Snowflake Challenge #4

[malenkayacherepakha]

The 4th Snowflake Challenge is to talk about my goals for the year - luckily I didn't already make a post on this, as it's something I've been thinking about for a little while now. 

If I could sum up all my goals for the year, I think they would all relate back to the idea of <i>balance</i>. The past few years have been a bit of a whirlwind - graduating, moving around, moving between various jobs. Things have settled now though, I don't plan on moving (house or city) for at least a few years, I've now got a permanent job that I'm very excited about, and it feels like I can do more than just constantly move towards the next stage of life or focus on getting one thing sorted out before moving on to the next issue. So this year I want to find a balance between all the things I enjoy doing and have to do; a balance between work, socialising, rest, fandom, etc.

This is all quite vague and I don't quite know what it'll look like in practice but I do have a few more specific goals, both in fandom and real life:

• Do fewer fests. I spent almost the whole of last year under a fest deadline, and it wore me out. I hardly wrote anything just for myself, and I'd like to that more this year. I did enjoy pretty much all of my fest experiences, but it's not sustainable to do another year that way.

• Find a better level of engagement with fandom. This seems like a weird thing to say in a fandom space, and is no way judging people who can and do give a lot of time to fandom, but I gave too much of my time and mental energy to fandom last year. I started to care too much about petty things and got too competitive with stats and readership, and I just kind of didn't like the way I was interacting with fandom by the end? It got to the point where I thought about just leaving entirely, although I'm glad that I didn't (I just needed a break!). This all comes back to that balance - I want to find a balance where I can enjoy fandom and create things I'm proud of without getting too caught up in tumblr and discord and everything that comes with fandom. I also want to continue developing the friendships I've made, because I've met so many fantastic people. 

• Socialise more. I've struggled a bit with making proper good friends since I've moved here, and I'd like to start remedying that a bit. I'm not going to go as far as setting a goal of <i>make some friends</i> because I think that'll put too much pressure on everything, but I want to make more of an effort to go out after work and do things that will lead to chatting to people etc. 

• Move more. Last summer I got strong, and I miss that. The autumn term got so busy that my exercise routine slipped away, and I want to start going back to classes and to the gym, because I loved how it made me feel. This also links into the socialise more goal - going to a gym class totally counts as far as I'm concerned. 

• Rec more. I've read so many fantastic fics since I joined fandom, and I'd like to share the love a bit more. We all love when someone recs one of our fics, right? I'd love to give other people that feeling. I've already got a list started, so at some point the recs will start appearing on my tumblr and here. 

• Kick ass at work. I'm so looking forward to properly starting my new job (I've tentatively started it this week but will get properly stuck in next week), and I really want to work hard at it. My past few jobs have had long periods of down time where it was easy to slack off, and that's going to be hard to stop, but now's the perfect time to really focus on my career and give it lots of my energy (although not too much, I'm still very much about that work/life balance!)

• Cook one new thing every week. My boyfriend and I have got stuck in a rut of eating the same few meals all the time, and god we're bored of it. I got several new recipe books for Christmas and have already gone through and marked things I want to try, so this one feels pretty achievable! Plus I do enjoy cooking, so it should be fun too. 

Who knows if I'll actually complete these goals, but that's kind of not the point. Just having them in the back of my mind will be enough, and I'm excited to try and integrate both these goals and the general idea of a better balance into my life. 

Comments

[nachodiablo]

Balance is a great goal! Best of luck with all of these :)

[malenkayacherepakha]

Thank you!