Accountability/Where Are We Going?: December 2020
This year is coming to a close. This year has been a bit of a dud. It’s been a lot of a dud. I realize I am super privileged and lucky to be able to only call this year a dud. I am healthy, as are my friends, and family. I am not struggling to pay rent. I do not have to make the daily choice whether to go at work and put myself at risk or to stay home and not be able to put food on the table.
While life in 2020 was not easy for anyone and while this year has been filled with a constant state of uncertainty and the continued uneventfulness of my career, I can recognize that on the scale of things, I had it good this year. I can also fully and easily say that 2020 was not even close to the worst year of my life, nor the most challenging.
I had written last month with some excitement about applying for remote work jobs. Well, those all turned out to be nothing. I got through to the final round with one job when at that point the company realized that I am a resident of Vermont and thus cannot qualify for their work from home position. That is apparently a thing. And, since three of the jobs I applied for were within that same corporation that pretty much wiped me out of ambition for looking for jobs for the time being.
Instead I decided to dive head first into this blog and figuring out how it can make money. It may seem strange for me to say that I dove into working on this blog when you haven’t seen many posts from me this month. My focus has been on moving my blog from a wordpress.com site over to it’s new home on wordpress.org. This gives me so many more ways to optimize and monetize my site.
I also did a lot of work in growing my network and writing guest posts for various blogs. Ironically a blog post I had planned (or a variation of it) for this blog – about where cruise ship crew can eat, was requested by another blog. You can check out that guest post on EmmaCruises blog here.
Moving the site over has reminded me about everything that has happened this year and how much I’ve put into this blog so far. This will be my 128th published post on the site. I can also see over the year how my focus has honed in a bit. Also, good job for all of you reading along in April, May, and June – there was a lot of gloomy kind of “we don’t know we’re going” stuff going on. Thanks for sticking with me.
Alright, onto the good stuff.
Where Are We Going?
Drumroll please…. just kidding. We still don’t know. We had figured that Stuart would find out before now when he would be going back to work. The uncertainty of it all is frustrating. The majority of people that he had been working with have either gone to their new ships or at least know when they are going. Based on this I would say that he should hear something relatively soon. If you are wondering where I am hoping he’ll go, here are my picks for which ship I am personally hoping he’ll get next.
When he goes back to sea I will head back to Vermont, complete another quarantine, and then enjoy some of the Vermont winter. I’m thinking that helping my brother get his snow machine working again will be in order and could be a nice way to enjoy some winter months.
For now, we are mid lockdown in Scotland. We did go for a lovely hike the other day and have found some more walking trails by our house.
Accountability:
I redid my goals a little bit ago, and, honestly, have modified them a bit as the month has gone on. Alas, here we go.
- Finish at least one online course per month. ✓
- On Coursera (referral link) I finished Brand Management: Aligning Business, Brand, and Behavior. This was the one last month I was on schedule to finish.
- Through VideoTel I completed their Environmental Officer Training Course. After the remote work jobs I applied for were a bust I decided to keep going with my course work to become and Environmental Officer onboard. They are not hiring for this right now (of course not), but gosh darn it, I’ll be ready!
- Read one book per month. ✓
- This months choice was Paddle Your Own Canoe by Nick Offerman. If you enjoy his sense of humor you will enjoy this book. It is not even remotely PG rated though, so be prepared.
- Post at least 10 blog posts each month ✓
- I did not write 10 blog posts this month. This is only number 5; however, this was because I was getting the new site ready. Watch out world, this coming month is going to be pretty great. Plus another guest post!
- Video chat with at least one friend per week
- Straight up fail on this. Just, wildly and horribly failed.
- Keep in touch with family. ✓
- Get a press handstand
- You know that video that was promised? Maybe next month? It is getting so much better. My tri-pod stradle headstand is like gold, my press handstand is… marginal.
- Take a French lesson every once in awhile ✓
- Life and Such: February 2023
- Accountability: July 2022
- Accountability: January 2022
- Accountability: August 2021
