Every year, before the beginning of the school year, I set goals for myself. At some point quite recently, I realised that I persevere and find motivation when I know–and am reminded of–why I do things. To that end, I thought I would share my goals here and why I set them for myself. This little exercise I did with myself was inspired by both James Clear and Dr Pooja Lakshmin's real self-care compass.
Writing
My main focus this year, as in the last few years, is my writing. This school year, my main goal is to publish Heritage and start working on the new project. In addition, I want to continue writing the blog and my newsletter (more about Narrative Notes here). Why do I write? It turns out that my brain is making up stories anyway. If I don’t write fiction, it makes up worst-case scenarios, which isn’t great. One of the reasons I write is to stay sane. Another reason is that writing helps me order my otherwise unruly thoughts. I share some of this writing because I love it when people respond to it. I love how it opens up discussions.
Music
Music is another creative outlet for me. While words are awesome and fantastic, I have discovered that not all human emotions and experiences can be verbalised. Music allows me to express all this nonverbal stuff, and it’s often more fun and active. This year, I’d like to keep working on my music, just play with it and have fun.
Meditation
I meditate every day without fail. It calms me and helps ground me in my body and my mind. I meditate because I’m curious. I learn something new about myself every time I meditate. My goal for the year is to maintain the habit of meditating every day and extend the length of my meditations on weekends.
Fitness Routine
I’m proud of the fitness routine I built for myself. I started from barely being able to walk due to a knee injury to working out five times a week. I do a mix of rowing, strength exercises, and yoga, and now I’m looking to incorporate a daily after-lunch walk. I think better on workout days, and the more I stick to my routine, the more energy I have.
Reading
A thread that runs through these things is that I’m curious. It gets me into trouble sometimes. Curiosity killed the cat and all that. But that’s why I love reading: I get to learn new things and be in someone else’s head. It’s amazing. My goal this year is to read a lot. My reading challenge runs on the calendar year, so it’s a bit off, but generally, I aim to read 50 books a year, which is one book a week. I set myself these reading challenges, not because I want to rush through books (I don’t) but because it helps me keep track of the books I already read. This year, I want to organise what I have learned from the books I read. The goal is to write down some thoughts and pull out good quotes from each book I read.
Time with my Family
I put this last on purpose. The other things are things I do for myself, and I felt guilty putting them first. But the truth is that I do the things for myself mostly so that I'm good company to the people I love. I have solid relationships with my nuclear, and that’s because I put a lot of time and care into these relationships. It is a rare evening when we don’t have dinner as a family. It is a rare weekday when I’m not home when the young people return from school with stories and stonewall silences. It is a rare month when we’re not doing something special as a family–travelling someplace, watching a musical, or having a games night. My goal is to maintain these relationships because these are the people I want to talk to about my day.
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