There’s something about the WordPress New Post window that shuts my brain down. Actually, most typed text composition options do this to my brain. I quite like writing with pen & paper but I think I need to find my sweet spot, tool-wise, that will let me get the words out without having to re-enter them – I describe my handwriting as a great example of a write-only storage system. Part of why I like writing by hand is that it slows the words down just enough that I end up being more thoughtful and deliberate – there are fewer superfluous words and I end up questioning what I’m thinking more.
See? That’s 103 words of nattering right there (ok, the WP edit window helps with that 🙂 ) and I haven’t even started on what the point of this post was.
It’s New Year’s Day, 2018 and That Year is over. It was a Bad Year in a LOT of ways but it was actually a pretty positive year for me personally, so I’m feeling guilty about that. But maybe that’s one of the #2018Liberations ideas (h/t Cate Huston) that I should be trying out – not feeling bad about my own successes while there is so much pain in the world. Not gloating about them, not being successful at the expense of others, but learning to be happy for myself.
In early December, I started what might just be my dream job. I’m an Engineering Manager at Buffer, a company that I set my sights on a couple of years ago when I started really thinking about what I value in life and what I want to contribute my few hours on the planet towards. One of Buffer’s values is “Show Gratitude” and wow do the people I work with live that value. It’s a bit of an awkward one for me because I get quite shy when people thank me for things or praise me and I have that impulse common to a lot of people (more so women? I’m not sure) to deflect praise and positive attention. But I think I need to work on that. Not just for myself, but also for others – both people who I can act as a role model for, showing that it’s ok to hear positive things about yourself and accept that gracefully, and for the people offering that praise. It’s not a great feeling to have tried to show gratitude to someone and to feel like that’s not appreciated, so I think I might need to get over my discomfort there 🙂
I am not much of a goal-setter. Some people are really motivated by setting goals but I tend to end up demotivated by them because as soon as I ‘fail’ to complete exactly whatever the plan I came up with for myself, I give up. Jean Hsu’s description of
being mostly effortlessly high-achieving through high school and college, and never really developing a great deal of grit and persistence.
resonates a LOT with me (not high school, because I was completely disinterested and didn’t even try then, but in university). I don’t think I have grit. I tend to give up easily. ESPECIALLY after I’ve failed to meet some arbitrarily strict standard I set for myself.
So that’s my goal for this year – to keep getting back on the horse. To work on building habits – to keep re-starting when I stop or don’t think I ‘measured up’. The habits I want to work on are:
- moving more – I’m intrigued by the “217 in 2017” that the folks over at Fit Is A Feminist Issue blog did last year. I particularly appreciate the definition of what ‘counts’ as a workout that they provide – anything outside of their normal day. Bill and I have started going swimming midday on Tuesdays and Thursdays (thanks for the flexibility, Future of Work!) and that would cover a good number of a potential 218 in 2018 🙂
- writing more – This is a first start, but I’d like to ‘ship’ a post per week. Hopefully some of the other habits I’m working on can help provide inspiration for some of the things to write about, but I’d also like to write some fiction.
- reading more – one of the amazing perks that Buffer offers employees is free e-books. Like, for real, you say “Hey, I’d like this book” and they give it to you. Unfortunately, the first one I picked is a bit of a slog so far and I’m really not enjoying the author’s tone, but at the same time, that’s a good lesson for me on the writing side – if your audience feels insulted or lessened by what you are writing, they’re going to put your work down sooner than they otherwise might. I do actually have a goal here – I want to finish one book a week. I know that some of them (like the current one) will take more than a week to get through so I expect to supplement completions with fiction/humour (too bad I devoured the whole “The Broken Earth” series in one week in September. Credit for three books in a week! (see what I mean about goals being a problem for me? 🙂 )) I mean, technically, I finished John Hodgman’s “VacationLand” today, which could count as finishing this week, but since it was a re-read, I don’t know if that’s cheating.
- serving more – I want to find ways to help make the world a better place that involve more than just giving money (although I want to do more of that, too) but involve me actually doing things that have an immediate positive impact on people.
And more self-compassion. I’m going to fall down on these goals. That’s ok. The real habit I’m trying to build is starting again after I ‘fail’.