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[Vector]

Every year I think of twelve avenues of focus that I want to use to facilitate growth. These can be New Year's Resolutions; they can be bucket list items you're almost ready to cross off; they can be career-related; personal; profound; small; pointless; silly.

I'll put an example in my next post, but this is how it works:
- Spend some time thinking of 12 things you want to attempt in 2023.
-----> In practice it helps to have your goals be concrete enough to determine whether you have succeeded.
-----> Think carefully about whether your goals are, at the least, small enough to start working on.
- Write your 12 things in a list format in this thread.
- Post updates as you work on and complete goals.

If you wanna do a fractional-Behemoth, that is between 1 and 12 goals you intend to regularly check in on, that's also fine. Done is better than perfect. More importantly, everyone has bumps and surprises in their life. There are some things that we will never achieve, and that's okay. The goal is to struggle, together, for a year.

You can see last year's thread here.

[Vector]

*inhale* HOLY SHIT I'M OFFICIALLY MIDDLE-AGED! Here's last year's post:

Spoiler: Commentary by 2023 Vector (click to show/hide)

I want to push myself this year. I haven't been trying that hard since 2020 hit for obvious reasons, and I'm kind of seeing the writing on the wall. The last of my youth, which I had been saving to enjoy, was eaten by the pandemic. I'll be 33. Time to pull myself together.

The year's overarching theme is to stop stalling.


Behemoths

1. Pass my qualifying exam and finish my master's degree.
2. Study for and attempt the JLPT N1.
3. Apply to 8 opportunities which I don't think I'm going to get.
4. Make 5 decisions that feel like significant risks.


5. Earn my driver's license.
6. Try to navigate the queer dating scene.
7. Clothing/personal appearance update. The present situation is ... bad. Most of my stuff is both ugly and moth-eaten.
8. Electronic device repair/upgrade. I stopped doing normal maintenance in 2020 and am now very behind.
9. Work on my health.
- Minimize being alone when eating at restaurants, having desserts, and drinking.
- Join a dojo, any dojo. Participate in moderation. Don't let them goad me into joining their teams, and don't quit like usual when they try it.
- Practice reaching out to others when I'm feeling upset. Continue attending therapy.


10. Keep tithing 10% and organizing/working on community projects.
11. Participate in the Hot Fresh Reading Challenge.
12. Enjoy the seasons and become anchored in time.
- Full moon teas
- Cleaning the house for the solstices
- Go to some music, plays, and that kind of thing
- Extending holiday wishes to people instead of just pretending holidays don't exist
- Enjoy the entire month of ~June~ instead of pretending it doesn't exist and I don't care about it.


There's a few more things that I really want to do but I'm not stupid enough to look at the present list and bump it to thirteen.

If I make outstanding progress I'll add some other things, like fixing up my room, making a website to publish creative projects, trying long-term pickling/brewing projects, beekeeping, finally running a Coyote and Crow table, whatever. Right now I just need to turn my life into slightly less of a clusterfuck.

I think I'm going to need more time to figure out a full list. I know that these four points are on it:

1. Try for 8 - 12 opportunities that seem uncertain.
2. Earn my driver's license.
3. Participate in the Hot Fresh Reading Challenge.
4. Participate in and document Full Moon Teas throughout 2024.

Looking at last year's goals, a few of the points can be folded into some large projects that I'm working on:
- Unfucking my life post-pandemic, post-no longer being an unstable 20-something, and post-escaping my family. Time to be a real adult.
- Doing the "buying stuff and crying about hair" part of my gender transition.
- "Grad" "school." Just... grad school.

There's some categories of my life that I've never been able to make real progress with--or that are suddenly more relevant in this chapter of my life--that I really want to have some firm growth on before 35:
- Publications, speaking at and attending conferences, learning the responsibilities and habits of a public intellectual (or whatever).
- Working on relationships, whether friendship, found-familial, romantic, or otherwise. There's a kind of "learning how to live life as an uncloseted gay" thing that I need to learn how to do.
- Learn more about how to make and appreciate artwork in various mediums. This is my gift to myself for surviving.

I do need to continue working on my health but I'm not sure about keeping it as a Behemoth. My physical health is mostly "fine" now except for all of the usual ramifications of having had uncertain healthcare access due to being trans, and the added burden of side effects from pretty severe PTSD.

So I'm going through 5 or 6 medical specialists I've been referred to right now trying to fix things, making sure I get enough sleep, improving my diet, and a bunch of stuff like that. I paid for a martial arts course this quarter but haven't attended it at all while I got onboarding paperwork and my HRT sorted out. I guess that's the next step.

I'll be back in a month-ish to check in on Behemoths 1 through 4 and see if it's gotten any easier to tease proper Behemoths out of those other projects.