.
Happy New Year.
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