2021 Recapped: New Year’s Resolutions and Goals!

New Year’s resolutions are a matter that I take somewhat seriously. For this year I had a bunch of them prepared both in terms of personal goals and in terms of blogging/streaming goals and hence, I wanted to talk about the ones I managed to achieve in today’s post.

In terms of my personal goals, I tried to be healthier, I guess? In my New Year’s Resolutions post, I also mentioned some life goals in general as well as stuff about my mindset:

• Eat healthier and more frequently.
• Try to stick to healthier sleep/eating times.
• Be more positive/less negative and cynical.
• Do more sports.
• Focus more on my studies.
• Call my distant relatives at least monthly.
• Call my parents at least twice per week.

Right from the get-go: I’ve been sleeping better. This is something that my friends in the FederalGhosts discord will deny but I’d argue that at least for half the year, my sleep schedule has been not in a fucked-up state. Yes, I still had issues with falling asleep but I don’t think it’s been as bad as in 2020… Okay, maybe it has been fucked for most of the time but I’ve got a better idea of how to fall asleep better. A lot of it comes down to my mindset and things I still have to do. Instead of saying that I “have to” sleep, I need to tell myself that I “can” sleep, for instance. There are also some exercises that I got through sleep therapy (an offer that our university provided to students) that work from time to time. I’ll try to sleep better in the next year again, for sure, but as it stands… lately, I’m either too tired early in the evenings and I end up waking up in the middle of the night… or I’m wide-awake during the night and struggle to sleep.

In terms of food and sports, I’ve actually been eating more frequently and my iron levels have been great! The last few times I donated blood, they were around 18 or 19, actually, with the minimum being 15, I believe. I’m not sure if you can have too much iron but I’ve not been feeling anaemic as much as in 2020 and I’ve also been able to deal with certain health conditions quite well due to my diet. I’ve been drinking a lot more water and tea. I’ve been doing some working out and even started to run frequently… Lately, less sadly but I wanna build up my stamina more in 2022 for sure. And well, I managed to quit smoking for a while. I’ve been smoke-free for 2 months, then had a relapse, 3 months, then had a relapse again and for the past two months, I’ve been smoke-free, too. I guess, I was smoke-free for half a year in total and I’m proud of that but I really am struggling lately with the cravings. I want to quit completely but I know that it will be hard. Sports? Uh, apart from the stuff I mentioned before, I didn’t do much. In 2022, I want to try out more weight-lifting as I’ve been able to gain weight this year. I’d love to build up a bit of muscle – mostly for my own self-esteem and stuff.

In regards to family-related stuff and my studies, I think I’ve been doing quite well…? I managed to study quite a bit and finish a few exams although I still underestimated a lot of the studies and the effort. That’s something that I’ll do differently in 2022. I managed to complete a bunch and even now, I’m still studying for the upcoming exams in January. I also managed to call my parents frequently this year. It sounds like a chore but they worry about me all the time if I don’t call them at least a few times a week. Similarly, I miss them. I truly do. But with Covid going on still and with my studies, I don’t always have the opportunity to visit them. Hence, calling them is a minimum for me as well even if my family situation is difficult at times. My distant relatives… not so much. I want to call my grandparents more in 2022 but I can’t help but feel as if some of my distant relatives are laughing at me. It’s that whole thing of being a foreigner to them even though we’ve got the same roots. They also feel better about themselves because they know their language better than me, I guess, and it’s just weird. Lowkey racism, you could say, but it’s obviously not racism. I don’t know. At the same time, I don’t want to completely lose touch with them… I’ll try to call some of them more often in 2022.

At last, positivity! I wanted to talk less about politics and to be more selfish, I guess. Take breaks for my mental health, take care of myself, don’t endure selfish or toxic people, and essentially just be more positive instead of focusing on the shit things that happen in this shit world. I wanted to distract myself more often and while my blog has been less political, I think I was still being quite cynical or negative at times. It’s less about toxic positivity or what Blockade calls “Aggressive Positivity” and more about accepting myself and giving fewer fucks about toxic people or the shitty world around us. I think I managed that somewhat well but in the end, it was still a shitty year filled with shitty people and we’re still in a shitty world, so uh, fuck that. I’m at it again. 2022 will be better!

In terms of blogging and streaming goals, I wanted to be more creative and familiarise myself with features that I haven’t tried out at all yet. 

My blogging goals were mostly about improving the quality and being more consistent as well as trying to do more on YouTube. Well, I ended up being quite consistent with the blog but not at all with YouTube. It’s been difficult to bring up the motivation to do everything for that, especially as it’s never good enough to get uploaded, but I have some different plans for the future of my YT channel and it may be quite cool once I get started!

Apart from that, I wanted to try out new blocks, the classic editor, more layouting options and the like but I didn’t actually do any of that as I don’t like a lot of the blocks that I haven’t used yet… The Classic Editor is weird and the layouting tools like galleries and whatnot look weird on mobile and are less accessible. Stick to your roots! The established style works best right now!

My streaming goals also were about consistency but also about quality! I wanted to: 

• use my drama/improv experience more!
• educate me on Mental Health topics and LGBTQIA+ related things!
• Be more consistent!
• Work more on my emotes!
• Work more on the branding and stream ideas!
• Be more positive about myself and others!
• Make the stream more accessible!

Most of these were about quality. Saying “yes” more often and improvising a bit more was something that had to do with the drama experience that I mentioned before. I think I managed to do that quite well but I still have long ways to go. Before my winter break, I managed to deliver some great one-shot streams that I really enjoyed with new games that I haven’t streamed yet. I felt freer and better and was having a ton of fun. I hope I get to build up that energy again after my break in 2022!

I also managed to educate myself on mental health topics and create mental health channels on my discord but I realised that instead of trying to help, it’s better to forward resources to people. I’m frankly not stable enough mentally to provide help to other people. More importantly, I think I’ve been better at handling things such as mental health and anxiety and stuff thanks to feedback from other people. I still have a long way to go in my journey to create a safe and inclusive environment. In terms of accessibility, I had closed captions for a while but they stopped working and I can’t set up new ones and I’m not sure why. I’ll have to fix them in January once I’m back home but I had a relatively good experience with the ones I was using. Maybe I’ll have a better one with one that is integrated into OBS. 

In terms of positivity, I’ve been better. Numbers don’t matter as much to me anymore and it affected the stream in a good way. Once you start to look at the numbers or once you start to worry about drops in viewers, your stream gets worse and people notice. Now that I care even less about that and try to deliver the best show possible to the viewers that are there, more people tend to stop by which has been great. My community has grown to be an amazing place full of wonderful people. I really love it and hope that we get to meet more friends and hang out with more lovely individuals. And well, emotes: With the new emote slots and the animated ones, I received, I’ve been able to pump out a whole lot of them. I’ve been happy with how they turned out. I still want to rework them a bit more though and I want to add more ideas in the future though I’ll make a different post soon.

Either way, I think I managed to get a bunch of my goals crossed through. I have new goals for 2022 but I’ll talk about those in the new year. Looking forward to it! Did you have any resolutions and did you manage to get them done? Are you happy with 2021 or do you have new goals for 2022?

Cheers!

This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!