What are your New Years intentions/resolutions? Why have you settled on them?
I think we are all looking to 2021 as a bright spot after the last year has disrupted normal life for basically everyone. Is there anything you learned, or discovered about yourself, or found in the your lockdown routine that you wish to carry forward? Perhaps something that you intend to leave in the "old" way of the world? I'll share my reflections below.
This year has given me ample opportunity to reflect on the things that are valuable to me, particularly because of how much time I spent doing nothing. That isn't to say I wasted my time --- I moved to a across the US, started a new job working full time, spent 10 months of the year researching and writing my Master's thesis and subsequently defending, and started planning a wedding. It was a hectic year, and the downtime was critical.
All of this culminates to the last few weeks, where I have gained tremendous clarity in two places. One, I was gifted this modern and straightforward Bible and another book about craftsmanship. I have found myself reading little sections of both each day. This is a practice I aim to continue through the New Year:
- Reading something in a book, no matter how much or how little, and reflecting on it.
The second item of clarity is that I really miss playing music. So,
- I have decided to learn the piano.
I was deeply steeped in concert music during high school, where my school's band played in national showcases and competitions. I practiced on average around 4-6 hours each day. I let that practice go in college, and am now keen to rekindle it. It helps that during the holiday season I am with my parents, who have an upright piano (that no one ever plays), so I can practice a bit before buying a keyboard of my own.
So, with these intentions, I am not seeking to make radical changes in my life, but rather to spend 30-60 minutes on something that is deeply meaningful to me.
For those that struggle with resolutions, CGP Grey put out an awesome video where he suggests going by themes rather than specific resolution. While I don't personally set new years resolutions, I found the arguments he makes of doing themes over resolutions very compelling.
Thanks for posting this! I've decided to follow CGPGrey's advice, and go with a themed year instead of a list of resolutions. Since a year is a lot of time, I've decided to pick one overarching theme for whole 2021, and split it into four themed quarters.
The general theme for this year is "Foundation" - as in, rebuilding the foundations for the rest of my life. I've finally reached a certain level of stability - emotional, occupational, financial - where I no longer feel I'm just running around like a headless chicken. With the benefit of experience, it's the right moment to fix the major issues I consider to be interfering with me being happy and achieving my goals.
The more specific theme for Q1 2021 is "Focus". Over the past years, I've managed to sort through various persistent issues I've been coping with, and concluded that their common theme is a lack of reliable, sustained focus - both on doing small tasks and with tracking larger commitments. So, over the next three months, I'll be taking this problem head-on, trying to replace my haphazard coping strategies with something more refined and hopefully more effective.
As for the rest of the year, I haven't decided yet - I'll be picking up a quarter theme depending on the current needs. I know I want to do a "Health" theme, and this will be either Q2 or Q3, as I want to take advantage of warmer weather.
I did this in 2020, and I can definitely say it worked. I'm going for a new theme in 2021. :)
One flip side to this is that as with last year, I'm having trouble deciding on a theme. There's a lot of stuff I want to get to and I'm trying to draw the lessons i can from this previous one, namely that all my successful projects were all driven by motivation, and something that I truly don't enjoy just won't get done.
So I'm trying to remove all the things I'm definitely motivated for from the equation. My last year was the "year of the body" and i do feel i came out of it with overall, a better body. I lost weight, significantly gained in muscles and gained a variety of physical skills which I'm very happy about.
I'm thinking about having a "year of the mind" but that is far too abstract. I also know I want to dedicate a significant portion of my year to skating, but that won't be the theme of it either. So ...
Maybe the "year of rest". I would like to truly improve my sleep, which is something I've been slowly inching towards anyway. And I would also like to better manage my rest time. There's a reason I'm writing this at 5am, after all...
Figure out once and for all where I stand on the "parenthood" situation. As I've gotten older, the desire to have kids has fallen sharply. Where once, I thought it was a foregone conclusion that I would have at least one child, I'm now at this point where I'm almost completely against it. As I've gotten older, I've continually questioned if being a parent is something I actually want or if I wanted it because "that's just what you're supposed to want".
Normally, this wouldn't be THAT big of a deal but I've been in a long term relationship(12 years) with a wonderful woman who is fully expecting marriage and at least one child.
We had put it off because we just weren't in a position to do so but now we're both in our early 30s and she's definitely concerned about her biological clock. If I decide that I don't want children, it will be the end of the relationship as she's admitted to me in the past that she would resent me for my decision.
Continue to work on my physical health. At my heaviest, I was approaching 300lbs. I never looked like it because I have fairly wide shouldered, broad build. I certainly didn't LOOK 300 and most people would've guessed me to be around 260, MAAAAAYBE 270.
But hitting 298 on the scale prompted me to start working on it and I'm currently about 255lbs, after a year of intermittent fasting and light, but inconsistent exercise. I definitely need to improve on the eating and exercising but there's been some improvement. Clothes are fitting better, I'm almost out of XXL and back into XL. I have to wear a belt with every pair of shorts I own.
Actually focus and work on my mental health. There's a LOT of change that's going to have to go into this but for the first time in my life, I'm finding myself actually wanting to focus and improve my mental health. This will include both points 1 and 2, a few other things, and, probably most importantly, getting together with a therapist and seeing if that's something I can benefit from.
Learn an art of some kind. I've never been a big art kind of guy but the idea of playing an instrument or being able to draw/sketch is something that I've always found interesting. I just didn't have the time and/or motivation to really dedicate to it. This year, I intend to force myself to find the time and give those things a chance. I used to sketch Pokemon when I was in elementary school so I know the interest isn't entirely fleeting.
Work on a language. I've always wanted to become bi or even trilingual and living in Texas, as a 911 dispatcher, Spanish could almost considered to be a necessity. Alas, when I was high school and forced to take it by my mother, I had no interest in learning it and didn't put forth the necessary work. Now that I'm older, and actually want to learn, I must find the time and dedicate to it.
If you're into physical art, give juggling a shot! It's easy to get into and requires fairly low commitment (25 bucks for 3 high quality juggling balls and a few hours of your time in chunks of maybe 15 mins per day) at first, and if you get bored you can stop and you'll still have learned a new skill ;)
I hate how true that is about myself. I had the opportunity to learn both French and German and was okay but let them go and didn't put in the effort I should have. I guess that's how it is for a lot of us and now it's a lot more effort than I would have been at the time.
I'd like to be kinder. I'd like to be more open, and more honest. I'd like to be more self-assured.
Over the past year, I've watched myself become more jaded, more arrogant, more presumptuous, more judgmental, and more passive-aggressive for seemingly no reason. One might even say more toxic. I do not like this. I've always thought of myself as thoughtful, and ultimately relatively easygoing—principled, certainly, but not overbearingly so. Why the change in temperament? The quarantine has thrown me rather off-balance, but it would be irresponsible to place the blame on external factors alone. I think I've become a bit too taken with myself, and haven't made an effort to keep things real by interacting in meaningful ways with the people who matter to me.
A certain amount of this has been due to my spending extra time on the internet, social media, and my phone in general; things that tire me out before I've even started my day. The surreality of the hyper-online experience naturally reflects back onto my perception of myself, making me excessively reliant on the opinions of people I don't actually care for. On what is effectively a performative basis, I've allowed myself to be manipulated by a few toxic discourses that, truthfully, are in poor standing with my ideals. I've become disconnected from some of the things that make me me, and have reacted with far too much negativity.
I have no interest in exhibiting such behavior any further; I would much rather be a source of warmth to the people around me. I enjoy helping people, creating things, and solving problems, not only for altruistic reasons but because doing so makes me feel more secure in myself, and just happier. I think that being more consciously aware of my attitude in this regard will be helpful in the long run.
I'm going to add one more thing to this resolution: I'd like to "get caught staring" just a bit more. A special thank you to @scrambo for introducing this detailed, amusing, and extraordinary (if occasionally prurient) blog to me. That is, I'd like to smile more, and make a better effort in general to season my quotidian social interactions with more engaging body language, for no reason other than that being warm or gracious in front of other people actually does make me weirdly happy. I'm surprised I haven't picked up on it until just now, but I'd be willing to bet that my semi-recent tendency to express consistent indifference toward the world in my body language (for reasons that are unclear to me) correlates rather closely with a perception of isolation from it. Hopefully this realization will be useful too.
I'm glad my little link had an effect out there in that wide world :) It's already telling that you are aware enough to notice this change in yourself. I think with the right mindset and enough time to allow for changes you should certainly see good results!
I have a very simple advice: if you anticipate a hard/stressful/sensitive interaction, take a long deep breath before every time you talk. This gives time and oxygen to the brain, and you end up choosing a better answer almost every time. Your tone of voice will also change, becoming more thoughtful and relaxed. Good luck :)
Since I won’t join a gym in these trying times, I ordered a bunch of weights and weightlifting parafernalia and I’m also reading Bigger, Leaner, Stronger.
Apparently, growing muscles is a lot more complex than I thought, but I’m not looking to become a perfect Adonis. I do wanna look good, but also have more energy and mental well being in all my activities. My doctor agrees with me that I explored enough anxiety medications and right now physical exercise is my best bet.
I’m approaching an age in which my ridiculous weakness can become problematic from a health standpoint. I mean, I was never able to perform one correct push-up, not even as a teenager. That’s kinda demoralizing.
I suppose I can sum up by saying I’d like to be able to perform 200 push-ups in a row at some point in the next year.
Good luck to you!
Edit for a bad joke: you'll have to change your username from mrbig to mrhuge when you're done with this year
Hahaha... let’s just say I’m already one kind of huge, which I intend convert into another kind of huge.
Bigger, Leaner, Stronger is a pretty good book, I remember reading it 5-6 years ago when I started getting serious about getting fit. It is a easy way to get a good introduction into nutrition and different aspects of exercise.
Two things, I find that are most important is discipline and keeping an eye on your nutrition. Be mindful of what you eat and have an approximate goal of how much of carbs/fats/proteins you want to consume. Don't try to be too strict with it, but having an idea of what you should eat and what you are eating, will help you quite a bit. I personally think, trying to fit to a diet too strictly, causes a negative feedback everytime you miss any targets.
Set a schedule for your workout/exercise sessions and try to stick to it. As you progress make sure your routine evolves with you. This also includes rest days, which are important for your body too :)
of course, all of the above are things I find which personally works for me. Everyone is different and the key is finding what works for you!
Best of luck on your journey towards getting healthier! :)
Thanks!
Right now my only difficulty is with an excess of information. I feel that I’ll simply forget a lot of it.
Don't get too caught up on the details.
Growing muscle can be complex if you are into competitions, but most of the time what matters is consistency.
For us mere mortals, just doing the work and pushing ourselves is all we have to worry about. Looking for the perfect routine and exercises is a waste of time and energy.
Good luck!
Thanks that’s really helpful.
A book I was really impressed with when I was doing weightlifting was Starting Strength (Rippetoe). It comprehensively covers several key barbell exercises (including the common ones like bench press and deadlift), but does so by bringing physics and anatomy to bear, which I really liked. I recommend it, though you'd probably need to invest even more money in equipment to get things like a squat rack and a bench press bench. Because of this book, I've been turned off of using strength equipment that isn't free weights, i.e. stuff that uses cables, cords, levers, rails.
I actually ordered a bench press bench :)
I've watched the video @gco recommends, and I'd recommend it as well. In that format, I have two themes for my resolution:
Health - Mostly paying more attention to my diet and making an effort to be more active in my lifestyle. I'd like to make some lifestyle changes when it comes to what I eat, how much of it I eat, and why I eat it. I went vegetarian last year and noticed many benefits. This year, I'd like to make similar changes into not eating things because I need the dopamine hit (junk food, sweets, etc) and eating because I like how it makes me feel in the long run, i.e. impacting my sleep patterns, energy levels throughout the day, etc. I'll probably cut alcohol, though whether or not I go completely sober depends on some social elements. It's a theme, I'll see how I feel!
Career - I have been unemployed for 2 years in February. I am not young, but I am too young to retire. I need a job, and I'd like to find one this coming year. I quit my last one due to moral disagreements stemming from policy decision that led to multiple injuries. I fear I may have been blacklisted, and I hope that the past 2 years studying programming have hopefully been enough to jump tracks, we'll see.
Once-a-year for resolutions is not often enough.
"Agile" is a business model mainly applied to software development; if you are not in IT, you may never have heard of it; if you are, you've probably heard too much.
Either way, though, it translates well to the personal improvement / goal setting nature of New Year's resolutions. Each "sprint" is a short-term session (1 week up to, at most, 2-3 months), you set some goals at the start, try to reach those goals, and at the end, you evaluate your performance, re-consider your priorities and set new goals for the next sprint.
I was a practicing Wiccan for many years, and the Wiccan holiday cycle stuck with me, which includes 8 main holidays pretty evenly spaced out through the year. So I have 8 sprints each year, each one 6 or 7 weeks long. I expect month-long, or 13 four-week sprints would also work very well for most people.
Regardless, that's the idea -- effectively, take a day at the end of each sprint, consider your long-term goals and what you should do in the next few weeks to move yourself towards those over-arching goals.
... just my dos centavos.
Per the video @gco posted, I'm going with two themes:
I'm also looking into getting a dog! I'm thinking of adopting a 1-3 year old, though. That should be less work although I do expect to have plenty of training to do.
1-3 years old is definitely a lot less work, depending on the dog! Are you looking for anything in particular?
If it weren't for the inherent health issues of purebreds I'd 100% say I want a corgi. They're the right size, smart, cute and decently energetic. I'm not ruling them out but I think I should just go to a couple of shelters and meet some dogs.
You could always look into a Corgi rescue. That’s what I plan to do (but with Russel Terriers).
Looks like there are a bunch of corgi mixes up for adoption. That should give them some much needed genetic diversity.
Good luck to you in your moderation! We are doing a dry January and abstaining to try and set ourselves back on track.
What kind of breed are you thinking about?answered aboveI don't really do new years resolutions. I do keep a self improvement to-do list in my head. I managed to get a few things ticked off this year:
I won't say what my future to-dos are. I firmly believe you shouldn't state those projects out loud until their done. I've read about how doing that can give you premature endorphines as people will praise you for your efforts. When I set out to lose weight I never said anything to anyone about it. When people started to notice I didn't really acknowledge it. I managed to lose ~60 lbs and have kept it off for a few years.
So maybe next year I'll have a couple more "last year resolutions" to report successfully on.
My new year's resolution will be 3840x2160. I just bought myself a new 4k monitor. :) (BenQ PD3200U 32-inch 4K UHD) Have only been using HD for years up to now.
Look into the new year with better clarity! Stay blessed my friend.
I'd like to be a little less condescending and I'll try to do that by becoming a little less distracted and better and listening without only listening to see what I can say about myself next. I also plan to run another marathon but I'll be okay if that's not done officially due to covid and instead just 4 and a bit loops of my 10km loop.
In 2020 I completed 2000 KM on my bike. This year my goal is to hit 3000 KM.
I had my first ever hit of magic mushrooms (I'm in my 40s, it's frankly well overdue).
That was at 10:50PM, about an hour after a small meal. I have no idea for dosages (just trusting my nephew) so it was a little less than half a wine glass. They honestly didn't taste that bad - not good, but not vile either. The burps are definitely the worst part, reminds me of tequila in that regard.
It's now 12:20 and I'm sitting here wondering what in the hell all the fuss is about. No trails, no audio or visual hallucinations, just a mild (5% is pushing it) boost to colors. My nephew had the same dose and claims he's tripping balls - at this point I think he's full of shit.
I do feel kinda... good. Just very chilled out, mellow, and relaxed. That's definitely the shrooms bringing it on, I wasn't in a particularly great mood when I ate them. I feel like if my digestive system is taking more than two hours to get this stuff into my bloodstream then maybe my guts have a problem I'm not aware of. My muscles are definitely... different. Not in any way I can put my finger on but that network is sending back some new signals. Good ones. A little tingly, a little rubbery, then back to normal.
Always wanted to try shrooms, but at this point I think I need a professional and a vastly larger dose than was in those old dusty buds. Perhaps my brain just doesn't know what to do with the psilocybin. I've had stronger visual trips than this on cannabis. :P
Give it another hour. Sometimes they take awhile. The last time I had mushies, I didn't wait. I should have. I wanted a smooth mellow, instead I got waaaaaay too introspective and confronted by my own issues for ages. That can be healthy, even necessary, in the right setting and frame of mind, but I wasn't in either.
There's definitely some subtle effects creeping in right now - a bit of time dilation, music's timber is changing a bit, and I can see some very passive afterimages. I feel wonderful, though - that part is definitely not undersold. Good tunes on, I'm in a great frame of mind for it.
It seems like every distortion of my senses vanishes the instant I try to focus on it. The shrooms are coming in at the edges, it's like they are afraid to take center stage. I'll give it another hour and see where we are then. So far, I'm digging it but I feel like they've been oversold. :)
Dave Chappelle also once thought it was overrated.
Congrats on the new adventure! I feel thankful that you've shared such an intimate moment with us. Happy new year and best wishes to you!
Edit: ps check this amazing and beautiful song out at some point. Feels transcendent for me in a normal state. hope you find it uplifting!
Mmmm, there's always time for Derek.
I'm definitely interested in microdosing now. I feel like something was plugged into my nervous system that was missing, like vitamins. Strange energy. It made an attempt at that introspective trip, but that was no harder to mentally swat away than cannabis paranoia. Easy enough if you recognize it. After that it's just chilled out relaxation, something that's far better than alcohol imo for ringing in the new year.
Adios, 2020. Now it's time to pick a fight with 2021 - I want my roaring '20s back. <3
I have lots of things I want to do but since lack of willpower/procrastination has basically been the one thing that permeates every aspect of my life, I'll stick to the stuff I will:
Probably have to do before the end of this year
Be able to do without much soul-searching or figuring out what I want
So firstly, I need to have a proper sleep schedule again. Currently my sleep schedule can be described by the phrase "I don't need to be up so I procrastinate sleep." (Credit to u/lionirdeadman in the unofficial discord for that one.) That will change whenever vaccination actually makes this pandemic come to an end and I'll need to be ready and awake for school at what's almost certainly gonna be before 7:30 AM.
Also related to school, I need to not generally struggle with stuff you don't do in the classroom like school projects and homework and pay attention and generally try to be a better student. The subjects are only going to become more complicated with time and my mother really cares about my grades so staying put isn't really an option.