New Year, New Goals: 2019 Edition
If You Write It, They Will Come
2019 will mark the second consecutive year that I write my goals for myself in a word processor (to later publish on the internet) versus in my Joe Jonas notebook. It feels both like a betrayal and like growing up.
2018 saw a lot of changes, some planned (traveling in South America for eight months), some unplanned (backpacking across New Zealand with my sister, becoming a master hitchhiker, falling in love, living in Buenos Aires for three months). I knew that changing so much of my life—my job, my surroundings, my daily activities—would be a wonderful and worthwhile adventure. I didn’t know I’d like it so much that I’d want to continue doing it for another year.
As I started thinking about what I want my goals for 2019 to be, I played around with different frameworks. Should I split them up between maintain and improve goals? Personal goals versus goals about the world? New versus old? Divide them by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?
I ended up writing five meta goals and then a few specific goals beneath them. My own little 2019 framework. Here goes:
Keep travel a part of my life.
1. Live in Buenos Aires (and maybe another city later in the year—CDMX?) with a traveler’s perspective. How? Explore new restaurants, theaters, museums, neighborhoods; don’t get complacent, do make new friends with locals and other travelers there.
2. Get back out on the road. How? Spend at least three months of the year backpacking / seeing new places.
Stay well rounded.
3. Be confident about my fluency in Spanish and continue to improve it.1 How? Continue to communicate in Spanish with potential clients, read one long article or short story in Spanish/week, get back to regularly writing in Spanish—journal entries, essays, notes to Diego—at least an hour a week.
4. Keep my reading up. How? Read at least three books/month, and try to have one of them be something other than a novel.
5. Maintain a healthy level of normal activity. How? Hit 10,000 steps/day or above for all of 2019. Any extra working out is great.
6. Get and stay outside. How? Be outside for minimum of 15 minutes every day and never fall into vitamin D deficiency again!
Write.
7. Keep writing my blog. How? Write a minimum of 2,000 words/month in blog posts.
8. Keep writing for others. How? Get at least one piece of writing published under my name in some kind of publication in 2019, and get paid for at least three other pieces of writing.
Money, money, money (must be funny / in a rich man’s world).
9. Support my life in Buenos Aires by writing and editing, and make enough to supplement the $5,000 I have saved for travel later in 2019. How? Pull in $800/month with freelancing work and continue to live by my BsAs budget.
10. Make sure I have enough money to move back to the States when/if the time comes. How? Do not further touch that fund.
11. Make giving money to people and causes I care about a real part of my life. How? Donate 10% of my income. Even if it feels harder now that I have less. If I get in the habit of doing it now, one day when I have more, it’ll be easier to continue.
Invest in my communities & relationships.
12. Stay in touch with my family and, in the healthy relationships, be there with and for them however I can while away. In the unhealthy ones, don’t get hung up on them. How? Weekly phone calls, regular video chats, and planning some family time for next year (May or December).
13. Stay in touch with my friends while I’m away. How? Build & execute a better birthday-remembering/acknowledging process, send regular missives to those I really care about. Be planful about this because that works for me.
14. Grow my girl gang in Buenos Aires for as long as I’m there. How? Host events at least weekly and work on at least three new creative projects for ourselves or for clients. Enjoy it and them.
15. Continue to grow in my relationship with Diego. How? Keep doing what we’re doing—have fun, communicate well, show our love for each other in all the ways that we’re inspired to do—and be able to start planning (and then executing on!) a big trip together.
En Fin
There we are. Technically, more goals than last year. Much of my 2018 was about self-exploration, and I figured out a little more clearly what mattered to me: time and energy to explore, reading and writing and editing, seeing new things and meeting new people, and investing in my relationships. And I learned a lot about budgeting and money management while on the road and living abroad.
I want my goals for 2019 to be ambitious but not impossible. I’m not going to promise myself I’ll finally train for a half marathon or write a novel. I’m going to invest in myself, my passions, and my relationships and continue to embrace the unknown, the new, and the scary. It’s the only way.
Cheers to a new year of living and loving!
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