studio1009

2024
What can I say. America, what is WRONG with you!

But for the things I can control:

Goals for 2024:

Painting: Start holiday card earlier and choose a less challenging subject. Do a challenging subject in the spring
ASL: Find a group that meeting IRL to practice with.
Health: Add strength training
Reading: Continue book log

Progress:

1. Painting:
I did start my holiday card painting earlier. No I did not choose a less challenging subject, but where's the fun in that. I did one other studio painting in the summer (Broadwinged hawk) and a bunch of plein air.

2. ASL:
I did not make much progress in learning ASL. I was distracted by researching cochlear implants. I decided not to get them yet. I would still want to become fluent in ASL even when I do get CI.

2. Health:
I did add strength training to my weekly exercise routine. I also lost more than 20 pounds. I had to buy new clothes.

4. Reading:
I continued logging my reading; increasing from 8 in 2023 to 10 novels/novellas and finished 3 short story collections (2 of which I had begun in 2023). It helped that I did not get bogged down trying to read the Hugo nominees.

The big joy this year was a spontaneous trip with my husband to view the total solar eclipse. I did not anticipate the emotional impact of seeing the shining sun and blue sky suddenly replaced by a dark orb with a white halo in a dark sky. I have several ideas for paintings based on that experience.

Goals for 2025

1. Painting:
Three studio paintings, including the aforementioned eclipse subjects.

2. ASL:
Prioritize ASL study.

3. Health:
Maintain healthy practices learned this year to avoid developing Type 2 diabetes.

4. Reading
Continue reading log

5. Political Action
Find effective ways to defend the U. S. Constitution and human rights.

Current Mood: hopeful

These were my goals for 2022:

Learn ASL: fluent in fingerspelling; learn 20 signs; daily practice - 10 minutes; weekly lesson
Improve Health: weigh 240 (for knees), exercise 5 hours/week – 300 minutes/week (diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol). Log food (lower sugar, lower calories to 1500) – I will continue this
Declutter my house: Declutter workshop and utility room
Travel: New Zealand or Key West; Finish Delta Queen video, A trip to Hawai’i with Devin
Arts and Crafts: Holiday card painting; Quilt designs
Being happy: eliminate things that make you angry; which may mean resigning from convention work or adjusting my attitude.
Relationships: make effort to deepen friendships and marriage

This is my progress toward those goals:

Learn ASL – I did not make much progress. I had a plan, but didn’t do it. It takes a lot of concentration to watch the lessons on video. This will be essential in the future, but I can’t figure out how to make it a priority.

Improve Health – I did not gain weight overall this year, so I could say this is a success. I am still mindful of healthy eating, but apparently not enough to lose weight. I enjoyed aqua aerobics, especially in the summer. Regular exercise is still difficult in the winter. The exercycle and elliptical are boring -- even if I watch TV. Walking outside hurts my arthritic knees.

Declutter my house – Some progress on the workshop, but the utility room was not touched. I have enough space to do art, and can find the tools and supplies to do house maintenance. Mostly successful.

Travel – This goal was highly successful. We traveled to Hawai’i, Maine, Pittsburgh, and New Zealand. Part of the incentive for so much traveling this year was to use airline credits that were expiring.

Arts and Crafts – This goal was also highly successful. I did a lot of watercolor and needlework this year. Most of my paintings were plein air works (Outdoors in a short time period) I took a class in Chinese brush painting which also encouraged quick painting. I posted them to Instagram, mainly to brighten the timelines and encourage people to do their own imperfect art. I made a little progress on the quilting design. I knitted a vest with alpaca yarn I got for free. I continued to cross-stitch a Celtic zoomorph design onto a black T-shirt. I crocheted a couple of baby dragons. I have started a shawl knitted with a fingering weight wool-nylon blend. The wool is hand-dyed variegated in the colors of the Glasgow Worldcon tartan.

Being happy – For the most part I have been happy this year. I still look forward to getting up in the morning. I am optimistic in general. We are financially secure, which helps a lot. I still get very angry at things that happen personally and in the world. I need to turn that anger into action.

Relationships – This is still hard because of the pandemic. I enjoyed a few visits with friends this year. I've gotten to know my daughter-in-law better. The cancer scare last year has made me spent more time with my husband. We are so busy with our separate pursuits, but we have been making it a point to spend some part of the day in the same room just hanging out and to try to kiss or say goodbye when leaving the house. The future is not guaranteed.

Goals for 2023:

Learn ASL – fluent in fingerspelling; learn 20 signs; Daily practice - 10 minutes; weekly lesson Watch videos and fingerspelling app.
Exercise regularly – Weekly goals: Elliptical – 1x; Exercycle daily (30 minutes); Knee PT – daily ; aqua aerobics (45 minutes) – 3x. Log in MyFitnessPal app.
Be happy – Prioritize the things I enjoy doing and take action on the things in my life that make me frustrated and angry.
Read at least one book each month – I find myself spending too much time watching movies, reading news and social media. I have not finished any books other than the Hugo finalists this year. I keep buying interesting-looking books and feel bad that I haven’t read them. I am in the middle of three books: History of New Zealand, Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen, and A Desolation Called Peace. I need to keep a reading log to support this goal, and as a reminder to review the books.
Travel - Make photo books from the Hawaii and New Zealand trip.
Painting – Do at least two studio paintings of my own composition, in addition to plein air and class work. One of the paintings can be my holiday card.

Wishing all my readers a Happy New Year!

Current Mood: thoughtful

These were my goals for 2021:

Enjoy life/Be happy - The To Do list will always be there. One outing or activity per week that is just fun or relaxing
Learn ASL – Become fluent in fingerspelling; learn 20 signs/month;
Improve Health - Exercise 5 days a week to mitigate current health issues. Eat good food.
Declutter my house - Concentrate on office, workshop, utility room. Be able to find what I have
Travel - Plan New Zealand or Key West; Finish Delta Queen video, Finish Ireland photo book
Arts and Crafts - Watercolor Painting Lessons, Start Holiday card painting in June; Quilting design

This is my progress toward those goals:

Enjoy life - I didn't expect the pandemic to continue as it did. I did make an effort to do fun things within the constraints.

Learn ASL - I did not make ASL lessons a priority. I only watched 3 video lessons. It is hard, so I kept putting it off.

Improve Health - I did improve my health. I am exercising much more. I go to aqua fitness classes 3 times a week and use my exercycle 2 or 3 times. I have arthritis in my knees so "going for a walk" is painful. I lost 9.5 pounds.

Declutter my house - I had a little success in decluttering the house, but not as much as I wanted. Things that relied on my husband's cooperation did not happen. I did tidy up my office a little. My husband gets a bit of a pass for not helping with decluttering. In June, he was diagnosed with colon cancer. We went through a couple months of uncertainty. He had successful surgery, but will be a year before he recovers completely from that. He is being monitored with blood tests to make sure cancer didn't slip out of the tumor.

Travel - Once we were vaccinated, we took one extended car trip mainly to visit relatives. It was wonderful to go out and see museums and enjoy the outdoors. I started planning a New Zealand trip and a Hawai'i trip for 2022. I am very pleased that I finished the photobook from our trip to Ireland and the Worldcon. Shutterfly does a wonderful job. I did not work on the Delta Queen video, not sure why not.

Arts and Crafts - I continued the watercolor painting lessons on-line and in-person. The in-person classes were difficult because of the face masks. I bought a clear panel mask for the instructor. She was gracious enough to wear it and offered to pay for it. The interaction with the other students was nice. I used the snow scene I did for class as my holiday card. Staples, the office supply store did a wonderful job of printing the cards at a low price. I did not make any progress on the quilting design. I continued to cross-stitch a Celtic zoomorph design onto a black T-shirt. I also did some kumihimo and crocheted more bunnies. I sewed black stretch velvet trousers. I sewed a few more COVID masks. Now that manufacturing has caught up, I don't feel the need to make any more cloth masks. The N95s are more effective.

My goals for 2022 will be much the same as 2021. I will concentrate on the Be Happy goal and the Learn ASL goal. I think I have Health and Arts as a routine now. Travel and Decluttering the house are still important because they will support the Be Happy goal. I don't have the mind space to add any other goals.

I have been using hearing aids for a little over 20 years. My hearing gradually got worse. With tinnitus as well, it is harder for me to understand speech. I currently rely on captioning and lip-reading.

I have been trying to learn ASL for several years off and on. I took some classes, but it never stuck because I didn't use it daily. One of my goals for this year is to learn ASL. I'll start with the Bill Vickers videos, and eventually I'll be brave enough to try it in real life.

Another anti-doom-scrolling app I found was one to practice the manual alphabet (fingerspelling). I can form all the letter in alphabetical order, but have trouble "reading" them. The app lets you set the speed and number of letters. It shows static hand shapes, then you type in the letters.

This is a nice thing to do when I want to take a break. I do 5 or so words in a session. I hope I continue until I'm ready to "read" videos of fingerspelling.

Current Mood: hopeful

I am listing my goals for 2021 so I can focus my activities on these goals and not get distracted as often:

Enjoy life/Be happy - The To Do list will always be there. One outing or activity per week that is just fun or relaxing
Learn ASL – Become fluent in fingerspelling; learn 20 signs/month;
Improve Health - Exercise 5 days a week to mitigate current health issues. Eat good food.
Declutter my house - Concentrate on office, workshop, utility room. Be able to find what I have.
Travel - Plan New Zealand or Key West; Finish Delta Queen video, Finish Ireland photo book
Arts and Crafts - Watercolor Painting Lessons, Start Holiday card painting in June; Quilting design

Current Mood: hopeful

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