Before I start anything else can I plead with the universe to make 2022 less of a shit show??? Please!!! Although early signs are not hopeful. Onto the recap before I get into that...
- Get at least one piercing
- Get at least one tattoo
- Read 100 books
- Watch 150 films
- Go to the cinema 5 times
- Learn to drive
- Get a new car
- Go to Longleat
- See a show on stage
- Learn to cross stitch
- Learn to crochet
- Write 20,000 words of a novel
- Get fitter
- Break in my sequin Doc shoes
- Keep up to date with book reviews
- Start to grow my hair out
Well that was a disaster. Coronavirus is still affecting everything massively. As are my pathetic finances. I still haven't found a new job but that is a definite goal for 2022. To cut a long story short my old manager quit with a week's notice so I was running the shop single-handedly 5 days a week from end of July to the beginning of October. I debated taking it on permanently but I didn't decided quick enough and now I have a new manager. It has been... tough. She's lazy and slapdash about everything and has criticised me to my face and it's hard. I've lost all confidence in myself and my ability to do the job because whatever I do it's wrong or not good enough or ignoring something I didn't realise she'd said. I'm just tired of it all.
I was up to date on book reviews for a while but there's one from April I still haven't posted and two that have been hand-written but need typing up. I've decided to stop requesting from NetGalley for a bit, I just have too big of a backlog that I really need to catch up with, plus I have three (!!!) to read that were author requests. On top of that I've created a list of 22 books to read in 2022, plus I want to try the Alphabet Challenge.
Films were a disaster this year for some reason. I got to 95 I think it was and only managed two cinema trips, both in December: A Boy Called Christmas and Encanto. Both were amazing and I've already bought the Encanto soundtrack. We were hoping to see the new Spiderman film but there's just one teensy problem there... The car is broken. It's been making a strange noise when you reverse for a while and then the other day it made a loud clunk so we're thinking whatever it is has broken. It means I'm using foot power to get to work at the moment as well which is fun. Not. Mum gets her money on the 14th so hopefully it won't be too expensive to fix.
Speaking of the car, over the space of a couple of months we bought two new ones and then bought our original one back. The first was an Audi estate which had a broken window and an unfortunate gear problem - it would jump into fourth when you wanted second, not good. Then we ended up with a Skoda Fabia, just getting home was fun with that one, it was running on fumes and the petrol cap was jammed. The first station's attendant couldn't help and they were out anyway but the second managed to sort it. It was an uncomfortable car but it ended up needing to go because it had a habit of just stopping without warning. A tad dangerous. Then thanks to notifications from the DVLA because the logbook hadn't been done we discovered that our original one hadn't been sold yet so we bought it back.
Writing was OK this year, I manged 26,000 words for National Novel Writing Month in November so I'm really pleased with that. Fitness, hair etc, forget it, I kind of forgot about the crafty stuff and I feel guilty about my shoes. 2022 will be the year! I hope...
Anyway that's long enough for now, I will be back soon-ish with my 2022 Resolutions (I haven't even come up with them yet...).
Stef Out x
