They're Not Resolutions - They're Aspirations

Filed Under: Personal

Many keyboards are worn down by the annual flurry of conversation about New Year’s Resolutions - whether they work, how to do them properly, and so on. It’s tiresome. I’ve always seen the beginning of a year as a good opportunity for a kind of reset, some time for reflection on and reappraisal of priorities. Following that, a sense of optimism and excitement about what is to come.

Over my winter Holiday, which was especially long, I made the vague decision to stay in Edinburgh, or at least stay with Rockstar Games, for the next few years. I’ve been here 3.5 years and the whole time I’ve viewed my presence as kinda temporary. 2019 was especially indecisive should-I-stay-or-should-I-go at some points, so it’s nice to now have a sense of certainty about what I want to do with the future.

Here’s some resolution-type things. They start off as vague ideals, then I force myself to refine them into clear specifications for achievable goals.

1. Write more. Write a bit every day. Therefore, write 100 words a day. (These are my 100 words for today!) I manage to achieve this on days when I write blog posts, which the 100-word-target has motivated me to do more of, but otherwise I keep missing it. So I might downgrade it to a 50-word target, because the original intent was to motivate me to literally just open up a document and add a little bit more to it every day.
2. Hobby every day. Just do the smallest measurable amount every day. I’ve already written about my lofty hobby goals for 2020.
3. Learn Scottish Gaelic. Do Duolingo every day. I rather like Duolingo, but I’d be kidding myself if I thought it was enough to pick up enough Gaelic to speak it fluently. I will look into more hardcore learning methods.
4. Finish the Warcry Card Creator. To this end, plunk 5 minutes of work into it every day.
5. Keep up my very basic exercise regime. To get started, I do 20 squats every day. On lazy days I can just leave it there, but on energetic days once I get started I will work through the whole suite. It’s definitely paying off, getting easier to do and improving my body shape, so it might be time to find some more exercises to add to the routine.
6. Play videogames more. Last year I barely played videogames at all because I just hobbied a whole bunch. Play a videogame for 15 minutes per day. (I suck at this one. Why is it so hard?)
7. Read more books. Read 5 pages every day.
8. Go swimming. Once. This is a matter of overcoming a fear of being publicly mostly-naked that has prevented me from enjoying swimming, one of my favourite forms of exercise, for like 10 years. I want to punt that fear right into the bin where it belongs.

Hitting all these targets in a day isn’t easy, even though they’re all quite small. I suspect I need to build a daily routine that gets me through them all.

What are your ‘New Year’s Incredibly Specific Targets’?