I like goals. Not in the #goals Instagram post – I want this life – kind of way. I like goals like, “by summer I will have moved out of my parent’s house” or “tomorrow I will run 10 miles instead of 8 before work” or “at the Welwyn Half Marathon I will aim for a PB”. My biggest problem with goals is I tend to set to many, especially when it comes to this blog. Writing gets me carried away in a whirlwind of opportunity and I end up with lists like the 100 daily challenges (link above). Despite actually intending to complete all 100 challenges across a consecutive 100 days, it turns out there are a few too many environmental factors to consider and that means it was always very unlikely that I was ever going to be able to do it in 100 consecutive days. I think that I may take the list down and exchange it for the original ‘Goals I want to complete within a year’ post that I did way back in my initial 30-day blog challenge. This is a much simpler and comprehensible goal list that still sees me achieving milestones that I very much would like to see done this year.
I have ticked off the ‘visit a new country’ goal already, I spent last week in Estonia which is a country I’d never been to before. Booking a place in the Shakespeare Marathon and having a training schedule in place to chase that sub 3-hour marathon goal should mean that get ticked off this year too. Also, training for a Marathon should also mean I complete a 100-mile week of running during the peak training phase.
Ticking off goals is a great way to feel accomplished and gauge progress in your life, even when the goals are self-led. New Year tends to be a time that many people set themselves challenges but I feel that people should think more about goals. To me, a goal is different to a challenge as a challenge initiates some kind of contest, as if there is a finish line at the end and once you have crossed, you have won the prize and no longer need to partake in the activity. I like goals as they represent milestones more than an ending achievement. If you complete a PB in running, it only means that you have a new time to beat or a new goal to achieve; you reach a milestone but it doesn’t put a cap on that activity.
Anything that is worthwhile in life is always an investment of time and requires consistency. I like to call them “maintenance projects”. The best things in life are always maintenance projects: if you want a good-looking body you have to maintain a healthy lifestyle, if you want to be good at an instrument/language/art form you have to maintain a consistent practice, if you want to be good at writing then you need to write and read every day, if you wish to learn anything new then you need to work at it little and often, etc. These maintenance projects are what keep us ticking in life, they are what drive us into being interesting and productive people. If you want to feel satisfaction then take up something that requires maintenance, that you can perhaps hit milestones or goals within, but there will be no finish line; it is all about the journey and the adventure that comes about with it.
The blog is definitely a maintenance project for me and I want to make sure I maintain consistent uploads with posts. These may not always be fruitful and rich with content, something like the post about going to Tallinn, Estonia (check it out) may only occur every 4/5 posts, but either way regular uploads mean my writing skills stay up to scratch, my free time is filled with something more worthwhile than mindlessly scrolling social media and I always have an outlet for my highly functioning creative mind.
The goal for this year is to blog as much as possible about everything and anything I fancy. I will try my best for daily posts but consistency and maintenance is the real over riding focus.
I hope you are all enjoying the new year so far.
Peace & love.
BG
benedict. 