Review of the Year 2021

Sadly, 2021 must be rated as Failing To Meet Expectations.

The target for 2022 is Must Improve.  If the required standard is not met further action may be taken.

I'm afraid I neglected this blog throughout 2021, I hope to give it some more attention in 2022.

Like everyone (except perhaps our Prime Minister) my and my families lives were limited quite severely by the restrictions made necessary by the Covid 19 epidemic.  Also I'm alternately outraged and depressed by the many ill effects of the continuing Brexit disaster, or the "Inglorious Revolution" as I like to call it.

My son John had a very bad year.  He started 2021 ok-ish.  In June we took John on holiday to the Isle of Wight, which we had done successfully a number of times before.  But this time he reacted very badly, possibly because of some upsets on the journey and at the hotel there, though it's hard to be entirely sure.  He started refusing to get into his car, and often refusing to go out at all.  Unfortunately this continued after returning from the holiday and is still a problem, which made it impossible for him to engage in many of the activities he had previously seemed to enjoy.  Then we heard that owner of John's rented house had died and the heirs wanted to sell it, so he would need to move.  Arranging new accommodation for John became a real headache, and this process is still going on now.

My wife Eleni has been very concerned about John's difficulties.  But in July-August she managed to visit Greece for 7 weeks to catch up with family and friends and have a holiday.  In September Eleni and I visited my mother in Scotland.

For myself, my mental health continues to be rather flaky.  I had plans for various activities but have achieved very little.  In the summer my brother Alasdair asked if I could write a program to design Scottish tartans, which is something he sometimes does as part of his job.  I spent about a month on this and eventually got something working that he was happy with.  It is now available for anyone to download from https://chiselapp.com/user/cmacleod/repository/tartaniser/index - screenshot:

When I retired in October 2020, I basically treated my time as a long holiday.  This was fine for a while and perhaps necessary since I had been feeling quite exhausted, but eventually just slobbing around gets old.  So now I'm aiming to follow a more work-like routine: 

• for weekdays have a TODO list combining tedious but necessary jobs with things which are interesting but require some organisation to make progress with and work through the list.
• keep the weekends as unstructured down-time.

In summary, 2022 still has the potential to correct the faults of 2021, but it needs to get its act together, put its nose to the grindstone, and pull its finger out!

Happy New Year to all ✨