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Jan. 24th, 2019 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eafmHmm. I've been thinking about how much fun I had with the reading challenge, and how easy it was to read for hours a day when I had a self-directed if arbitrary goal -- and comparing that to how easy it is to let myself get completely caught up in the drudgery of housework and adulting and homeschool-related-driving and let all my passions and joys and hobbies fall to the wayside when I don't have any deadlines or concrete, time-sensitive goals driving me.
I seem to recall there was a challenge that went around LJ, years ago, in which people set themselves NaNoWriMo style goals each month. I wonder if I want to do something like that.
Some of the things I enjoy doing a/o want to do more of:
walking (casual and walking tours)
kayaking and other boating
baking and cooking (especially getting back to sourdough and sauerkraut)
writing
painting
reading
going to museums
going to ecology centers for things like birdwatching
jewelry making and similar crafting -- oh, and crocheting
making music
listening to live music
attending lectures
gardening
going dancing
I've also finally recovered enough from my years at the school that I want to get involved in some sort of volunteering or community organizing again. The racial justice group just isn't going anywhere. The woman who started it doesn't seem to be familiar with or interested in the sort of steady effort required for community groups to get off the ground, and she hasn't even gotten around to the few lowkey commitments she did make (like restarting the FB group to build online community because it's hard to get homeschool parents to show up in person for things that aren't activities for their kids). If we weren't about to graduate from the homeschool community as of the end of this year, I'd offer to take the group over entirely but what it really needs is a couple parents of 7 or 8 year olds who are committed to the community for years to come.
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ETA: On the concrete goals -- I agree with the zen habits guy and others who emphasize the benefits of building habits rather than setting goals. But for the list above, only a handful lend themselves to habit. I don't want to paint every day, for example, but over the course of the year I'd like to have added a dozen or so details to the house -- Polish flowers in the hallway, mary poppins and a Chinese dragon above the houses on the mural, some twisted branches in among the poems on the wall by Sarah's room... I'll think a little about whether a goal is what I want, or a different sort of habit...
I seem to recall there was a challenge that went around LJ, years ago, in which people set themselves NaNoWriMo style goals each month. I wonder if I want to do something like that.
Some of the things I enjoy doing a/o want to do more of:
walking (casual and walking tours)
kayaking and other boating
baking and cooking (especially getting back to sourdough and sauerkraut)
writing
painting
reading
going to museums
going to ecology centers for things like birdwatching
jewelry making and similar crafting -- oh, and crocheting
making music
listening to live music
attending lectures
gardening
going dancing
I've also finally recovered enough from my years at the school that I want to get involved in some sort of volunteering or community organizing again. The racial justice group just isn't going anywhere. The woman who started it doesn't seem to be familiar with or interested in the sort of steady effort required for community groups to get off the ground, and she hasn't even gotten around to the few lowkey commitments she did make (like restarting the FB group to build online community because it's hard to get homeschool parents to show up in person for things that aren't activities for their kids). If we weren't about to graduate from the homeschool community as of the end of this year, I'd offer to take the group over entirely but what it really needs is a couple parents of 7 or 8 year olds who are committed to the community for years to come.
------------------
ETA: On the concrete goals -- I agree with the zen habits guy and others who emphasize the benefits of building habits rather than setting goals. But for the list above, only a handful lend themselves to habit. I don't want to paint every day, for example, but over the course of the year I'd like to have added a dozen or so details to the house -- Polish flowers in the hallway, mary poppins and a Chinese dragon above the houses on the mural, some twisted branches in among the poems on the wall by Sarah's room... I'll think a little about whether a goal is what I want, or a different sort of habit...
