Last year, I came up with a handful of goals that I hoped to accomplish this year. I believe it’s better to focus on a few things at a time rather than spreading myself too thin. That’s been a good way for me to avoid burnout and make steady progress in everything I’ve done. How did I do with my goals? Let’s take a look.
- Learn some unicycling tricks. Nothing too fancy right away, just some stuff that I can probably pick up in a year or less. Riding backwards, juggling while riding (which I did once earlier this year), starting off without leaning against something, etc. With all the progress I made at unicycling this past year, I think I can go even further next year.
I absolutely nailed this. Now I can easily juggle while unicycling and free mount almost every time. Additionally, I can unicycle with my eyes shut, free mount with my eyes shut, solve my Rubik’s Cube, and do the YMCA and Macarena. I’m still working on riding backwards but I can do it fairly easily for short distances. Daily practice has paid off tremendously and I look forward to having even more fun while continuing to improve. - Stick to a solid, consistent workout routine. Since I first joined a gym back in 2014, my workouts have been all over the place. Sometimes I’ll go weeks without exercising, other times I’ll not miss a workout for months, and still other times I’ll just do warm up sets and call it a day. My strength has varied dramatically as a result and I never seem to stay at one level of strength for very long before rising or falling to another level. Next year, I hope to hit the gym regularly and stick to a good workout program so I can get my strength where I’d like it to be.
This didn’t happen. I went to my gym fairly regularly until it closed down in the spring. I’m pretty sure it opened back up a few months ago but I haven’t been back since. My routines have changed dramatically and I’ve fallen out of the habit of going to the gym. Even though I haven’t stuck to a consistent workout regimen, I’ve juggled and unicycled every day this year, played with my rola bola each day since I got it for my birthday back in early autumn, and done chinups almost every day. That’s all kept me in pretty good shape and given me plenty of opportunities to move around rather than staying totally sedentary in my free time. Maybe next year I’ll be able to get my strength training routine down pat. - Start working on my humanitarian plan. I talked about this in a recent post, so I won’t spend too much time on it here. Since I think about it a lot, I might as well try some things out and see what happens. Maybe it will work out in practice similarly to how it looks in my head, or maybe I’ll need to do a lot of things differently. Either way, I’ll at least be moving toward one of my biggest life goals and helping people out along the way.
Another one that didn’t happen. I kept to myself for much of the first half of this year and was hardly even helping myself during that time. I have done more to help people in the past few months, though not as I have in mind with my humanitarian plan. However, I did learn a lot this year about helping people: certain methods work well for some people but not others, those who don’t want help won’t benefit from it, listening without judgment or attempting to solve problems is often the best way to help someone, and I can help people much more effectively now that I’m in a much better space (more on that in the next point). Maybe I had to learn those lessons before embarking on any major ventures. Either way, I look forward to seeing what opportunities I come across next year to move toward my bigger plans. - Continue healing. I worked through a lot of difficult emotional stuff this year. The more I learn about myself, the more stuff I find to heal. Whether or not this ends up being a lifelong process, it will probably take me several more years to discover and heal everything that comes up. Fortunately I have several wonderful friends who regularly help me on this journey, so I’m ready to keep going and see where it takes me next.
Of all the goals I had for this year, this is the one I’m most grateful for having accomplished. While I’ve still got a long way to go, I made more progress in emotional healing this year than any other year of my life. I lost so much in 2020 and was in pain for a long, long time. I think I had to go through all that in order to get where I am now. It wasn’t until the pain became overwhelming that I finally started working through my emotions. Once I got through the worst emotions that came from events of this year, I started addressing other, more deep-seated issues. With enough determination and time, I’m confident that I can clear out all of the deeper issues that have plagued me for decades. Given how wonderful and free I feel at this point, I can’t even imagine how much better I’ll feel after several more years of this. I’m excited to see what that looks like for me.