goals

2021/2022

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers, and welcome to the final Thursday of 2021, and the penultimate day of the year. 2021 has been…a wild ride, to say the least.

The last couple of years I’ve used my last blog of the year to look back on the goals I set back in January and see where I ended up. I honestly haven’t done a lot of looking back yet, or looking forward at new goals, but I don’t feel like pushing this out to next week, so here we go.

Goals I had at the beginning of the year, and progress on those goals:

  • Keep writing.
    • I honestly didn’t think I’d made that much progress with this one, but as it turns out, I wrote 32 songs this year (about 2/3 of them in February for FAWM). Some of them are keepers (a couple I actually quite like). I had hoped to get a couple of things recorded this year, but that didn’t happen.
  • “Yes, and…” opportunities at work.
    • I’d call this one a mixed success. I was promoted to team lead in February, helped nudge a couple of my direct reports along in their career growth, and am in the final stages of hiring someone new for my team. I didn’t take as much initiative in leadership projects as I had intended.
  • Keep investing in the communities and relationships that allow me to thrive.
    • I feel good about this one, although there’s always room to grow. I have a good routine for checking in with a lot of folks virtually and have a couple of virtual communities that are really important to me. Going forward, I want to invest more time into local friendships, too, so I have people I can do things in person with whenever that feels safe again.
  • Try to internalize the notion that it doesn’t have to be perfect to be good or valuable.
    • Still working on this, but I think I’m doing a better job of recognizing when perfectionism sneaks in. I’m letting go of the idea that “perfect” even exists, although it’s hard to not hold myself to that standard.
  • Keep doing the work to be an adult that my past selves can be proud of.
    • I feel like I’ve done a lot with this one. I found a new therapist here in the Twin Cities about a month ago, and she’s commented that she can tell that I’ve done a lot of work in therapy in the past to get to where I am now. I can see the evidence of that, too.

Other things that happened:

  • Survived another pandemic year.
  • Moved back to Minnesota.
  • Missed Song School, which was super sad but was the right decision for us at the time.
  • Adopted Nova!
  • Applied for and was accepted into seminary.

I know I’m missing a bunch of things, but those feel like the big ones.

Goals for 2022:

  • Keep finding ways to create.
  • Pass all of my classes.
  • Keep investing in the communities and relationships that allow me to thrive.

I will leave you with photos of Nova’s Christmas naps and the goofy Nova Christmas socks I bought for me and my husband. Happy New Year, everyone!

2020/2021

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers! Here we are, the last day of 2020, a year that has been… *gestures vaguely*…something.

Last Monday, on the Winter Solstice, I did a little looking back on the past year, on the goals that I set at the beginning of 2020, at how much progress I made (or didn’t) on those goals, despite (or because of ) everything 2020 threw at me. I made a similar post last year, so let’s follow that same format and take a minute to glance backward and look ahead, shall well?

Goals I had at the beginning of the year, and progress on those goals:

  • Write. Songs, yes, but also other things, poems and short stories and maybe even games.
    • I wrote 42 songs, including one spoken word piece and something for every card in the Major Arcana of a tarot deck. I did not write poems or short stories. I started noodling around with writing a game, got overwhelmed, and set it aside.
  • Read more, especially poetry and other things that inspire me.
    • I didn’t read more – I read 13 books, contrasted with last year’s 23. But I did read more Mary Oliver poetry, which was an excellent choice.
  • Make music often, as close to every day as possible.
    • I did not make music as close to every day as possible. But I still made music, and in a year that tried to totally derail everything, I’m calling that at least a partial win.
  • Do the work, in therapy and on my own, to be an adult that my inner child can be proud of.
    • This is lifelong work, but I have done a lot of work in this arena!
  • Take care of my body and my brain and my spirit.
    • This hasn’t been a resounding success, but…you know what? Fuck it. Given everything that 2020 was, yes, this was a success. I got myself medical care when I needed it, I have a better awareness of what I need to do to take better care of my body, I’ve continued therapy, I’ve found ways to learn and grow despite *gestures wildly at the year*.
  • Follow through on the plan to have my credit card paid off in June.
    • I did this! I had it paid off in May, actually. This was a very big deal.
  • Create more routine and space for ritual in my life.
    • I often feel like I have failed at this, but in reality I have established some important routines and rituals this year. They just don’t look like I thought they would a year ago.
  • Get a new, better-paying job.
    • I didn’t post this one on the blog last year, because I knew some of my coworkers read the blog and I didn’t want to cause unnecessary alarm. But I did this! I started my new job in March, four days before we went into lockdown, and it came with an approximately 60% salary increase. I am so much happier where I am now (which is not to say I don’t miss my old coworkers, but this job is a much better fit for me).

Other things that happened:

  • Took a mountain dulcimer class, a couple of mandolin classes, three songwriting classes, and a handful of songwriting workshops.
  • Tried Tai Chi (for a couple of months, in the Before Times).
  • Cowrote a song with someone I met on the internet. Also cowrote with my partner.
  • Bought a gorgeous new octave mandolin that I’m absolutely in love with.
  • Got married!
  • Hosted write-alongs for Song School friends the week that Song School would have happened.
  • Performed with my partner at a virtual open mic.
  • Decided to take an indefinite break from Facebook.
  • Bought a Nintendo Switch Lite and played many hours of Stardew Valley.
  • Played a lot of D&D along with a handful of other delightful games.
  • Established a number of (virtual) social routines.

Goals for 2021:

  • Keep writing.
  • “Yes, and…” opportunities at work.
  • Keep investing in the communities and relationships that allow me to thrive.
  • Try to internalize the notion that it doesn’t have to be perfect to be good or valuable.
  • Keep doing the work to be an adult that my past selves can be proud of.

May 2021 be a gentler year than 2020 was. May we keep finding reasons to hope. And may the lessons 2020 brought us not need to be repeated.

Goals

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

I think I mentioned last week that after I wrote my goals last year, I didn’t look at them again until I was doing my review of the year. That’s how goals go for me pretty often. I have a hard time sticking to them and keeping track of them.

I got a shiny new planner this week (inspired by a friend’s planner purchase), and I’m using it to try to better track my progress on my goals. This is not the first time I’ve tried using a planner to do this (I have a bit of a planner obsession, really), but this one seems to fit how my brain works better than others have. (It’s the Clever Fox Premium Weekly, for the interested.)

I think part of my struggle with goals is that if I mess up once, my brain tells me I’ve failed, period, and I should just give up. I don’t often think of myself as a perfectionist these days, but I definitely have those all-or-nothing tendencies.

So this week I’ve been trying, and then working on being gentle with myself if I fall short. I’m trying to establish a new, earlier morning routine, which is hard, and I haven’t succeeded every day. But I’ve done better than I honestly thought I would, so that’s something.

The new year is hard. No matter how much I tell myself it’s an arbitrary marker of time, it’s hard to ignore the “time for a fresh start” energy everywhere. There’s a lot of pressure to improve.

One of my Facebook friends posted one of their resolutions as something like “eat the elephant (one bite at a time),” and that’s an attitude I’m trying to adopt. I’m shooting for some big shifts in 2020, and the only way to get them done is one bite at a time.

2019

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers, and happy new year! I hope you enjoyed whatever holiday festivities you took part in (or chose to abstain from).

I’m starting 2019 feeling a little scatterbrained, but I want to take some time to acknowledge what 2018 held for me, and look a bit at what I’m hoping for in 2019.

So here’s a (far from complete) list of what happened in my 2018:

  • I completed my first FAWM.
  • I started going to a Unitarian Universalist church. I joined the choir at the church. I quit the choir and stopped going to church.
  • I turned 30.
  • I played a lot of D&D with some really awesome folks.
  • I wrote 48 songs (blowing away what I thought at the time was an impossible goal of 40).
  • I played five Acoustic Explosions.
  • I went to Song School for the second time.
  • I hit five years on testosterone.
  • I made new friends and strengthened some existing friendships.
  • I reconnected with my grandmother via letter writing.
  • I finally started to really track my finances.

I’ve been thinking a lot about possible themes for 2019, and I think I’m going to steal mine from Ellis (a musician I greatly admire who I met at Song School), who posted on Patreon that her word for 2019 is Embody. I’ve been feeling very disconnected from my body, and I think this is my year to really get grounded and learn to sit in my body through all its aches and pains and quirks. There’s also something in the word embody that feels like reaching for more genuineness, more honesty…and I think that is going to start with me being more genuine and honest about my needs, rather than constantly worrying that I’m being an inconvenience.

Other things I hope to do this year:

  • Find a new therapist.
  • Complete a second FAWM.
  • Write 30 more songs.
  • Read more (I fell short of my Goodreads goal of 30 books in 2018; I’m hoping for better focus this year).
  • Go back to Song School.
  • Play out at least four times.
  • Find at least one opportunity to play out somewhere that isn’t an Acoustic Explosion.
  • Play more D&D.
  • Keep tracking finances and get to a point where I feel solidly in control of my money.

So here’s to a new year and new opportunities. May the lessons we learned in 2018 not be wasted so we don’t need to learn them again this year!

Follow Through

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

This has been a long week already, and I’m glad it’s almost over – work has been frustrating, and I’m super ready for a vacation. Thankfully, we leave for Song School in just over a week!

On a personal level this week has been an exercise in follow-through. A fellow Song Schooler on Facebook organized a songwriting challenge for this week in preparation for school, and I decided to join in – writing a song a day for seven days straight. I know that I can do this, because of all the writing I did in February. But it’s still a challenge. I’ve been having trouble with mornings for a couple of months, and my evenings are often full, so I was definitely nervous leading up to this week. So far, though, I’ve managed to get up at my first alarm every morning this week and sit down to write.

I didn’t finish the song I started this morning (in fact, I think I’m going to set it aside and start fresh with a different idea after work today), but if I do manage to finish a song today, I will have hit my 2018 songwriting goal. For the whole year. On August 2. Each of the past two years I have written 20 songs. I decided that this year I’d be outrageous and set a goal of 40 songs. I’ve written 39.

It is a weird and wonderful feeling, following through on a goal all the way to completion. This is not something I’m super familiar with. A lot of my plans are hatched when I’m hypomanic (hi, Bipolar II brain), and they fall apart when I come down, which is really defeating. The fact that I set what felt like a totally ridiculous goal that I’d have toil at all year and probably wouldn’t actually achieve, and that now I’m going to hit it two thirds of the way through the year…it’s pretty unbelievable.

I don’t know that I’ll be able to repeat this in future years, but I’m not thinking about that yet (or, at least, I’m trying not to think about it yet). I’ve been fortunate to have the time in my schedule this year to make writing more of a priority, and I’ve worked hard to actually write on a regular basis (with the help of classes at the Old Town School, in particular). It feels good. And I’m looking forward to coming away from Song School with some fresh inspiration to keep going.

Sleepy Starts

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

I’ve been having a very sleepy couple of weeks.

When July started, I had these grand plans of getting up early every day. It…has not gone well. I’m learning that if I don’t get up as soon as my alarm goes off (or whenever I first wake up on my own before my alarm), it gets progressively harder to get up. I’m a little disappointed in myself for not having a better handle on mornings.

On the other hand, a lot of my other goals for the month are getting accomplished. I’m walking more, I’m impulse spending less, and I’m getting a lot done at work. So there’s that.

On Monday night, I have my first gig in a few months. I’m nervous about it – despite being in songwriting classes consistently, the creative well has felt rather dry lately. I feel like I’m fumbling around on my guitar, and writing lyrics is often like pulling teeth. I know I just need to keep showing up and working through it, but it is pretty overwhelming. Still, I’m going to play on Monday and try to work in some new stuff. We’ll see how it goes!

Plans

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

After I posted last week about my word of the year being “Action”…I promptly caught the cold from hell and lost several days to that nonsense. I was out of the office for three of the last five work days, and spent a lot of time annoyed by the fact that I couldn’t breathe through half my nose and kept waking myself up coughing. But I finally (FINALLY) and starting to feel more human again, so now I feel like it’s time to move forward with starting 2018 (a little over a week late, but hey, who’s counting?).

I’m continuing PT for my knee, which is helping a lot. It also makes me whine a lot, because the exercises are HARD (but feel like they shouldn’t be). I’m working on being more gracious about it and grateful for the progress I’m making.

Songwriting class started this week, and I’m trying to hit the ground running, so I have a shot at hitting my goal of 40 songs written this year (twice the number I’ve written each of the past two years).

I’m working on anxiety coping mechanisms in therapy. One of the things I’m trying this week is writing down my anxieties, in the hopes that getting them out of my head onto paper will make it easier to talk myself down. So far it seems like it’s helpful, but it’s only been a couple of days, so jury’s still out. I left my session this week with several ideas to try, though, so if this doesn’t work out, I have other options.

One of the things I want to do a better job of this year is actually planning out my weeks. There’s a big part of me that hates the idea of being boxed into a rigid schedule, but I also recognize that I’m more productive if I have a plan. If the only way I will make time to write songs or read books or whatever else I want to do is if I block out time in my schedule every week, then that’s what I need to do.

I’m trying to keep my goals reasonable, to not bite off more than I can chew in the first two weeks of the year, because I don’t want to burn out. Finding the balance there is a challenge.

Fighting to Focus

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

It’s been an anxious week. I got some good news on a personal front (that isn’t official enough to fully announce here yet, sorry), but the time leading up to that news was extraordinarily stressful. And the actions of the Dorito-in-Chief in his first week in office have been nothing short of horrifying.

I’m struggling to balance my intake and output of news-related information on social media, as well as the effect of that input and output on my mental health and general ability to function in my daily life. As a white dude, I have immense amounts of privilege that I want to leverage for good. To do that, I need to stay informed, and use my voice in the hope that I can help to inform other people. However, I also deal with chronic pain, anxiety, and the joys of being Bipolar, which means that the deluge of horrible news can be particularly paralyzing.

I don’t have answers for this yet, but I’m looking for them. I’m taking steps to get my life more organized, and am trying to exercise other methods of anxiety mitigation as well. Despite the fact that the last week has been more than a bit of a political dumpster fire, I’m determined to do what I can to make 2017 a year of forming better habits and breaking out of unhealthy patterns. I’ve struggled in the past to do this for my own sake, but I’m  hoping the sense of urgency I feel now to reach out and create change in the world around me helps to propel me on to greater success.

There’s no point in lying and saying I’m super hopeful, because I’m not. I’m struggling with some pretty crushing despair and questioning where we’ll be as a nation in four years, or if we’ll be anywhere at all. But I’m clinging desperately to the hope that this is a wake-up call for a lot of people, not just for me, and to the belief that We The People are stronger than any attempt at autocracy.

Hang in there, folks. And stay alive. Sometimes that’s the greatest revolutionary act we’re capable of.

Edited to add: my partner pointed me to this article yesterday that is related to all of this and was really helpful to me. I hope you also find it useful: How to #StayOutraged Without Losing Your Mind.