chives

It's a new year, and with a new year comes resolutions! For once, I'd like to really make and keep some smart goals this year, because usually I completely forget my plans come the end of January.

My first goal is to write more. This was my goal last year too, but I immediately bungled it, probably because I was still in the middle of my study abroad and needed to focus on that. This year I don't have any particular huge life obstacles that I know of, and I'm making the bar a little lower than my previous "write every day" plan. I signed a pledge for 150k words this year at getyourwordsout in hopes the community and easier-to-catch-up-on goal will help me motivate myself. I'd like to get back to pushing a chapter of Aftermagical out each month, as well as working on other short fics I've had ideas for (and maybe my dumb gay kinkbait Overwatch OC fic too??)

Second is reduce toxic social media. I don't want to just say "reduce social media all together," because frankly I get a lot from social media sites that I don't easily get IRL - validation for my obscure interests, low-impact socialization, and a steady drip feed of memes and anime girl fanart. But over the past few months I've managed to cut some of the parts of it that have driven me insane - discourse, antis, politics, etc. I mean, it seems easy to blow off this kind of stuff, but its also easy for those to leak onto your TL and hard to get it off without being ruthless with muting/unfollowing people you otherwise like. So far I've been avoiding it by just staying off social media all together, but it's made me feel isolated and distanced from all my friends. Unless I find a better way, I'm probably going to do just that. But I'll feel bad about it, so I'll keep looking out for better options. Really, thank god for the mute function. Twitter gets that right, at very least.

Third is to organize my house. Since moving out from my parents, all my living situations have been temporary, with most leases only lasting a year, and I treated them that way. I never properly settled in beyond making sure I had basic furniture and a good bed. They've always been a mess. Heck, even living with my parents, our house was always a wreck, and my room was the worst of it. It's hard to say if my current apartment will be a long-lasting living space for us, but either way I want to get organized. I'm talking places to put things, sorting the useless shit out and donating it off instead of packing it in a box for us to find next move, maybe even having decorations on the wall.

The rest of my goals are less committed, but they do exist. I'd like to eat less fast food and cook more, as well as work on doing more journaling (like this?), but neither of those are things I'm making plans for, at least at the moment. Oh, I probably should also get a real job this year, as well as learn to drive. But those are less "personal improvement" goals and more like "i have to do this to continue living a decent life" obligations, so less fun for this post.

Figuring out how to motivate myself and keep going is still a difficult thing in my life. Depression, with its lovely friends anxiety and psychosis, frequently zap away all motivation I have, leaving me instead with not neutral apathy, but intense shame I didn't complete my goals or obligations. I haven't found any fool-proof way to get myself back up when failure hits, much less prevent failure from happening, so I'm very much taking it as it goes. Hopefully if nothing else this year, I want to find new tactics to beating the bullshit that is my brain, and getting things on track!

Anyway, happy new year 2019! Let's see if this sucks any less.