Plans and aspirations for 2021

Here are some plans and ideas for this year. I’m late, in the sense that this would be a better January post, but no regrets – that’s mostly because I’ve been doing some of this already.

Professional: this is my biggest change in 2021! I left my past job analyzing education data and began this month as a Data Analyst at the City of Ann Arbor. It’s an exciting opportunity: subject matter I’m passionate about, work that will challenge me technically, building new relationships, and heeding the call of public service. And if/when we eventually go back to working in-person, city hall is a short bike ride away.

The change is a big leap in a lot of ways. Two major ones are returning to an individual contributor role after years of managing and shifting from the rhythms of consulting to those of government.

For years I’ve said my dream job was to do municipal data science, like the big teams in NYC or Chicago or Los Angeles, but here in Ann Arbor. This is as close to that dream as it gets, which is pretty incredible. I’m still getting up to speed (yesterday was day 8) but it looks like there’s no end of interesting work to do.

In the past I’ve spent recreational time on city matters (like estimating bike lane ridership or building a Twitter bot to boost voter turnout). Now that I’ll be getting my fill of that at work, I’ll shift that extracurricular energy elsewhere.

Climate action: the climate crisis remains the most urgent matter facing humanity. I feel compelled to do something. This year, I’ll continue to take individual action but also try to do more awareness-raising of those around me. I’m getting more comfortable talking about the climate crisis and its causes and I have some ideas for art I might make or collective action I could organize (for instance, reactivating my attempt at a board game sharing co-op).

I’ve come to appreciate the role of stories in motivating climate action – read The Overstory if you haven’t yet! – and the importance of taking a view of the world’s ecology and timescale that is much broader and richer than measures like parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. I’m reading Earth in Mind and feel the need to educate my children, and myself, about the natural world, hiding in plain sight near and far. This year I’ll be replacing more turf grass with native plants and starting oak and pawpaw trees from seeds and acorns that are overwintering now. If I make it Up North this summer, I’d like to visit the Hartwick Pines along the way.

Family: In 2020 I stayed in touch well with my brother and parents. I am keeping that up so far this year. In terms of exciting family plans, I have our first two backpacking trips booked! Including a hike-in trip to camp at Blind Lake, which I hope will be three generations: my older kids, me, and my mom.

Reading: I’m on a tear so far this year, reading a mix of novels and nonfiction. I got the good advice to not finish books I don’t love and am trying to apply it. Last night I got through 30 pages of a novel, then decided to skim the rest, skip to the ending, and move on – success. I’m also planning to read some good kids books this year.

Making: I learned a lot about creating and fixing things last year. It’s a virtuous cycle: confidence begets trying new projects, which begets experience, which begets confidence. Some 2021 making plans are:

• Better learn to use the sewing machine I bought at the end of last year. And grow my textile skills further in general.
• Get involved with the nearby makerspace All Hands Active, both for the community and the tools. I’d just gotten comfortable with their awesome laser cutter when the pandemic hit. It took me ten months to realize that the solution was to join as a full member.
• Try milling the invasive buckthorn that I remove into usable wood. For starters, this would be running small trunks of it through a bandsaw to make small boards that could become … a cutting board?

Community: I’ll likely redistribute my participatory energy, shifting some of it to try out All Hands Active as a community. I’ll work to keep up important individual friendships and explore promising new ones, and as COVID and weather permit, I want to deepen ties with my neighbors. That was going great but took a hit during the pandemic. I’ve lived on this block for two years and right now I greet a dozen of the 29 households by name in the street. It’s a good start but just scraping the surface of potential friendships and mutual aid. Even physically-distanced, the neighborliness and cookie or gardening swaps during COVID have lifted my spirits.

Biking: I’d like to ride my bike to Saline. I rode to Ypsilanti in 2018 and several times since and Dexter last year. With Saline I will have covered the ring of towns nearest to Ann Arbor. After that there’s another set that make for slightly longer round-trips of 30-35 miles: Whitmore Lake, Chelsea, Milan, South Lyon. I rode to South Lyon in 2017 so have that one in the bag already.

Writing: I enjoyed writing here in 2020 and hope to keep that going. In addition to current matters, I’d like to document some old projects and tell stories that are dear to my heart. For instance, my most time-consuming project ever was the electric home brewery I built around 2014; it would be a nice trip down memory lane to recap that here. Plus those circuit diagrams drawn in PowerPoint might be of use to someone…

May 2021 be a year of regrowth and blossoming.