As a new year is approaching, I am musing over my goals. I don’t like to make resolutions, but I am all about setting goals. In this post, I want to talk about the different goals I want to set for next year. They will be moderately lofty goals, but with the realization that I may not fulfill all of them–or any. I will start with the ones that are the most pressing on my mind and then move mey way through the rest.
1. The novel. As in writing it. I have fallen off since my sleep was greatly disrupted last weekend, and I want to be get back to it. My inertia is bad right now along with my depression. I can barely muster the energy to do anything. I was talking to K today, and we were commiserating about being depressed. It’s been a hard almost-year, and we were incredulous about *waves at the world around me*.
I want to get a rough draft done by April 1st of the new year. Ideally, I would keep up with 2,000 words a day until I get it done. My biggest problem is that I tend to get bogged down in the middle of writing AND that I get stuck editing as I write. I have a hard time just letting shit be shit, but I know that’s how shit gets turned into diamonds. (Well, no, it’s not, but I can’t be fucked to change that metaphor.)
I do have the novemoir (what I’m calling it for now) well in hand–in my mind. Meaning, I have it sketched out and some of it written in my brain. I get too lost in the sauce as I’m putting it down to paper, and I have to try to let that be what it is.
2. A year of refinement. Taiji and Bagua are a big part of my life, obviously. I’ve been working hard on the Double Fan Form, and I’m so close to finishing it. But, I’ve noticed that I already have things to refine in it, which I’ve done a little of, but I’m resisting it until I’ve finished teaching the form to myself. I thought I’d be done with it by now because no other form has taken me more than three months to teach myself. This one, we’re going on seven months with one month break for when I got my triple shots. So, six months I’ve been working on this, and it has felt at times that I would never finish it. I am three postures away from being done (maybe four?), and I can barely believe it’s true.
I had thought about other weapon forms I wanted to teach myself, but then I realized that I needed to focus on refinement because my forms are sloppy. Not just weapon forms, but hands only forms that are, well, not as tight as I’d like them to be. And, I would like to add mud-stepping to the Swimming Dragon Form (Bagua). That’s not a new form, mind, but it’s new in terms of walking in a different way. A much harder way.
I do want to check in around October or November to see if I’m ready to take on a new weapon form. I have a hunch I will be, and I need to take some time to figure out what it’s going to be. I have a few in mind, but I don’t know what I’ll be in the mood for at that time. I have wanted to learn the Guandao for quite some time, but there are no good videos for teaching it. It’s also not Taiji or Bagua, so it’s in a martial art that I don’t practice. That’s not an issue as it came be adapted to Taiji (as my teacher’s teacher has done. Or rather, he knows/created a Guandao Form. I’m not sure if he made it Taiji or not).
I have wanted to learn it for some time because I saw one of my teacher’s classmates demonstrated it at the school’s demo ages ago. It has stuck in my mind ever since. The thing is, there are a lot of forms to learn. I’m not sure I want to put in the work with this one, especially after it took me some time to find a good Double Fan Form that I could adapt for my purposes. I would also like to do a Double Sword Form, but I cannot find a good video of that one, either. I had seen one in one of my previous deep dives, but I cannot find it again. If I do, then that will be the one I want to teach myself. Otherwise, I don’t knwo what I’ll do because I cannot find what I’m looking for.
3. Decluttering. My house is a mess. It’s always been such, but it’s gotten worse since my medical crisis. Why? Honestly, because my parents no longer come back to visit. Yes, I need external pressure to get shit done. Now, I have a spiral of shame going on because once I think about doing one thing with the house, it reminds me of another thing I need to do. And another. And yet another. There are so many things I haven’t done, and even when I get one crossed off the list, there are half a dozen other ones to take its place.
Shame is a big reason I haven’t tackled the clutter and other household things I need to do. It makes things worse, obviously, but it’s hard to move past it. I do want to get rid of at least half of the stuff in the house that I don’t need to hold onto. I might make it a goal to fill the garbage container every week and recycle container every other week. That’s a low-pressure way of getting rid of shit, and I think even I can manage it.
Side note: I have a neighbor who brings in my trash cans every week, which is really sweet of him. In addition, he came by to help out with one other thing without any prompting. I have a hunch it has to do with my medical crisis, but for whatever reason, I am appreciative of the help.
I need to work on the house. But that’s warring with my need not to feel shame. *Sigh*. I know why my brain is like this, but I often feel like it’s impossible to change my mindset. There’s one way I could maybe make that happen, but that’s another number for another post.