Life goals bingo for 2020, follow-up

[luzula]

So, I usually have a five by five bingo card of yearly goals, here are the ones I had for 2020. Many of them were derailed by: 1) the pandemic, obviously, and 2) falling for a new fandom after having been in a fallow period fannishly. The latter had already begun to happen when I made the goals, but I didn't realize how much it would change what I did in my free time!

Things I did with a vengeance:

• Finish and post the Flight of the Heron longfic that is eating my brain. (Ha ha, I finished that longfic and am halfway through a third one.)
• Post 5 hours of podfic. (Haven't tallied it properly, but it's more than 30 hours!)
• Make lots of gooseberry jam. (Okay, for lack of gooseberries I only made a very small jar of gooseberry jam, but I'm still counting this because I did pick huge amounts of blueberries, lingonberries, cherries and rosehips and make jam from much of it.)

Other things I did:

• Go running 50 times. (54 this year. It varied, for a while I ran a lot, but then developed shin splints and had to take it easy, and also I didn't bring my running shoes to the summer place.)
• Make a new friend. (No new RL friends, but I'm counting my three new fannish friends in FotH fandom!)
• Do something new. (This is a sort of wild card--I'm counting "writing novel-length fic" as an achievement even though it overlaps with another goal.)
• Go birdwatching at the coast when it's stormy and the pelagic sea birds blow in to the coast. (Yes, I did this in January before the pandemic--I went with two retired former colleagues and it was great.)
• Try out the "flipped classroom" teaching method. (Yes, it was worthwhile.)
• Learn to do union negotiations in support of workplace struggles. (Yes! We're doing negotiations over Zoom, so I've been able to participate, and have actually started to be active and contribute and learn a lot.)
• Visit my friend K, who has moved recently. (Yep, got that in before the pandemic hit.)
• Have hiked at least 200 km of the local trails. (Yes! I liked this goal a lot. I got to count 60 km that I did in 2019, but then I hiked a lot in the beginning of the year, and did a weekend trip during the pandemic that maybe I shouldn't have, because I took public transport.)

Things I did partly:

• Do a moss inventory of a 5x5 km square of Skåne, for a survey project. (I did half of the field work for it, before the pandemic came.)
• Go tree climbing eight times (I have arborist equipment). (I think I did five, and two of those was for picking cherries?)
• Sleep outdoors (well, in a tent/hammock) 20 nights. (Technically I could have done this despite the pandemic, but how much fun is it to go camping near where you live? I think I did seven nights, four while hiking and three in the summer while visiting a friend so we didn't have to be indoors together, because pandemic.)

Things I could have done despite the pandemic, but did not do:

• Focus on learning more about lichen epiphyte species on bark and wood. (Ha, no. This fell to the wayside because new fandom. I'm also not making ANY progress on my backlog of moss specimens.)
• Don't gain weight. (I'm back up at 65 kg, but would prefer to be 62. I'm not overweight, I just prefer to not carry around those 3 kg, especially when I go running and suchlike.)
• Develop my workout and exercise routine. (Lazy me, did not do. /o\ I did have a problem with my shoulder in the first months of the year, which hindered me for a while.)
• Build a tree platform from wooden pallets and put it in a tree, and then sleep on it. (Nope. I did have the revelation that it would be much better to build something similar to a portaledge like they have in rock climbing, because it's so much lighter. My idea was to have a "floor" of sailcloth, or other strong cloth, and just bring that, and then you can cut down saplings and make a temporary frame wherever you are.)
• Try out Marcq St Hilaire's method of determining one's position with a sextant. (Okay, this is somewhat pandemic-related, because I didn't want to take public transport out on the islands. But I could've done it in the summer when I went sailing for two weeks with my parents.)

Things I didn't do for obvious, pandemic-related reasons:

• Go to Scotland. (This is the one I'm saddest about missing. Hopefully this year!)
• Go on a week-long hiking trip in the mountains.
• Go to one of the Swedish national parks I haven't been to.
• Get to see the capercaillie or black grouse lekking in the spring.
• Go on a trip to Estonia and help survey forests there.
• Go swimming in 20 new lakes/places by the sea.

Worthwhile things I did not have a goal for, but which happened because pandemic:

• I spent a lot of time at the family summer place.
• I got a much better relationship with my mom because we spent so much time together. Very happy about this one!
• I spent a lot of time with my parents' lovely and affectionate dog who is 12 and won't live forever.
• I picked large amounts of wild mushrooms and dried them.

Comments

[snickfic]

I'm curious about your moss and lichen goals. Is that a professional thing? A hobby? How did you get started there?

[luzula]

Partly it's about geeky interest in nature (I refer you to the Great Species Contest of 2016). But it's also a tool for surveying forests to judge their nature conservation value, that is, how close they are to being actual old-growth forests. I guess I'm good enough that I could do this professionally if I wanted it as a job, but I do it as volunteer work in my environmental organization.

[snickfic]

That's really cool! Thanks for posting about it. :)

[isis]

I didn't go to Scotland last year, either. :( Maybe we can meet up there in the future when we're allowed to travel again!

[luzula]

That would be cool! I'd planned to go with two Flight of the Heron fans, and haven't asked them yet if they still want to go in 2021. But it would be lovely to meet you as well.

Also, you know you're always welcome to Sweden to hike with me in the mountains here, right? : ) We could go to this place, for example.

[regshoe]

Well, you've achieved an impressive amount even despite the pandemic! All that hiking and jam-making sounds very good fun, and hopefully other hiking/birdwatching/travel things will get easier presently. :)

[luzula]

I am very rarely bored--probably if I hadn't fallen into FotH, I would have gone through all my moss specimens, or something else I could do in the apartment. But yeah, I am very eager for vaccination and freeedom!

[garonne]

I am particularly impressed by the 200 km :D

Also, I just learnt a new word, "pelagic"!

[luzula]

I guess 200 km is not that much if you do it spread out over a year! But hey, I am happy to impress you. : )

[starshipfox]

I usually go to Scotland twice a year and I've been missing it SO MUCH.

Your moss-surveying and tree-climbing activities sound wonderful! I do a monthly bumblebee transect, but I hadn't considered moss-surveying as an activity -- it sounds fascinating. I'm also impressed with all your jam making! I didn't get any gooseberries this year either -- I did manage blackberries, cherries and cranberries. I usually do blackcurrants too, but the pandemic got in the way.

[luzula]

I've never been there and have been reading so much about it for fannish reasons! Most of what I've read has been about the 18th century, though, and I realize it is the 21st century now. *g* But I'm very eager to see it.

Oh, I do like bumblebees too. But you're in Ireland, right? Ireland and Scotland are a moss paradise due to the oceanic climate, so do check them out. Although a drawback is that you need a microscope to properly study them.

[starshipfox]

You can definitely get 18th century vibes in Scotland -- when I was reading "Flight of the Heron", the scenes in Edinburgh were incredibly vivid to me because I knew exactly where they were taking place. Much of the 18th century city is very well preserved, and the landscape, while obviously much more urbanised than it was at one time, still maintains the remote / rugged feel described in literature.

I've been aware that we have a lot of moss and lichens here, but I didn't realise Ireland was a moss paradise! I must investigate further -- I'm pretty sure my dad has a microscope he never uses, so perhaps I can borrow it.

[luzula]

I'm looking forward to seeing it! : D

I think this is the standard field guide for Ireland and Britain--I've got an earlier edition and it's quite nice. A warning though that it's much easier to get started if you can go out with someone who already knows a bit. : )

[starshipfox]

Thank you for the link! I definitely found it helped when I was learning about bumble bees to have someone to guide me, even though I can now tell them apart without really thinking about it.

I have an interesting Ellen Hutchins who was a pioneering Irish botanist, specialising in lichens and seaweeds: her paintings are beautiful.

[luzula]

Oh, that's cool, I didn't know about her! I've seen Ulota hutchinsiae, at least.

[solo]

Try out the "flipped classroom" teaching method. (Yes, it was worthwhile.)

I'm intrigued by this. How does it work?

Come, come to Scotland! \o/

[luzula]

You assign the students material to review before class (often films, but could also be texts). Then you use the lecture time for various activities such as quizes, retrieval practice, questions from the students, problem-solving exercises in groups, etc. It's meant as an alternative to the teacher lecturing to the students (not that lectures can't also contain interactive elements).

Will definitely come in the summer if I manage to get vaccinated in time!

[hyarrowen]

*faints*

Well. It all sounds like tremendous fun. I've never thought of watching for seabirds in storms. What did you see?

As for black grouse, I've seen them in Wales (possibly lekking? idk. There were six or seven of them.) I have to say they're very silly-looking birds!

[luzula]

Hee, you don't have to do it all!

As I recall, I wanted to see a northern gannet, but didn't (but I see there are a lot of them in Scotland!). I did see a kittiwake for the first time, though. Also a black guillemot.

I've seen both capercaillie and black grouse, but just flying away in the forest, never lekking.

[hyarrowen]

Ha, that's pretty interesting! Birds that are pelagic to you are coastal to Brits. The first time I saw gannets it was a real Attenborough moment - there was a whole flock of them over a school of fish, dropping into the sea like thrown axes from a height of fifty feet or so. That wasn't far from Glasgow, of all places.

[hyarrowen]

ETA ...Brain fog strikes again. I totally know what pelagic means. Thought tbh it isn't a word I use every year.

[luzula]

dropping into the sea like thrown axes

That is such a vivid image! You do have a way with words. : )

[jesse_the_k]

Huzzah!

Im so happy you had a new fandom to carry you through some of the pandemic grimness.

BTW, have you seen the BBC series SHETLAND? Its primary attraction is the stunning landscape, captured with helicopters/drones. The rugged police detective is definitely a Fraser descendant. The slash vibes were very low.

[luzula]

Thanks for the rec! Realistically, I'm not going to watch it, since I have some sort of psychological hurdle to overcome in order to watch movies/TV. Reading is so much easier...I don't know why. I do watch sometimes, but mostly as a social activity with others.

But yes, new fandom = a delight.