Looking ahead at 2021: Some personal and professional goals
Being stuck at home gave me more time to think about my goals for 2021 and start making some first steps at making those goals a reality. While I have a lot to be talking about looking back at 2020, the pandemic was challenging at times.
Here are a few of my goals for 2021:
Read more for business and pleasure
One outcome of moving to the Kindle and the iPad for reading has been seeing the rundown of books I read during the year. 2020 wasn’t a good year for reading. I owe that to the pandemic. Summer — laying by the pool — is when I do a lot of my reading, it seems. COVID-19 shutdown my local pool for much of the summer. When the pool did open, it was too fraught with rules and restrictions to make it worthwhile. Going to the beach during a pandemic was far from relaxing this past summer.
I’ve made a list of some books by reading priority that I’ve yet to read on my Kindle or iPad. Over Christmas break, I read and remembered why I used to enjoy it so much that I’m making a resolution to read more throughout 2021 by making it a daily habit again.
Use my spare time more constructively
A typical day for me pre-COVID was about working, writing, and going to the gym. Being stuck at home gives me a few extra hours a week because the gym I don’t have a commute and my gym is a no people’s land gives me a few extra hours a week to play with,
Sometimes I fall into a pandemic malaise when I get nothing of consequence done. It’s fine to do sometimes. I’ve been doing it a bit too much in the past two to three months.
Reading and learning time are coming back to my daily schedule in 2021.
Tinker for fun
I bought myself a Raspberry Pi kit plus an Arduino kit for Christmas. Really, I bought them for something to do during my holiday break. Another goal of mine for 2021 is to tinker more. I’m far from handy around the house. However, I enjoy tinkering with technology and new applications a lot. Going into 2021, there are some ways tinkering can help me with my day job, plus keep my mind busy during the pandemic.
Write for myself again
Much of my writing time targets billable writing work, whether it’s for my day job or a freelance article. Usually, it means writing bylined articles for publication these past few years. The pandemic and a change in jobs meant I had to stop writing for a steady freelance client that kept me busy during the evenings and weekends for the past two years. Such extra time let me write a few more contributions for opensource.com, but there were still ideas I wanted to pursue myself.
2021: A rebuilding year
I come from a family that prizes resilience. My plan is to land on my feet post-pandemic and get back to more things I used to enjoy and bring them together to move my life forward both personally and professionally.
My name is Will Kelly. I’m a technical marketing manager for a container security startup. Before that, I worked as a technical writer. My articles about DevOps, DevSecOps, cloud, and enterprise mobility have been published by TechTarget, InfoWorld, InfoQ, and other leading sites. Follow me on Twitter: @willkelly.
