New Year, Same Goals

Ahh, the new year.

The time when people make overambitious goals and flamboyant Instagram posts about the past 365 days, and their hopes for the oncoming 12 months.

I’m guilty on both accounts; however I’d argue that *most* of my goals are pre-written, a carry-over from 2018 and what I did not accomplish on my 25 Things List.

What, you might ask, do I mean by *most,* and what could I possibly be adding to my already pretty daunting list of items to accomplish in the next year?

A little more self-care.

I have a tendency, as Type-A’s are wont to do, to overload myself with tasks, goals, projects, hobbies – you name it, until I’m brimming full of adrenaline and stress. I know this about myself, I have known it about myself, and yet I somehow continue to make the decision to continue down that path. Maybe it’s that habits are hard to break. Maybe it’s that I thrive under pressure but always push it too far. Maybe I like to stay busy. Maybe I just need to calm down for ten minutes.

So that’s what I’m going to try to do in 2019, which is in direct contradiction with the timeline on my 25 Things List – so we’ll see how that goes. What I really need in my life is to begin putting less pressure on myself, stop being so critical of myself, and start forgiving myself. I’m going to bring back my daily habit of meditation, and try to add a few moments to each day to take a deep breath and relax.

I’m also going to acknowledge the very real possibility that I will not accomplish everything on my 25 Things List, which even hurts to type.

In the beginning, when I began working on this project, I was very focused but relaxed about the outcome – I was going to challenge myself and work hard to accomplish all of my goals, but I wasn’t going to stress myself out over the list. After all, it’s a self-imposed set of goals with a self-imposed timeline. I figured the point of the list was to accomplish things I’d always wanted to, and to stop living in a “someday” mentality, and start living in a “today” mentality. Which it is.

However, in the past few months, it’s slowly started to sink in that I only have one year to finish my list in the timeline I’d committed to, and that has begun to stress me out. Which, I keep telling myself, it doesn’t need to. The problem is that I feel like I’m so close, and if I really push myself, this time next year I just might be typing up a blogpost about how I’ve completed my list. I can imagine myself leaning back in the seat of an airplane (the final item on my list is to spontaneously book the next flight out of MSP), satisfied with the knowledge that I completed 25 major life tasks in 2.5 years.

The problem is I did not set myself up for success. That’s the nature of the list I created, that’s the nature of the mentality I sought out to develop, and that’s the nature of my current state of being.

What I mean by that is when I created this list, I wrote down several items that I knew would be nearly impossible to complete, but I wrote them down anyway. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – the point of the list was to stop putting life on hold, and to start doing the things I’d always dreamed of doing. However, certain tasks, such as writing a novel are almost impossible to do within 2.5 years alone, not taking into consideration the other 25 items on my list taking up some of that time. I recall writing a few items down, noting how nearly impossible they would be to do in combination with one another, but writing them down anyway, because I wanted to accomplish them, and I wanted to stop putting them on the back burner.

So if I could do it all over again, would I do anything differently?

As far as the items on my list go, no.. When I look at my list, I still want to accomplish all of the items on it. My gut wants to keep all of the items on the list, but logically I wished that I had balanced it out a bit more. Many of the items on my list are very time consuming or involve travel, which is great, but in combination with one another, proves to be kind of a lot.

Mostly, I wish that I had begun the project earlier, like when I’d turned 20, so I’d have more time to complete everything.

But again, self-imposed timeline. If I don’t accomplish these before I turn 25, they are all obviously still things I want to do, so I’ll continue pursuing them anyway.

That being said, I’m not all 100% a stressed-out monster. I’ve had a pretty wild, incredible year because of this list, and I am grateful beyond words for it.

And I have a feeling the best is yet to come.

Currently, I’m sitting around halfway done with my list. Recent(ish) accomplishments include visiting a nostalgic place from my childhood, which I did this summer and will make a blogpost about soon. I also learned how to make hollandaise sauce, which is super exciting, and not going to lie, makes me feel a bit more like an adult in a strange way.

I have yet to check off what should be a super easy item, but is proving to be the most challenging: get into a normal sleep schedule. As I type this post at 11:17 p.m. with plans to wake up at 5 a.m. to finish and post it, I can say that I’m certainly not even pretending to be accomplishing this goal. Work in progress.

I have booked my flight to Nepal and my reservation with a trekking company to do the Mount Everest Base Camp Trek, have plotted out my final few State Park trips to ensure I hit all 75 of them by next January (I’m currently over halfway there), and am working my way through the IMDB’s Top 100 Movies List. I’ve also recently started a Life Time Fitness membership, so I can train for Everest and for the 10K race that’s on my list, which I’ve already signed up to do the week after I return from Everest, because like I mentioned above, I’m a crazy Type-A who never knows when to stop. This all goes hand-in-hand with my goal of getting in the best shape of my life. I’m working on the design for my handbound copy of The Great Gatsby, which I hope to complete before I leave for Everest, and I also plan to visit California this summer to go skateboarding with my Dad through his old stomping (or technically skating) grounds.

That only leaves a few items left on the list. I plan to wait to start the after school writing group for kids until the next school year, when I’ll hopefully have more goals accomplished and more spare time. I’m also saving up a stash of cash for my Roth IRA, so that will come later this year, and I’m slowly but hopefully surely paying off half of my student loans. I’m working on several different writing projects right now, so
I need to narrow my focus and pick one as my “novel” to complete before 25. I might cheat a bit on this one, because I’ve been working on a collection of poetry, which is not a novel, but is still a completed literary work of sorts. It’s not exactly what I had in mind when I wrote the goal, but it’s not not what I had in mind, either. As for taking education courses, I’ve been doing that along the way, and am not really sure when to check this one off. I feel like I need to wait until I’m nearly 25, so I can hold myself accountable to continue seizing learning opportunities that may or may not come my way.

And finally, the capstone project: go to the airport and purchase tickets for the next flight.

All things I want to do, and will push myself to do before next January – but still, a daunting list. I feel good about the tasks, but nervous about the time.

Everything feels like it’s slowly pulling itself up toward April, when I’ll leave for Nepal. I hope to have several of the items above checked off my list by then, and will plan to write another 25 Things update once I return from my trip, in addition to what will surely be several blogposts about walking 81 miles through the Himalayas.

But, until then, lots of careful planning and lots of self-care are on the horizon. So, this year, whatever goals you may have lined up for yourself on your docket, I hope you’ll challenge yourself to add a little more self-care into your life, as well.

More adventure ahead!