As I do toward the end of every year, it’s time to set some goals for next year. After the insane mess that was 2022, I’m keeping it simple in 2023. If I have only a few goals and I accomplish all of them, I’ll feel great, start looking for other things to work on, and end up easily accomplishing more than I set out to do. I’d much rather do that than bite off more than I can chew, fail at several of my goals, and set myself back in many ways. With all that said, here are my goals for 2023.
- Stretch every day. This was a goal I set for this year but it didn’t last longer than a few months. I benefited greatly from doing it, especially when I started stretching my wrists as part of my preventative self-care and recovery for juggling. Next year, I plan to do at least some stretching each day.
- Get my book ready for editing. After losing my dog Sawyer, I lost a huge amount of will to do almost anything, including work on my book. The emotional pain I’ve felt since then along with the remaining cruelty in the world has also made me question what value a book on communication could have. As a result, I still have a lot of work to do before it’s ready to publish. If I write a little bit every day throughout 2023, I think it will be ready for the final edits before that year ends. That seems like a much more attainable goal for me at this point than trying to get it published sometime in the next twelve months. I hope I can stick to it and make it happen.
- Heal my deep-seated trauma. I’ve worked through a lot of pain over the past few years. Clearing out the stuff that’s closer to the surface has vastly improved my mental health but I still have a lot of deep issues to address. This year, I started digging real deep. Difficult as that was, it’s been hugely beneficial. I realized more than ever before how much that deep pain has been holding me back and making me do things I’d rather not as well as preventing me from things I’d rather do. It’s time for me to heal all the deep-seated trauma that has been festering my whole life and making everything worse for me. If I can’t get through it all in the remains of 2022, I’ll do what it takes to clear it in 2023.