Here we are, July, half-way through the calendar year and, in the Southern Hemisphere, wrapped firmly in the freezing embrace of winter.

My brain is keenly tuned to these kinds of markers, as though I’d have more success with things if I started or finished them in a quarter, or a season. If the last 18 months have shown us anything, it’s that everything can change very suddenly and the best laid plans aren’t any match for chaos.

For me, winter is the part of the year where I feel most trapped, and that feeling isn’t helped this year by not being able to drive somewhere even vaguely warmer. Being stuck at home with my elbow, and considering the distinct possibility that there could be further COVID lockdowns coming, made me realise I’ve barely touched the list of resolutions I made at the start of the year.

One of them can go straight in the rubbish bin and be set alight: I’m not going to be able to learn how to skip as fast as a boxer in the time it takes me to watch all the Rocky movies, not this year at least. Let’s revisit that in 2022, a year of twos, including two arms.

I would like to finish building my almost life-size JECKA corgi and I don’t see any reason why that can’t happen, besides the fact that if something isn’t staring me in the face I tend to forget it even exists.

I also really need to get smarter with my finances. I’m not terrible, I pay my bills on time, I pay more on my mortgage when I can, but I want to be in a place where I have a holiday fund, and can replace my carpet and buy a new lounge when my cat goes to cat heaven (sorry Wuz). I would like to build a life-size corgi and read The Barefoot Investor and get myself organised for a big year of saving next year (or this year! Why wait for an arbitrary date!).

I also want to do a garden plan. I want a nicer garden, my mum wants me to have a nicer garden, it would be nice for both of us if I had a nicer garden (my mother doesn’t live with me, she just has extreme levels of energy and very big opinions on gardens and I respect that, she has a gorgeous garden). Winter feels like a good time to work on that in time for spring, which seems like the logical time to plant stuff. I also want to pull down my retractable washing line and replace my mailbox as part of those plans.

A corgi, a financial plan and a great garden!

I want to fit in one more road trip this year. This one might be tricky, over the last few weeks I was supposed to be in Victoria and South Australia on an extended family road trip which I was desperately looking forward to, but which COVID and my own clumsiness put on hold.

If the family trip can’t go ahead before the end of the year, I want to fit in one more trip to Coolah, even if it’s just a long weekend. Coolah is definitely one of my weirdest favourite destinations, but it really is a great tiny town and the drive there is fantastic: long, straight stretches of road where you can wind the windows down and sing Jason Isbell real loud. My friends are leaving Coolah at the end of the year, so it’s probably the last time I’ll have reason to visit and I want to say my farewells.

Corgi, money, garden, travel.

I also want to reach the arbitrary goal of reading 52 books this year. I’m a little behind, due to the time I invested in swiping endlessly on Tinder in the hopes of meeting someone who wasn’t hiding a terrible secret life, but I’m in the middle of a run of books so good that I just want to get home and read some more, so I’m quietly confident I can catch up. I’ve also deleted Tinder and told a friend that if he sees me on there before the date I’ve given him, he is to roundly humiliate me.

Corgi, money, garden, travel, books.

Finally, once my arm has been given the all clear, I’m getting back into health and fitness, which was a huge priority earlier in the year and I made some real headway with it. It got to the stage where I was so bummed when it rained and I couldn’t go on a walk that I bought a giant waterproof jacket with a hood so I was prepped for all weather.

At the moment I’ve been prepped just for hibernation and it’s not good, so corgi, money, garden, travel, books, fitness.

Six goals in six months. Feels pretty doable.

About two months ago my brother-in-law dropped my new camera off at my house. A series of events meant the camera had travelled from Sydney to Orange, via a long stopover on the Central Coast and I had been impatiently waiting to get my hands on it for weeks.

As he walked across my front yard, he pretended to trip and we laughed about how funny it would be if, after all the hassle and waiting, the camera didn’t even make it inside.

Two weeks later, before I’d even had a chance to use the camera, I actually did trip over in my front yard, dislocating and fracturing my elbow, rendering my left arm useless for the time being and the camera has been sitting bundled in its backpack, next to the guitar I also can’t play.

Since I had The Fall (and it needs to be capitalised, if only because in these times of plagues and pestilence, it’s the only thing out of the ordinary that’s happened to me in the last 12 months), life has been a series of appointments and waiting rooms.

My next appointment is in about two weeks and I’m hopeful this time that the brace will come off and I’ll be able to start physio and driving and photography again, so I decided to tidy things up here, with the intention of posting photos once I can take them again and when I have weaned myself off my iPhone and am back into the trickier world of DSLRs.