With 2017 finally done and gone, it’s time to focus on 2018. I’m not one for resolutions, so to speak, but I do like to set some goals at the beginning of each year. Just like I think the end of the year offers a convenient time to reflect, the beginning of the next year is a logical time to take those reflections and turn them into something to move forward with. Of course, this isn’t something that necessarily has to (or should) coincide with the new year, but it is a convenient demarcation of time to work with.
After having genital reconstruction surgery in 2016 and changing jobs in 2017, I think maybe it’d be nice if 2018 had no major life change events. Just, you know, maybe cool it with the big ass shit, ya know? Otherwise, I think I’d like to keep a similar kind of trajectory for things without focusing on any big personal growth type stuff. I think I like where I’m at right now.
For the most part, I have two main goals for this year that I want to work towards. I think you’re supposed to have like measurable things and milestones or whatever, but I’m going to keep them somewhat loosely defined.
A couple months ago, I let slip a wild dream of mine in an interview I did. I want to run 52 marathons in 52 weeks. Ugh. What a stupid idea, I know. But it’s something that’s been kicking around in my head for more than a year now. Realistically, I don’t know how possible this even is for me. I don’t know if my body can do it. Or if I have the mental capacity to do it and not get burned out or fall into a rut or become miserable with it. I don’t know how logistically possible it is at all. Honestly, I don’t have any details of this worked out. All I have is the idea and a couple thoughts for how I could pull it off.
But even if this somehow becomes a reality, it’s at least a few years off. However, if I do actually want to try to make this a reality at some point instead of always being “a few years off,” I need to start making moves. What that means for 2018 is I want to start building up my running. Last year, I ran three marathons. This year, I want to run at least six, maybe as many as eight. It’s a far cry from 52, but it’s a small step in that direction to test the water and see how I hold up. If it goes well, I’ll take it further in 2019.
I currently have four marathons already locked in for this year. I’ve got Disney World Marathon coming right up this weekend. Then I have Boston Marathon and Big Sur Marathon 13 days apart in April. Lastly, I have New York City Marathon in November. I’m really looking forward to the test of Boston and Big Sur so close together. I think that’ll be a good early indicator for how quickly my body can recover from one marathon and go into another. It’ll also force me to shift how I train and race to focus less on time and more on how quickly I can recover from a marathon.
In addition to those four, I’m still thinking about what other races I want to try to add. I’d really like to do the Reykjavik Marathon after doing the half marathon there last year. I really enjoyed the event and getting there is actually pretty easy and not too expensive. I’m also thinking about Steamtown and Philly, but we’ll see how that goes as the year progresses.
The second major goal I have for 2018 is to find and work on a programming side project. While I don’t miss the stress of being a co-founder of a non-profit startup, I do miss having having a side project. I don’t know what this project will be yet, but I had a few good ideas last year that I just barely had started work on before getting sucked down into my job search. I’d honestly like to get back to those ideas and make them a reality.
Other than that, everything else is small. I’d like to take my camera out and get back into photography. But I say that every year and it never really happens. Related to that, I’d like to clean up the mess that my photos have become. I started this project a bit a few months ago, but then lost the time. I think if I can clean up this mess, it’ll make photography feel less like it’s just adding to the burden.
I’d also like to waste less time on Twitter. I mean this less as a resolution and more as a way of saying I want my Twitter usage to be more efficient. As god awful as I think @jack and the company’s refusal to do something about the white surpremacy and threats of violence are, I do really love Twitter as a service. It’s a great way for me to stay connected with my friends, make new friends, keep up with news across all of my interests (running, trans activism, politics, etc), see more cat photos, learn, and a bunch of other things. I think I spend too much time on Twitter, but I do think Twitter is a net positive thing in my life. What I hope to do is find a way to get what I get from it without wasting as much of my time on it.
Mostly, I think this comes down to culling how many people I follow and re-organizing my lists. I’m a heavy list user, but the time has come to examine how I use them and make adjustments.
Lastly, I need to find more time to write here. There were multiple things I mentioned in my 2017 wrap-up post yesterday that I wished I had written about here. And most of them were things I started to write about but never finished. Accomplishing this requires a shift in how I think about my blog posts. Frequent readers know I pump out lengthy posts, but I think this needs to change. I still love writing a couple thousand words on topics, but I’d be more likely to post more if I broke those bigger posts up into a few smaller ones over a couple of days. It’d reduce the cognitive weight of sitting down to write if things were smaller and more bite-sized.
Welp, that’s it. That’s what I’m thinking about for 2018. Less of a tick and more of a tock, as they say. Of course, things change. Plans should be kept loose and malleable and we should stay open to new things. A lot of the good things in 2016 and 2017 in my personal life were not planned at the beginning of the year. They just happened. I expect 2018 to be much the same.
What are your goals for 2018?