I accomplished almost none of my goals this year. I studied zero French (was simply not interested) but instead spanish. I still don’t run. I wonder if I lost some muscles and I looked at discrete math a little bit but not enough to be meaningful. I did however add a comment section to this blog.
Although most of my goals weren’t met I learned and did so many things this year that I didn’t know I would come to value and this post is going to be about those things.
Assistive Technology 👩🦯 #
This year I started attending a school to become an assistive technology instructor and got certified in JAWS 2022! I also learned Unfied English Braille (UEB).
Web design 💻 #
I completely redesigned this personal site with CSS Tailwind and also made a site to find places to play chess, scrabble and bridge where I live. I don’t maintain it very well BUT both these sites have a Google Lighthouse accessibllity score that’s over 90%! In 2020 (when I was just starting to learn about accessiblity in web design) the score was 70 and below. Obviously I still have a lot to work on but I’m proud of this improvement.
Chess and Scrabble ♞ #
I learned (last year at the tender old age of 29) how to play chess beyond just how the pieces moved and joined a chess club as well as a few tournaments. A struggle that I have is being ashamed of my lack of progress. I’ve been playing chess for about 8 months now and find myself often agitated at my lack of advancement. But all good things take time and besides, what’s the rush? It’s not like there’s a deadline I need to meet.
My Braille instructor introduced me to tactics and strategy in scrabble-which completely changed the game for me. I used to detest scrabble because it often felt like a vocabulary contenst. Oooh I know the word erudite. What now? But once I learned the two letter words I began to understand what he was talking about. There’s so much going on in this silly letter tile game. What I enjoy about scrabble that doesn’t really exist in chess is the inherent wackyness of it all. Consider the two letter words aa and ut. What use do these words have outside of scrabble? Or the word retina? This word has value outside of scrabble obviously but in the game, it’s a great word because it’s a stem word (you can create bingos from it with the addition of one more letter).
Books and Movies and Music 📘 #
I both read and watched more movies and books than in any other year of my life. So much that I didn’t log any of them. I left my comfort zone and read romance (Thomas Hardy). I tried to read Agatha Crystie but I guess mystery might not be my genre. And no, I’ve not finished Moby Dick. I watched slow movies that I thought I’d fall asleep through but surprisingly did not (Mindwalk, My Dinner with Andre and Whisper of the Heart). I also learned I really like Bruce Springsteen and while I don’t necessarily like The Strokes, I couldn’t help but listen to The Adults are Talking on repeat. It is the anthem of 2021.
Final Thoughts #
On Day 636 Koos wrote about possibly closing down his pandemic journal. Almost two years ago, I wrote my first pandemic post. January 2021 was the most recent post I wrote with the pandemic tag. I suppose I stopped thinking of myself being wholy enveloped in the pandemic a long time ago. But despite what my blog might imply, as of this date, the world is still very much in a pandemic. I do think it is almost over though. Here’s to hoping next year, we will more easily be able to see the people we want to see.