End-of-Year Goals Check-In, 2018 Edition
Goals & Outcomes
A year has passed since I left my apartment, left my job, and left New York to go travel. I am the same person who turned in my keys, prayed I’d meet saner people on the road than those I’d shared apartments with in New York, and got in a cab to the airport in Newark, but I’ve learned so many different ways to be that person. Different perspectives to see problems from, different values to apply to people and relationships, different paths to pursue my interests and passions.
I am still the kind of person who loves making a plan but sometimes struggles to achieve it on time; thus, no 3Q2018 goals check-in. Forgive me, o readership, for I have sinned.
But I’m here with a 4Q2018/end-of-year wrap-up for y’all! And that’s got to count for something.
It should count for more, actually, because while I didn’t sit down and write a goals check-in when September came around, I did think a lot about how my goals were changing.
In September, I flew back to Buenos Aires from Christchurch six weeks earlier than I’d planned to because I really didn’t like New Zealand. I wanted to keep traveling, but not in English-speaking places, and not expensively, and not in a way that mandated me repacking my backpack every 48 hours (I’d gotten really good at using my packing cubes and regularly rewearing the same outfit for two to three days, but it was wearing on me). I decided to go back to South America, back to Argentina, back to Buenos Aires, and back to Diego. I decided to invest in many of the travel aspects of my trip—trying new foods, learning a new language, making friends from all over the world, writing about it all—but without actually changing my home base every other day. I’d bunker down in Buenos Aires, make day and weekend trips around Argentina, and slash my budget in half (I went from $50/day backpacking—which I easily came under in several places in South America and blew up by buying tickets to New Zealand/spending six weeks there—to living on $700/month in Buenos Aires, and the savings covered my flight home for the holidays).
So my goals became slightly less backpacking-focused and slightly more holistic, but the original three-pronged approach I set out for myself in 2018 by and large still applies. I still lived out my dream, and I still learned from the process. So let’s go through it! I’ll give you this quarter’s update and also summarize how I did for the whole year. And then I’ll share what I’m setting my sights on for 2019.
Goals around getting to know the world:
1. Go experience the world. Simple enough. Explore, try new things, take advantage of my youth (in all its healthy, obligation-free glory). How? Spend a significant amount of time (at least 6 months) traveling slowly through some part of the world that I haven’t been to and that’s not much like home
Win. Did the damn thing. I lived abroad for 341 days of 2018, the large majority of them in South America, the large majority of those while backpacking. I felt uncomfortable, I felt at home, I had experiences I hadn’t even imagined and others I’d dreamt of. And it was so totally worth it.
2. Meet and get to know new people. Be friendly, ask questions, don’t assume I know anything about anyone. How? Travel alone, forcing my extroverted self to find connections around me, and stay in lots of different types of accommodations with lots of different people—airbnbs, hostels, Workaways, etc.
Win. I definitely groomed my hostel routine to maximum make-new-friends efficiency. I made friends so close they feel like family in half a dozen different countries on my trip (and friends who hail from all over, so now I’ve got people I want to visit in Ireland and Uganda and England and Israel and Brazil). I interviewed locals and local expats. And I learned how to turn off my judgmental assumption-making at least a little bit. Not entirely—I actually think, somewhere in a tiny, shitty hostel in New Zealand when I was feeling relatively burnt out in general, I found myself making more assumptions-per-capita than at any other point in my entire life—but I recovered, and reminded myself how to find the common humanity in all sorts of people with all sorts of values and backgrounds that I would previously had a hard time connecting with. And I’m really proud of that.
Next, goals around getting to know myself:
3. Figure out if I like writing / storytelling as much as I think I do and if I need to be in a career that is more directly tied to it. How? Write at least an hour a day, every day, on a variety of topics and in a variety of forms and see how it makes me feel
I really feel like I should give myself a fail for this one, since I did fail mightily on the mechanics of this goal; even though I’ve probably written for more than 365 hours this year, I didn’t do them in the measured, disciplined way that I wanted to force myself to follow (and If I couldn’t do it when my days were entirely mine to control, does that just mean I’m terribly undisciplined? Probably, and that deserves a fail.).
But at the same time, I did realize how much I love storytelling, and that I do, at least right now, want to continue to pursue eking out a living from it. So in that way, it’s a win.
This year, I’ve written a couple hundred thousand words, many for this blog and some for actual real-life paying clients (!). I’ve edited another several hundred thousand for clients (!!). And I’ve worked on my own niche—real, honest, creative nonfiction writing about food and women and travel and things I love—and managed to convert that passion into my first piece of sponsored content, a piece on Buenos Aires small plates restaurant LUPA and the holiday dinner I planned there. It was a pretty special moment to realize that I had the confidence and experience to pitch myself to a business I knew I’d love to write about, have them agree, and then get to actually write it.
Coming around to the big-picture aspect of this goal—figure out if I need to be in a career directly tied to writing to feel fulfilled—I think the answer is no. I don’t. I want to keep pursuing it right now, since it’s a fairly flexible, rewarding way to make enough money to travel with, but in realizing how happy I am with some basic balance in my life, I’m realizing I could probably go back to a job I wasn’t super passionate about but still be happy, so long as it left me enough time to do other things. (Build up women. Cook. Go for walks. Bake zucchini bread. Learn something new. Read books. Call my girlfriends. So on and so forth.) I’m gonna stick with this writing and editing thing for a little while longer, and if I can somehow parlay it into the kind of financial security I want for when I reach “real-life adulthood” (which will start whenever I have a living space not decorated with solely IKEA furnishings and then, eventually, children), wonderful! But I can live without it. But I’m happy to be living with it now. You know? Let’s call it a half-credit and move on.
4. Create a portfolio that showcases my creativity and drive (so that by having it + a traditional resume I can tell the full story of myself). How? Design and manage this lil blog
Win. Especially with the LUPA piece, an example of content in partnership, I think this blog has become a good, if casual, portfolio for me and some of the writing I love to do. If that’s all I had done towards this goal, I’d think I had come up a little short, but I’ve also put together a slightly more formal/professional portfolio (and the corresponding client reviews) through my freelancing work, which has gotten me more work, which will continue to build my portfolio…and so on! I still think I need to level up the aesthetics of this blog, but I didn’t prioritize that aspect of the portfolio this year, and I think that was the right prioritization.
5. Stress test my values and the things I think I want out of life. How? Write down what I think those things are now and compare them at the end of my traveling to what I think then, constantly try to see things from others’ points of view, live little experiments in the various places I find myself
Half-credit, because I didn’t do this as planfully as I thought I would, but I think that’s actually some of the growth itself. I recognize that I’ve changed and grown a lot over the last year, and that one of my most important core values is that I am changing and growing going forward. Which means there will always be some amount of stress-testing of those values. Which means that I need to be able to maintain the right level of abstraction to reflect on them over time. Which I think I’m reaching!
As I wrote six months in…this year has been about accepting ambiguity. Realizing I might not know where I will be in a month or a year or a decade, but to trust myself and the people I’ve surrounded myself with to know that that place will be one that challenges me, fulfills me, and allows me to use my talents and passions in ways that better the people and projects around me. I feel good about applying the lilypad technique—more on that later—and just letting myself live a slightly less examined (and planned and fretted-about) life.
And last, goals around maintaining my current world & self:
6. Maintain my relationships with my family, friends, mentors, coworkers and stay a part of their lives. How? Check in with them, write to them, share stories with them, remember birthdays and anniversaries and celebrate them, even if I’m away from home
Half-credit. I by and large thing that all of my important relationships have lasted with little to no negative outcomes—and in many places, positive outcomes, what with distance making the heart grow fonder and people traveling to visit me and different lifestyles forcing my loved ones and I to prioritize catching up (or get in sync on deprioritizing it) and all that. There are definitely pockets of my social circle that I need to maintain better; I got to go to my old company Christmas party at the end of the year, which was an awesome way to catch up with all of the people I love there, but also reminded me how many of them I failed to reach out to during the year.
Being home for this last month and having the chance to catch up with family and friends has been really special. I feel deeply loved. I wonder how hard that would be to maintain over time—if I live abroad for years and years, do the intensity of those relationships fade? I’ve talked about this with my friend Sara, who’s English but has lived abroad for the better part of two decades, and she assured me that the relationships with similar souls can go on for years and years with minimal, but meaningful, in-person contact. I believe her, and if I have the chance to test that out for myself, I think I’ll have the same results. There’s something to be said for the same-soul thing—there are many people I’ve grown close with this year abroad that I didn’t expect to get along with so well (Kerianne and Isabelle come immediately to mind—two incredible women that I’ve managed to get closer to while being farther away).
7. Keep my “nest egg” savings for getting an apartment / car / wardrobe for if/when I want to come back and pick up life, or if something unplanned happens. How? Literally do not touch my second savings account
Fail. I didn’t not-touch the nest egg. I dipped into it for a few investment items (like getting a new laptop when mine broke) and for a few expenses back home. Technically, I still have all of it, if you port over what I’ve managed to save from my travel budget; I kept $5,000 of that in reserve for backpacking next year (which I hope to add to with savings from freelancing work, if I can). But also, technically, I did spend some of it. I’m not too worried; enough of it exists to meet the goal it was intended for. Money is just choices, and I haven’t meaningfully reduced my available choices.
8. Continue my literary education. How? Read a book or two a month (at least!) and write about them—how they made me feel, what they taught me
Win! I kept reading and kept journaling about what it made me feel. It’s such a useful thing and I highly recommend it to any writer or voracious reader out there—it makes giving book recommendations 12x easier, it’s a fun thing to reflect on as you think about yearly accomplishments, and it helps point out the patterns in your literary comfort zone and motivates you to keep trying new things. Four months into year 25, and I’ve read 17 books, and I’m jazzed about what’s to come (my library holds list is a work of art, let me tell you). Reading makes me a better writer and a better human and a better dinner party guest. It is the best.
9. Stay healthy. How? Work out 3x a week (hikes count! Kayla counts!), get health insurance, get fully vaccinated before I go and go to the doctor if I get sick
Probably a fail, maybe a half-credit at most. I’m definitely overall healthier than I was last year. I average 10,000 steps a day instead of the 7,000 I clocked in 2017 (or 6,000 in 2016), I cook for myself way more often, I get way more sun (goodbye, vitamin D deficiency), and I regularly sleep eight hours a night, but I’m definitely not getting a solid three workouts in per week. I did go to the dentist in Buenos Aires, but I feel like she lied to me when she told me I had no cavities…my right back molar feels like it’s betraying me. We’ll see. I need to do a better job of this next year (she says, for the 10th year in a row), but I certainly feel more in tune with my body and like I’m taking better care of it than in years past.
Bye, 2018. Take Care.
This year was wonderful. The eight months I spent backpacking, the three months I spent living in Buenos Aires, and the month I’m spending here at home, reconnecting with my people and getting bloated from bagels and Jet’s Pizza, have all been beautiful and challenging and incredible in their own ways. I feel happy and healthy and lucky to be able to do this with my life. I have so much to look forward to in the year to come, and so much to be grateful for in the year we’re saying goodbye to. I am surrounded by such talented, passionate, big-hearted people. I want to keep building things with and for them.
What are your goals for the new year? Whatever they are, let me know if I can help in absolutely any way. Cheers to you and to me and to us and all that’s to come!
For more on my historical relationship with goal-setting, read my goal page. For 2019’s goalposts, check out this post.