2018 Review (Entry 20)

[geowench]

 

WOW, so 2018 was an extraordinary year for me, easily the most significant of my adult life.  From this outside nothing has changed, most people that I interact with have absolutely no idea that my whole life has been turned inside out and that this year I got my heart’s desire … I have been reunited with my brother.  Actually my heart’s desire was to be reunited with my mother and my brother, but learning about her and how much she missed me and how she told my brother, literally on her deathbed, to find me … well, it’s far more than I ever hoped for.  Obviously this dwarfs everything else that has or has not happened in 2018, to the point that it almost seems ridiculous to reflect on what I did or did not accomplish in 2018 or how the year went.  Still, I am going to try and to do just that, so here we go.

 

I had three goals for 2018:

 

1.     1. Live in the present and try to enjoy it.  (Instead of, oh, life will really start in August when we go to Prague.)

For the most part, I feel I did pretty well with this, especially once it became clear that we might not go to Prague at all … and indeed so far we haven’t (although we are still hopeful about 2019 and still waiting to hear if our visas are approved).  However, there is nothing measureable about this goal, so I can’t really say for sure how I did.

 

2.       2. Pilates or yoga 50x this year.  (Originally was 100, but downgraded to 50.)

I did 70 workouts this year – mostly short ab (and some arm) work workouts on youtube, so not really pilates or yoga, but the implicit goal was to improve core strength, and I have definitely done this.  Counting the workouts was really helpful and I will continue to use this in 2019.  The overall goal was to improve my health, and I am proud that I have accomplished that in 2018 – I feel much stronger both physically and emotionally than I did this time last year.  A year ago, I literally thought I might die in the next few years, I felt so poorly.  Now I feel empowered to continue to work on improving my health.

 

3.      3. Write more; specifically 

a.          50 online journal entries

HAHAHAHAHA not even close (this is entry 20 for the year).  I was expecting to write every week, but it was more like once a month.

b.         3 completed pieces of any kind (academic, essay, chapter of a book, etc.)

Yes, I did this!  I’m working on a sort of memoir (that I don’t actually expect to be published), and completed four, I think essays for it.  I also gave two OAS talks which required me to put together two PP presentations, so I think those should count.  And at work, or course, I completed many many pieces of curriculum, including a complete curriculum for two separate books.

c.          Continue paper journal, 2-3 entries a week

I did really well with this until after we got back from Japan and then it sort of fell off. 

 

So even though I fell considerably short for two of my three writing goals, I’m actually considering it an overall success because I have gotten back into writing again.  I even managed to complete some pieces and I actually started several more things, so go me.  On another creative level, I made some jewelry for the first time in years, and I also completed two sewing projects, which is very gratifying.  And I had an unwritten goal to read 75 books, and I actually read about 100.  I say about because the total is 112, but 10 or 12 of those are single Sherlock Homes stories, so the total is artificially inflated.

 

Overall, I am just in a much better place than I was this time last year – my will to live has been greatly diminished for the past two years or so, due largely to my poor health, but also not knowing what the hell to do with myself post PhD.  I feel like I’ve been given a huge reset this year, and I am more grateful than words can say.