2019 Goals
It’s 3 AM on a Tuesday. I’ve been awake for an hour reading various things already. I’m awake this early because I felt awful yesterday and could not wait to go to sleep no matter how early. I guess the void previously filled by my ex-girlfriend finally hit me. In this time where I’m cutting back on who I spend time with and getting to know and develop relationships with, losing one of those people came to bother me. I guess it happens a lot when you share much in common.
I wrote out all of these things that were flowing through my mind yesterday. What I was feeling, what I was mad about. Was I doing all of these new things and buying all of this new stuff to try to win a break up? Or feel good about myself to get away from those thoughts?
In my last email I talked about managing stress, and I am seeing the initial benefit of that. No, I am not signing up for drum lessons because I want to win a break up. I’m doing it because I actually want to try this out. It’s something that I want, not anyone else for me or telling me what I should do. I want to learn how to play Limb By Limb by Phish eventually, not anyone else (this might take 2 years!! The amount of arm and leg independence it requires to play this is stupid. Fishman is incredible.). I want to play ultimate frisbee on Sundays in the BUDA league not to be competitive or be flashy, but to be social and get some exercise in a sport I feel decent at. And so forth.
There is always some of that, though. After all, we are a kind of compilation of everything we’ve ever heard and learned, and we’re making executive decisions on what we want in our lives. I bought a bunch of stuff over the holidays but checked the reviews of all just to make sure they matched up with my research (which is pretty much scouring Reddit comments and Amazon reviews). Also, I am learning drums, and jazz + rock and roll musicians made those pretty accessible. I am not learning djembe. I really admire people who learn very niche things.
I woke up this morning not feeling completely better, but feeling in a better place. Yesterday, even the smallest of tasks felt major. I struggled to push through. But once again, my habits carried me. If I didn’t do it on my way out of the office the day before, I write down 5 things I want to accomplish as soon as I get to my desk. These 5 things may have been as simple as “type up meeting notes from Friday, update spreadsheet, email meeting notes and spreadsheet, schedule follow-up meeting,” but I wrote those things down and I did it. I made it to the end of the day.
This morning, I woke up thinking about how I can better organize and plan the larger projects in my life. So I want to write down what those goals are below. I want to seriously cut out on the many distractions I have and just slowly work on chopping away at these. Not because someone else wants me to, but because I want to do it. Because even if the struggle is frustrating, I will personally feel a sense of accomplishment I can be happy about and no one can take away from me.
1) Pass the PMP
- a. god dammit lol
- a. I should be able to piece this together within a year. LxL is a next year goal at the earliest.
- a. This might take a whole year. I’m thinking… I know how to use Tableau at a basic level. My approach to tackle this might be to solidify my Excel knowledge, at least fully understand the Tableau features so I know where things are, and also learn R for Tableau purposes (maybe Python?). Plus get better at data cleaning, which can be done in Tableau Prep. This goal will definitely take a lot of analysis for how the person put that workbook together and then planning out how I will do that myself, as well as the technical education.
- a. I don’t want to get too involved in this one, but I need to be honest with Nick about that after I do this initial planning. I just don’t have time to commit to work for a fantasy basketball website right now. Plus I don’t play fantasy anymore. But I want to help a friend expand his fantasy sports empire.
- a. The major work will be done on the condo by this week. I’m stoked. Will put together a write-up with pictures in a few weeks.
- b. I have to figure out if this is worth posting or sharing anywhere. I kind of want to do it. Just don’t know where or who to share it with.
- c. The other condo I’m interested in is like $12k. It’s in really horrible shape and would need a complete gutting. But I could work on it over time and make it brand new. It would be my project. I think I could do some of the work to learn from, and then pay someone else to things I shouldn’t risk (electrical and plumbing, for example).
- a. I have been working on this with my cousins for about two months now. Our date is set for July 4th at Rehoboth Beach.
- b. There’s so much room for self-doubt here, but as the leader and visionary of this, I have to just keep reminding myself that even if only the 3 people organizing it went (me and 2 cousins), we’d have to make it as fun as possible.
- c. By the way, this is equivalent to planning a wedding. My mom’s side of the family has 80 people or so in it. With so many people, it’s hard to get so many on the same page.
- d. My next steps are to get everyone’s address so we can mail out Save the Date cards. We also need to call everyone and make sure everyone reserves under our event name so we don’t have any booking problems, as the rooms will free up on May 15th if people haven’t reserved by then (the hotel allows us to reserve 10 rooms at a time and gives us 10 more as we fill those initial 10 up).
- e. I’m terrified. If this fails hard, I will never hear the end of this from my family for the rest of my life lol.
- a. I have one $6317.28 master’s loans at 5.31% left, and I’m fucking done with those. I have about $10k in subsidized, but I might do another master’s if I get accepted and start this fall, so I won’t have to worry about those until 2021. After knocking out that unsubsidized loan + paying off holiday credit card debt, I’m going to work on saving up to $20k for an emergency fund while also enjoying my life more. It will be nice to actually get to keep a full paycheck in a few months instead of sending 2/3s of it to loans. This last year was brutal.
- a. This is a stretch goal. It’s in the realm of possibility. But I think there’s a lot more going against me here than there is for the idea. Need to figure out how to break this down into realistic end goals.
10) Keep working on practicing and strengthening my habits.
I can do this. I just need to focus. And even if I don’t, and I mess up and do things badly, or if my interests go in a different direction in the middle of the year, that’s ok too. But I want to go for these things.