My friend Soph (of Uncultured Palate and C’est La Cuisine fame) likes to make New Year’s “goals” instead of “resolutions,” and I think the distinction is significant. “Goals,” to me, denotes a more concrete, achievable function — often, resolutions will be something simple like “get healthier” or “lose weight.” This kind of language is not specific.
Goals, on the other hand, are made out of small, easily measurable steps. They’re real. They’re tangible.
I know I’m late with this post, and January is almost halfway over already, but I wanted to share my own goals for 2021. For me, accountability begins with the act of recording what I want, what I need to do — it worked last year (to a certain extent, pandemic notwithstanding), so let’s see where we go from here.
- Make a temperature blanket
- Pay off my credit card debt
- Learn how to drive a manual
- Set a Twitch streaming schedule
- Post to this blog at least once per week
- Finish my novel
- Do something with the poetry chapbook collecting dust in my Google Drive
For now, those are my goals. I am hoping to also, in a nebulous way, feel calmer about my life and the things happening in it. Listen to more music. Drink more herbal tea. Focus on how to collect myself.
COLLECT, verb: to regain control of oneself, typically after a shock
To say 2020 was a “shock” is a bit disingenuous. A shock to the system, a shock to society, a shock to me in particular. It would be more appropriate to say that the year was a rocket-propelled grenade shot directly into the center of my life. Some of it was on purpose, some of it was certainly not (see: global pandemic).
In any case, now I have a set of particular goals for myself for this, my thirty-first year of life. Let’s get to it.
Liz Makes Stuff 