Goals

I did something unusual for me at the beginning of April, I made a list of goals for the month. Two of them were goals I really wanted to complete and the other three were stretch goals, things I wanted to try to do but wasn’t sure I’d be able to make happen.

Let me backtrack for a moment here to say that goal making and I haven’t always gotten along. In my career I have one over arching goal, but a lot of times my smaller goals were thrown off track by circumstances outside my controls (like being laid off or getting a new boss that made work life difficult). And in my personal life I made occasionally did a short run project, but didn’t make goals a regular thing.

That being said, by the end of March I knew that I needed to figure out a way to find a bit of peace and balance in my life. After starting a job in January and buying a house in February, and moving into said house in March, things had gone off the rails a bit. I wasn’t doing things that would help me feel better, healthier, and more content. So I made a list in my journal.

And now I’m at the end of the month, and I did pretty dang well with the goals. Some were related to exercise; I made the goal to run 50k, not a terribly long distance but enough to get me out regularly. I wanted to finish a sweater I’d been working on since January. As for my drawing, I decided to give something different a try, so I worked on things in a sketch book that centered on self data and data visualizations.

I made a few more that are for me alone. I didn’t achieve all of them, but I did feel content and peace throughout the month. I kept to many of my goals as I traveled at both the beginning and end of the month as well, helping my sense of balance.

As I sit here writing this on April 30th, I’m making a list of goals for the month of May. Some may be very similar—I’ve started yet another crochet sweater!—but some may change a bit. And the overarching goal is about me finding ways to spend my time that feels worthwile and that brings me peace. I found that being gentle with myself while also setting up some things I want to accomplish is helping me deal with the world as it is these days.