2019 Goals and Intentions
Jan. 4th, 2019 06:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rsadelleI again found this Danielle LaPorte year in review exercise really helpful for looking back on the last year and deciding what I want to do in the new year. My two basic themes for 2019 are: focus on the things that are most important and find solutions to problems. Some of my specific things are trackable goals and some of them are general intentions of things I want to remember.
Write. Like last year, I don't have any specific goals around this. I again want to write in a way that is fun and that lets me feel inside the experience.
Strengthen connections. Keeping track of this last year made me so happy, so I'm keeping this goal the same: Continue to prioritize relationships and time with friends and family, and be open to new people. Do this with someone every week, and with local people at least twice a month.
Connect to God/the divine. Like last year, I don't have a specific way of going about this. It's still important and still something I want to do. I am going to be more liberal about what "counts" for purposes of my goals tracking spreadsheet.
Get more sleep. I wrote down tired under the didn't work section of so many of my weekly check-ins for 2018. I think a lot of that might be that I let myself have fifteen minutes of wiggle room to count as going to bed on time, and I tended to push that so that I didn't go to bed until 9:15 a lot of days. For 2019, I'm going to be stricter about my bedtime: turn everything off at 8:15 and be in bed by 9, with only five minutes of wiggle room to count as going to bed on time. I also adjusted the thermostat so the heater/air conditioner doesn't come on quite so much before my alarm. (This is my primary trick for waking up without my alarm: the click of the the thermostat usually wakes me up so I'm up in time to turn off the alarm before it goes off.)
Cut out the mindless internetting. I spend a lot of time reading random Twitters and Tumblrs. Sure, a lot of times it makes me laugh, but also I know that I'm less happy on days when I read a lot of Twitter, and I know that it's time for a periodic cutting down of my social media time in favor of the things that make me happier and that I want to do more. In practical terms, this means that I spent some time telling Firefox to forget a lot of things (so they won't be in my address bar suggestions) and my new rule is that I can only regularly read people's social media things if I follow them. I'm making exceptions for one Tumblr and one Twitter that I want to keep up with but don't want to follow for reasons.
Take a vacation. In addition to just taking time off work at least once a quarter, this year I need a real vacation. I do have two cultural event overnights with my mom scheduled. Ideally Louis Tomlinson will go on tour andlakeeffectgirl and I will go see him somewhere interesting for my real vacation. If that doesn't happen, I'll go visit her and our other friends near her.
Prepare to move. There's a good chance I'm going to have to move at the end of the summer. I'm going to work on cleaning out my closet and cabinets and having the maintenance people fix any things that need to be fixed before then. If I end up not having to move, then things will just be nicer for me anyway.
Volunteer/get involved in a cause. I think I should get involved in something and I feel guilty for not volunteering my time for a cause, so in the spirit of finding solutions, I would like to make this the year I volunteer. Part of what makes me nervous about it is that I have a tendency to stick with things long past the time I should have stopped, so I need to go into this reminding myself that it's okay to quit if it doesn't work for me.
Address problems earlier. This is one of those lessons I have to learn over and over again. There were a handful of things on my highlights from last year list that were problems I found solutions for, and it reminded me that really a lot of problem solving is a lot easier than I think it will be. One of the problems to deal with this year is getting gum grafts done.
Share my interests/enthusiasm/excitement. So many of my highlights from last year were things like going to dance performances with my mom, sharing a fandom with my bff again, and book club discussions. This intention is to remind me that this is great, and I should do it as much as possible.
Be more weird. Honestly, I don't know what this looks like. One of the great things about watching older One Direction things is that Louis used to be really weird in a way he isn't in later things. I was thinking, "I wonder if that's because he was trained out of being publicly weird, or just a side effect of getting older, because I've gotten less weird over time." Then I stopped and thought about what I was thinking, and while some of it is just that I'm a calmer person now, I think some of it is less weirdness in a more tamping down on any weirdness way. At a minimum, I will continue to sing and dance in my car at stop lights.
Write. Like last year, I don't have any specific goals around this. I again want to write in a way that is fun and that lets me feel inside the experience.
Strengthen connections. Keeping track of this last year made me so happy, so I'm keeping this goal the same: Continue to prioritize relationships and time with friends and family, and be open to new people. Do this with someone every week, and with local people at least twice a month.
Connect to God/the divine. Like last year, I don't have a specific way of going about this. It's still important and still something I want to do. I am going to be more liberal about what "counts" for purposes of my goals tracking spreadsheet.
Get more sleep. I wrote down tired under the didn't work section of so many of my weekly check-ins for 2018. I think a lot of that might be that I let myself have fifteen minutes of wiggle room to count as going to bed on time, and I tended to push that so that I didn't go to bed until 9:15 a lot of days. For 2019, I'm going to be stricter about my bedtime: turn everything off at 8:15 and be in bed by 9, with only five minutes of wiggle room to count as going to bed on time. I also adjusted the thermostat so the heater/air conditioner doesn't come on quite so much before my alarm. (This is my primary trick for waking up without my alarm: the click of the the thermostat usually wakes me up so I'm up in time to turn off the alarm before it goes off.)
Cut out the mindless internetting. I spend a lot of time reading random Twitters and Tumblrs. Sure, a lot of times it makes me laugh, but also I know that I'm less happy on days when I read a lot of Twitter, and I know that it's time for a periodic cutting down of my social media time in favor of the things that make me happier and that I want to do more. In practical terms, this means that I spent some time telling Firefox to forget a lot of things (so they won't be in my address bar suggestions) and my new rule is that I can only regularly read people's social media things if I follow them. I'm making exceptions for one Tumblr and one Twitter that I want to keep up with but don't want to follow for reasons.
Take a vacation. In addition to just taking time off work at least once a quarter, this year I need a real vacation. I do have two cultural event overnights with my mom scheduled. Ideally Louis Tomlinson will go on tour and
lakeeffectgirl and I will go see him somewhere interesting for my real vacation. If that doesn't happen, I'll go visit her and our other friends near her.Prepare to move. There's a good chance I'm going to have to move at the end of the summer. I'm going to work on cleaning out my closet and cabinets and having the maintenance people fix any things that need to be fixed before then. If I end up not having to move, then things will just be nicer for me anyway.
Volunteer/get involved in a cause. I think I should get involved in something and I feel guilty for not volunteering my time for a cause, so in the spirit of finding solutions, I would like to make this the year I volunteer. Part of what makes me nervous about it is that I have a tendency to stick with things long past the time I should have stopped, so I need to go into this reminding myself that it's okay to quit if it doesn't work for me.
Address problems earlier. This is one of those lessons I have to learn over and over again. There were a handful of things on my highlights from last year list that were problems I found solutions for, and it reminded me that really a lot of problem solving is a lot easier than I think it will be. One of the problems to deal with this year is getting gum grafts done.
Share my interests/enthusiasm/excitement. So many of my highlights from last year were things like going to dance performances with my mom, sharing a fandom with my bff again, and book club discussions. This intention is to remind me that this is great, and I should do it as much as possible.
Be more weird. Honestly, I don't know what this looks like. One of the great things about watching older One Direction things is that Louis used to be really weird in a way he isn't in later things. I was thinking, "I wonder if that's because he was trained out of being publicly weird, or just a side effect of getting older, because I've gotten less weird over time." Then I stopped and thought about what I was thinking, and while some of it is just that I'm a calmer person now, I think some of it is less weirdness in a more tamping down on any weirdness way. At a minimum, I will continue to sing and dance in my car at stop lights.