Back in November, I wrote about trying new things in the year leading up to my 60th. At the time, I was questioning how much was even possible, given the state of the pandemic. Well, I surprised even myself! And not one thing required me to go outside. Here’s are the new things I’ve tried since my birthday.

I kicked it off right after my birthday by creating a Christmas e-book that I put up for sale on Gumroad. It was unlike anything I ever did before but it reminded me of a Christmas magazine my mother used to get when I was growing up. This particular e-book was specifically designed for Covid Christmas 2020 and included things that families could do by themselves and through Zoom parties.

To support the whole project, I learned how to do Facebook and Pinterest ads. It was definitely a ‘learn as I go moment’ and I’m really glad I had the experience. During the entire project, I learned a lot and I may even work on an Easter one.

At the end of the year, I rethought how I would approach a new year in my blog. Usually, in December, I’m pushing people to create goals and then create a vision board in January. But considering how this past year has been, it just didn’t feel right. Instead, I felt it would be better to ease into the year, tentatively, slowly, and with a little retrospection, compassion, and gratitude.

I created a 4-week program for January. It includes journaling, meditation, yoga, and movement. Each week builds on the previous starting with the first week of reflection as we looked back at 2020 and the impact it had on our lives. I also created a yoga sequence that starts at 6 minutes the first week and builds to 15 minutes in the last week.

After getting everyone set up and started on the first week, I realized that it might be difficult to complete a yoga sequence if you have to keep looking at it. And that’s when I decided to create an MP3 for the yoga.

Back in 2019, for Christmas, my husband wanted to know what he could buy for me so I told him a Maono Podcasting Kit. Did I want to podcast? Not really, but I did have this idea of creating an MP3 of my vision board guided meditation. Did I open the box at all during Covid 2020? Not at all, instead, I took up crocheting. Which was fine. It’s something I needed to do.

Then along comes January 2021 and my 4-week challenge, and I realize that maybe I need to make a yoga MP3 and I finally take it out of the box to learn all about it. And let me tell you, this piece of equipment is fantastic. Durable and great sound at the same time. And easy to set up. I had my first MP3 complete in a day. Sure, there were about 100 takes…but I got it completed!

But I didn’t stop there. After one participant said that it was difficult to picture some of the poses, even with my verbal queuing, I decided to make yoga stick figures to go along with the poses. Not an easy task considering that the last time I tried doing it was when I was in yoga teacher training back in 2005 and they were the worst pictures imaginable. Only another yogi who knew what the pose was would be able to tell what I’d drawn. (Even then, it was a stretch.)

So I spent a lot of time studying yoga stick figures, drawing out several different versions before I settled on the style I decided to use. And it was a success. I’ve gotten feedback that the yoga stick figures really helped her to understand what to do.

Whew. That’s a lot of new, big things we’ve done. We’ve also done smaller things, like trying different restaurants through Uber Eats…even using Uber Eats was new to us. With my husband out of work, he made all the meals for us. But now that he’s back to work, we’ve been ordering in more… pre-Covid, those would be the days that we went out to restaurants.

I also made headbands for the girls (part of my Orlando family) using the crochet flowers I was making. I can’t count crocheting as something new in my 59th year, because I started that back in the spring as something to do when we couldn’t go out but making headbands was one of those things I tried in December not knowing if it would look good or not.

I think it worked. What have you been doing this year?