for 2018

[pax_athena]

Goals are hard to set when you are not sure whether you have to move countries in two or five months time. Perhaps a goal would be not to panic and try to take things as they come, but this one is kind of moot; I know I can't or at least not better as I already do. Still, here a few things to aim for in 2018. I know those are not SMART goals, but so far this kind of general guidelines seems to have worked best for me.

• read 52 books, at least a third of them from the "1001 books to read before I die"-list, with the usual split between languages and gender and with a slightly more international focus than I would naturally have. This is down from this year's goal, but I expect the books be harder and longer, more (contemporary) classics than in the last two years.

• keep being active, somewhere between pilates, hiking, running and perhaps occasional bouldering or swimming. With as much hiking as possible, it makes me happy.

• buy less clothes. I know, I am repeating myself here, but well ... Who knows, maybe I'll actually manage one day?

• write papers, apply for permanent jobs, write observational proposals. All of those things without panicking and with less self-doubt. Asking for help early and not expecting that others will think me stupid when I do.

• be less of academic dating service. I love this - I love bringing people who can profit from knowing each other together. I love hearing a collaborator talk about a project they are stuck on and suggesting them to talk to another collaborator of mine who would help. There is a certain thrill in seeing a project take off this way. The problem being that others don't do much of that for me. And I'm slightly fed up helping others for fun if they don't help me out of their own accord.

• Embodiment. I know this tells you nothing, but it does tell me something. I've done a few things last year (changing my usual hair cut, getting a few massages, taking care of that one tooth ...) and the one before that (mainly being naked in Iceland) that made me feel good and I want to follow up on them.

• keep meeting friends. This year was full of visitors staying at my place; I got to cook with friends; I got to meet a few amazing people from LJ; I found a dinner buddy for fancy places in Amsterdam; I chatted a ton on WhatsApp; I played board games. Some of these thing will disappear because I'll be too far away from the people who made them possible, but I know that I can find new ones. Not too much, not too little of being social, just find the right balance. I think it really worked this year.

• keep some kind of order and organization. This does include the bullet journal (yes, it works for me!). And this article that twodottedlines linked to and that really resonated with me: Being Organized Is A Gift I Give Myself And Other People. So yeah, remember this.

• work towards more flow moments in my life, especially in my work. This does also mean taking time for certain things, blocking off days for a certain project. It will be harder once I'm teaching, but I have to think back to finishing the paper this summer and how it, well, flowed ... Yeah, I want more of that in my life.

• enjoy travelling.

• enjoy food. (Though this will be harder without my dinner buddy :( There aren't many people willing to invest in starry places - even though those ones are certainly not the only ones with great food. And though the general this particular bullet points means all kinds of food, but the Michelin restaurant visits will definitely be harder to get ...)

• write DW/LJ at least once a week (on average). I know why I fell out of it (just too much to do), but I also know that it's something that I need to stay sane. And also the above about friends? A lot of it would not have been possible without LJ and will not be. So: post. Communicate. Keep this connection to the world alive.

Comments

[ecosopher]

These are good goals! I think just writing stuff down is good, even if you don't achieve it. Just writing it down is the first step. Sometimes it takes a long time to get there.

Bullet journalling is good for me, too, although this year I bought a kind of bullet-journal-regular-diary hybrid, which lists spaces for bullets but has the traditional dates and planner pages (which is what I really missed in my homemade bullet journal).

[pax_athena]

It's actually less the writing down and more thinking about it, setting the priorities. Kind of: what do I want to keep and what do I want to change once I am at the new places? That translates easily into goals for a year at this point of my life.

My bullet journal is actually more of a diary, too - I do make monthly and weekly overview pages and have almost no pure "ticklists", almost exclusively daily to-do lists. But I still find a normal diary to constricting and having a few white pages in between stresses me out while with the bullet journal I just don't make pages for, say, vacation days or conference days that are fully planned out for work anyway.

[sighnomore]

Das klingt doch alles sehr gut :)

[pax_athena]

:) Ich hoffe, so wird es dann auch :)

[sousha]

Thank you for the link on organisation. It was very interesting.

Reading books... *coughs* Last year was my worst concerning reading books for fun. Z.E.R.O. It almost hurts to write that. So instead of deleting my Goodread account like I planned when I logged in a few days ago I joined the challenge. I will be most amazed when I manage to complete it but ten should be doable. Right?!?

And good luck with your plans!

[pax_athena]

So thought I! I read it month ago but keep coming back to it.

And even if you complete just one, it will matter <3 No seriously, I think sometimes there is just too much going on in one's life (and reading between the lines I feel like this is the case for you not just this year); I want to believe that such moments pass <3 Besides, Goodreads is another way to keep in touch, so I selfishly don't want you to go!

[decemberthirty]

You and I should trade attitudes when it comes to buying clothes. I hate shopping for clothes, don't buy things even when I should, always wear the same few things until they're absolutely ruined.... So while you set a goal of buying less clothes, my goal should be to buy more!

These all seem to be very good goals, but I think my favorites are the two near the end to enjoy traveling and enjoy food. It seems so simple, but it really is worth to remind ourselves to not just do things but to enjoy them.

[pax_athena]

Hah, perhaps we should exchange our shopping brains :D
(My problem is though that I wear my things until they literally fall apart, too. It does not stop me from buying more, though - so I end up owning a lot.)

[giallarhorn]

52 books! I only managed to clock in at 2 books, and one was a graphic novel which is kind of depressing, but papers don't read themselves so. But 52!

Yeah, being academic matchmaker is...well. There's a reason why there tends to be entire sections of people who're dedicated to doing just that, or whose jobs include that in the description. It's a largely thankless task that I think prob gets nicer if you have a nice tenure type position, but otherwise it's not a great thing to engage in.

[pax_athena]

Heh, I would go crazy without books. But then again, I hardly watch any series/movies, so this is my way to get my dose of fiction to clean my brain from too much science.

Oh, really? Who are those people and can I have their job? I would actually enjoy doing this for living *if* it came with job security.
It's actually something I learned from my PhD advisor, who is extremely good at bringing the right people together and see them spark off projects; I totally enjoy and that will do it again once I have tenure if ever. Until then I'll try to be a bit ... less. Just because I am annoyed at others, not because it backfired so far.

[giallarhorn]

They tend to be in high performance computing fields at academic institutes actually! It seems to be the gathering point for the sort of people who touch on a lot of different fields without being good at any specific one, for whatever reason.

Yeah, it's a nice thing to see happening. But it's also one of those things that takes time on your front, and the amount of benefits you reap relative to effort isn't...great.