Every year is the year for those dreaded New Year’s resolutions. You know the ones we tell ourselves we will do and that get discarded by most of us when life gets messy and it always gets messy. I could try to quote studies about how many of us actually keep these resolutions but you know the answer most of us don’t.
Each year we look back and then plan ahead for what we hope is a better and more prosperous tomorrow. I’ve tried and failed at setting goals so many times but that doesn’t mean I haven’t achieved some of them along the way.
I have been bad at goal setting, cause I’m afraid I won’t ever get there, I look at the mountain and see how far I have to go and its terrifying every time. You have to break down those goals, into more manageable pieces and have the stubbornness to keep on going even when those around you tell you, you can’t.
It isn’t something I’ve ever been good at, cause when a challenge hits you and you fall I often just stop climbing. I don’t think I am alone in that aspect and its been hard.
I have a few goals now, my most immediate goal is once I am healed to get another fight in before I jet off from Pai and I want to win but even if I don’t as long as I give it everything then that’s all that matters.
Next goal is to write at least 5 times a week and at least a few thousand words. My ultimate objective is to develop the story in the world I’ve already spent years crafting. I’ve done enough on the world, and realistically it doesn’t matter what stories I tell because this is just about experimentation with narrative structure, point of views and story flow.
It’s about getting to the point where I have something that someone out there will want to read. Maybe that will take months, maybe it will take years but that’s the path I have to take because I feel it within me even if I am still searching for the story.
The last goal is about finding a way to sustain a lifestyle where I can be location independent but be making enough to have flexibility to go where and when I want. I have been able to travel for years because I am diligent about my spending habits and have had great support from home.
I can’t do this forever but I also know I don’t want a normal job, I have not lived that sort of life for so long and I can’t see myself in that sort of environment anymore. It’s not that I can’t or wont get a job if I have to but that in the long run I want to be able to tell stories that are interesting and make you feel like the place is real.
So I am going to explore my options to gain income through things like cryptocurrency. To me I see it as a more risky industry to invest in but where the returns are so high it is something worth investigating and exploring.
That doesn’t mean I’ll be stupid but I’ll go slow and test the waters and see how it works. I’ve met a lot of people doing it so I want to learn as much about it as I can and hopefully use the invest as a way to get a better return than a saving account back home would ever allow.
I will climb Rinjani at some point this year. I remember the view of Gunung Rinjani from Gunung Agung before it awoke from it’s slumber and all I could think about was that I wanted to climb in and see the reverse of this amazing view below.
I never would have thought that’s what I’d be doing, I never thought I would be here almost 5 years later and still wandering Asia. It’s been an amazing ride and enriched the core of who I am because it has exposed me to see the world in a new way outside the bubble of Western life.
So these goals are my mission, they are the drivers of what I want to do and where I want to go. I want to get back into the ring because it’s a rush, because its something I would never have done prior to me traveling. I’ve always wanted to write and now that goal has to become my shadow.
It won’t be a shadow that stalks me but one that follows me in search of inspiration for those stories that are in me waiting to be told. I love living the nomadic life and want to find a way that gives me more freedom to do it in such a way where once in a while I can do the things that many people do on vacation that I usually can’t.
So I also want to work on finding a way to be more confident, to be spur of the moment and to be a wolf not a sheep. I don’t think that’s how anyone would ever see me but I hope I can find a way to find that person within.
So how do I achieve these goals? Focus, consistency and diligence. All of that means nothing unless I start doing it. The fighting stuff I am preparing for now, the writing I am going to start now by writing short stories, crypto I am investigating so I can understand just WTF I am getting into and self-improvement is all of this taken together with some good books thrown in for good measure.
So that’s the outline of how my 2018 will look, it is time to stop trying and just start doing. I have to make it happen, no one else will do it for any of us and its time for me to stop fearing failure and live to rise above it. To use the heat generated by the fires of my falls to allow myself to rise.
You have to see each roadblock as a challenge you rise up to not something that will pull you down. I forget that all the time but I am going to give it everything to see what I can accomplish.
So to everyone, to those goals set at the start of 2018, to the goals that you continue to reach for from years past and to believing that each of us can get there, maybe not in the exact way we picture but in the way we need.
It doesn’t need to be a new year to set goals or achieve them, that’s an illusion each day is a chance to make small changes or huge ones, to redefine who we are and who we can be at our best.
It isn’t something we can always achieve but its something to reach for regardless because it pushes us outside our normal frame of mind, because of the challenge it presents. To all those who have goals be it those you set a week ago or those you set tomorrow.
Write them down, live them and make them your reality and see you at your summit from mine where the horizon beckons and you can see and appreciate where you have been to get where you are, no matter if you reached the top or just got part of the way there no matter what happens it is worth the effort and will prepare for the next adventure you face.