I have some fairly intricate (and stressful) health and finance-related decisions to make right now, so I’m doing the mature, responsible thing: procrastinating!
…by putting my 2018 goals on paper/WordPress, so it counts.
Who knows what all I will actually accomplish, but during conversations with the last guy I started seeing, I realized that one of my biggest flaws is that I am afraid to dream big anymore. Frequently because, unfortunately, I am afraid to fail (yes, cultivating more of a growth mindset is something I’m currently working on, too).
I plan to edit this post as I think of more, but here we go for now! In 2018 I aim to:
- Present at an academic conference (which would be my second ever)
- Hit that oft-coveted six-figure salary (well, or earn that much–it doesn’t have to be through salary alone)
- Finish paying off that one semester of grad school I actually went into debt for (the rest of it was paid for when I went completely outside my department for my grad assistantship and started writing at the news bureau–one of the best decisions I have ever made)
- Actually finish one of these darn books I’ve started, and then publish it (self-published counts too, if I decide to go that route)
- Keep up with my blog consistently again
- Take one trip somewhere. Not for business; just because I want to.
- Get my strength, speed, flexibility, and endurance back up to a level at which I am proud of them. My goal used to be to squat 300 pounds someday. Maybe this year, as I baby both of these knees and work on the whole exercise-induced asthma thing, I will set my sights on squatting 250, doing ten pull-ups (not chin-ups, which I find to be much easier) in one go, and running three miles without a walk-break…and/or asthma attack at the end. I’d love to regain my needle (also called a “straight-leg scorpion”) body position, too.
- This one sounds absolutely inane. Because I was a college cheerleader and I have coached competitive cheerleading, tumbling, and/or gymnastics consistently for nearly the past six years now. But I want to get rid of this irrational fear of doing all my standard tumbling skills again. I’d love to be in a place mentally where I can just throw standing tucks (sober anyway, because I even threw standing fulls, standing arabians, cart-arabians, side-somis, etc. when I was drunk) without questioning myself. The irritating part is that physically, I obviously could still do tucks in my sleep. Even now, at a much heavier weight and very out of practice, I could physically do a triple-toe-back without an issue. But all those old injuries, and the ever-present doubt of myself…those are the real killers.
- I don’t know how to quantify this one, or really “measure” success, per se…but I also want to make sure that this year, I completely stop making all this effort for people who aren’t willing to do the same for me. Period. I have had this terrible habit in nearly all of my relationships where I have been willing to put forth more of the effort, do all the emotional labor, make excuses for their behavior, swallow my own hurt so as not to hurt the person in question, and really be the one to do all the sacrificing, all while demanding near perfection from myself and taking unnecessary blame for things that weren’t my fault. So basically, I have emulated most of the women in my mother’s generation; I am determined not to raise daughters who will see my example and do the same.
- Finish that damn blanket for my mother that I started knitting years ago. Mostly I just need to sew those squares together!