Last Updated on 28 August 2023 by Colette
2020 will forever be known as the year that laughed in the face of our plans and goals, and p*ssed on our chips time and time again. Looking back on my goals for 2020 has brought about a certain fondness for the innocence and optimism that a fresh new year afforded us with not a clue as to what lay ahead. It was a year in which Dave and I would celebrate turning 40, a year packed with celebrations, travel plans and exciting work opportunities. Almost every single one of them ended up cancelled or postponed.
Unsurprisingly I paid little attention to my goals after I’d written them back in January, glancing back at the post just once during the peak of lockdown and laughing at them and how impossible they seemed. So I think it will be especially interesting to see which of my 10 goals for 2020 I actually managed to achieve . . .
1. Earn enough and earn regularly!
What. A. Joke.
At the start of the year I talked about how I wanted to earn a more consistent, regular income as apposed to the famine / feast situation I have become accustomed to. For the last few years I’ve had a monthly baseline target (as in, we need this much money to survive) and then an upper target (now we can go on holiday, do some jobs in the house etc etc). Last year, because my income fluctuated so much, I hit that upper target for the year over all but had months where I didn’t even hit baseline. I wanted it to be more steady in 2020.
Of course what really happened is that I lost thousands of pounds worth of work in the first week of lockdown, was put on furlough by my supply teaching agency (which I was hugely grateful for but didn’t even touch the sides of the regular booking I had which was due to see me through to the summer) and found my commissions dried up to the point I was putting in one invoice a month rather than a couple a week. We survived it. The money from our cancelled holiday helped, I was lucky to be both furloughed and able to claim the Self Employed Support Grant – we were in a far better position than many.
But of course it does mean that my income for the year has been anything but consistent (unless you count consistently low?). September brought with it a regular three days a week in school for a full term – meaning September through to December we had money we knew was coming in on a weekly basis (though there was of course always the risk of isolation leading to lost earnings). Happily, my three day a week booking has now been extended to Easter which means we have a steady, guaranteed income for a few more months!
2. Cycle as a family so we can take part in the Ride London Freecycle
Regular readers will know that Dave and Ben are keen cyclists – Ben took on the challenge of cycling the 40 mile Ride Yorkshire Sportive in 2019 less than two weeks after his 10th birthday and raised over £650 for DiabetesUK. Obviously this is something we want to continue to encourage so had set him some new goals for 2020 (including beating his Ride Yorkshire time and learning to stay on the wheel of the person in front of him!). We had planned two sportives for him to take part in so that there was a focus for his training and we had planned a cycling calendar for Dave with a number of sportives to train for.
None. Of. It. Happened.
Every sportif we had planned was cancelled and during the bulk of lockdown, Dave lost all motivation to get out on his bike meaning that neither of them really did much training at all.
However, Amy learned to ride her bike in April, Chloe bought a new bigger bike and we spent a day at Betteshanger with my Aunty & Uncle. Chloe did 16 miles and Amy, who had only learned to ride her bike at the end of April cycled 18 miles at the start of August! It was the start of something.
And through the rest of summer we did a number of quite long rides around Manchester with the kids – Amy still using the tag-a-long as the new road bike we bought her for her birthday (and gave her early) was (and still is) too big. We had a couple of rides where we accidentally went far further than we had planned – leaving us with Chloe crying her way up hills and telling us she didn’t want to go on another bike ride!
Of course as the weather turned and it became much colder, the girls and I have had to stop cycling – it’s too cold for Amy to sit on the back of the tag along not really doing much for any distance, and Chloe & I don’t have the right gear for keeping properly warm. Dave and Ben have continued to cycle through to the end of October though and that’s probably them done for the year unless they happen to catch a particularly glorious day.
3. Cycle 20 miles
So following on from my goal for us to be able to cycle more as a family – I set myself a personal challenge of being able to cycle 20 miles.
I just wanted to be able to keep up with the kids, and to be able to ride comfortably as a family. I had no intention of joining an organised ride or anything like that, I just wanted to be able to do a 20 mile ride with Dave.
I first achieved my 20 mile target at the end of August when we were out with the kids – it wasn’t intentional, we got a bit lost and got home realising we’d done just short of 18 miles so Ben and and did a couple of loops around near our house just to tick me over the 20 mile marker. It was painful. The second time I did it was a couple of weeks later when Dave had a day off work and we went out for a ride together. It was too much – the ride was too far and too hard and I hadn’t eaten enough so it was an all out slog for about half of the ride but I didn’t give up. Next year I’d like to get to the point where I can do a steady 20 miles without feeling like I’m going to die!
Strava says I’ve done 101 miles in total this year so I guess next year’s target has to be to beat that!
4. Keep on top of the house
“Now that the children are older, that our house is more finished, that we have a cleaner . . . our house is definitely much tidier and more organised. ”
Except we don’t. We don’t have a cleaner. Lockdown put paid to that.
However, things are generally tidier, the kids are getting better at helping around the house, at putting things away (or at least moving them from downstairs to their bedrooms where I don’t have to look at them any more!) I’d like to say they do this without asking but that’s not the case!
Having a dog again does mean that there is more muck and dust in the house, though this is nicely balanced out by having put artificial grass down in the back garden so that the mud she brings in from the garden is minimal!
5. Make more time to write for the sake of it
The silver lining to having less paid work is more time to write freely. Of course the downside to lockdown is not going anywhere or doing anything to write about! That said, I do think I wrote more for the sake of it this year. Sometimes I have lots to talk about, others not – but what I have found is that I do just need to sit down and force myself to write sometimes because once I get going I usually have plenty to say!
6. Finish off half-written posts in drafts
This is an ongoing target – one that pops on my goal list every year.
Because of the way I work, I don’t think I’ll have have “Draft posts zero”. I currently have 39 posts in draft – which is six less than last year so maybe this counts as an achievement!
Some of those drafts will have been finished off and published, some will have been deleted as they were no longer relevant or were actually just titles that I knew longer knew what they were meant to be about! But in their place there will be new drafts, new half written posts waiting for me to check facts, add photos or flesh out into something worth reading!
7. Wear more colour
I have definitely added more colour to my wardrobe this year – a couple of coloured sweatshirts and cardigans, a bright red blouse (which I’ve not actually worn – cheers lockdown and social isolation) – but there is still work to be done!
8. Achieve a combined social following of 50k
Big miss. I think I will be ending the year around 1k up on where I started it.
9. Go to the cinema on my own
Go to the cinema on my own . . . I’m not sure I’ve even set foot inside the cinema this year. In fact that’s not true, I did take the kids to the cinema once in the summer holidays (I wrote about visiting the cinema after lockdown here) but I’ve definitely not been on my own yet! Another one to roll over to next year’s list!
10. Make more time for Dave and I
One thing 2020 brought Dave & I was more time together than we have ever had before. Dave has been working from home since mid-March and of course of several months we were all at home together. We’ve more than survived that, in fact I would go so far as to say that for the most part we’ve actually really enjoyed it – we’ve made each other laugh a lot, we’ve benefitted from the extra time in each other’s company. But, what we’ve really missed it time for the two of us. We’ve actually probably had less than that than ever with no babysitting, no nights out, no cheeky days off together, no weekends away. We should of course have had a week in New York together, as well as a many nights out and celebrations. As it is, we managed to squeeze a week of childfree time in August which we spent doing jobs at home or with friends – and it was glorious. But something we definitely need more of in 2021.
At the end of my goals for 2020 post I wrote “there’s definitely some outside influence in terms of whether I can achieve some of my goals” . . . and wasn’t there just. Considering this was a year packed with limitations, worry and general pandemic related gubbins, I reckon I did ok.
