2021 Goals

in

2020 was not a great year for most people. But it was a pretty good year for Myriad Misadventures. Probably for the same reason that it was bad for most people. I’d gained some momentum with the blog in 2019, posting more videos and blog posts than I had in previous years. And after COVID hit at the beginning of 2020 I was stuck at home for a bunch of time. Schools were closed longer than normal so I didn’t go back to work until…May if I remember correctly. That gave me a lot of free time at home to work on Myriad Misadventures and I made sure to take advantage of it.

I posted weekly Youtube videos for almost 3/4 of the year, until work caught up with me in the fall/winter. My blog posting frequency stayed consistent or even got a little better. I kept up my Instagram and TikTok output. And I opened up a full set of Chinese social media pages so I could post all the photos and videos on platforms available in China as well. The only thing missing was the blog itself.

As far as content was concerned I feel like I made some good progress. I started the year strong with quite a few fight videos, and the last couple I posted I was really proud of. I also expanded my martial arts content with training videos at the beginning of the year, vlogs about learning kung fu in China that I started about halfway through the year, a weekly martial arts video on TikTok, and a week of martial arts photos every third week on Instagram. And I can’t forget the martial arts expectation vs reality video that I had an absolute blast making. I also started posting much more interesting travel content when I started the vlogs about my trip to Tokyo a couple of summers ago. It’s still not quite where I want the travel content but it’s definitely moving in the right direction.

2021, like 2020, is probably going to be a little different. The difference there wasn’t much warning that 2020 was going to be super weird as 2019 ended, but as 2020 ended it was pretty obvious that 2021 still wasn’t going to be normal.

First off is obviously travel. I mentioned in a post a couple months back that I was planning more local trips for 2021 since international travel was still off the table but coming into 2021 it looks like domestic travel may still be a little limited as well. China has seen some recent coronavirus flare-ups that could keep us from traveling around as much as I had expected. I think we’ll still be able to travel some but it’ll probably be a lot like last summer, where our trip was short and somewhat local. There’s no way to tell for sure what the year is going to hold but I don’t think we’ll be venturing too far out of Shenzhen during Chinese New Year at least. Maybe by summer we’ll be able to go a little farther though.

What that means is that this is going to be the year to buckle down on martial arts. I finally got back into martial arts in a pretty serious way in 2020. With all the extra time I was at home at the beginning of the year I did a bunch of training on my own around my apartment, and then as the city started to open back up around the middle of the year I got back into JKD. From there I started doing tai chi and got back into wing chun as well so as the year ended I was doing 3 martial arts. Going into 2021 I expect to keep up with martial arts, although I may have to cut back a bit during the semester when I’m working, but I definitely won’t be going back to no martial arts like I had been doing for years.

And since I won’t be able to film much new travel content (I still have some stuff from 2019 and 2020 to make though so don’t worry too much yet) I’ll be looking to increase my martial arts content to make up for it. That means some more JKD, tai chi, and wing chun vlogs, more fight videos, and more form videos (which I started to play around with at the end of 2020).

2020 was certainly tough, and not what I had expected. But it helped me refocus in a serious way and I have a good feeling about some of the stuff I’ll be able to do going forward.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you on my next trip. Don't forget to click the links below and follow to stay up to date on what I'm doing and where I am and to see all the pictures and videos from my trips.