How cliche would it be for me to say “wow, what a year, huh?” We all know 2020 has been kind of the worst. We talked so much about making it our year when it started, and then a pandemic laughed in our faces and shoved us inside our homes. It’s been more tragic for some than others, but overall, it’s affected us in ways that we’ll never forget, which is wild to think about. Like, this will be a time we remember quite vividly when we’re old and shriveling away in retirement homes. Which, again, is just wild.
Despite all this mess that’s gone on during 2020, we’re still allowed to look back on all the good that happened. In fact, I feel like it’s good for our mental health to do so.
Though 2020 set me back on some personal goals, there are so many things I accomplished that I can still look back on and feel good about. I became a Twitch partner, got to be on the front page of Twitch a few more times, started collaborating with more creators, discovered I’m non-binary, got into makeup, and overall became more confident in who I am as a person. Pandemic aside, these are still things I was able to do, and celebrating things like this is so powerful for our self-image.
And while so many of my more personal goals were inhibited by this pandemic, I’m hoping this next year can start to provide a bit more leeway to achieve them. I was so focused on getting out and being more social, going to drag shows and making more friends, hoping to work through my social anxieties. COVID really said “girl, you thought” and shot that progress down before it could even start. But with the vaccine being available for us soon, the hopes of getting out there and crushing some of these anxieties feels a little more possible.
I mean…it’s wild to think that it’s been almost a whole year since I’ve gone out to any sort of social event. Wow.
This pandemic has also been inhibiting my creative mind SO much. So much of my writing comes from real life experiences, and without being able to experience much of a life outside of being in my apartment, staying inspired to write has been incredibly tricky. However, I will say that I’ve been a bit more inspired to write horror stories recently and watching things like The Haunting of Bly Manor and classic slasher movies has been motivating me to create something along the scarier side. So while not being able to experience anything other than the grocery store has made some of my writing a little harder to implement, at least these stories have been doing a little something to keep that creative side of my brain moving.
So…yeah. 2020 has been kind of a mess, to put it at the absolute lightest. It’s impeded our quality of life by way more than we could have imagined, but it doesn’t mean we were stagnant, and it doesn’t mean we will continue to be.
We can continue to work toward our goals. We can continue to blossom. Things weren’t great, but we can persevere, one step at a time, at a pace that’s still manageable.
As far as things goals I’d like to work toward in the new year, they’re similar to the things I wanted to work on this last year, but with a slightly renewed focus.
I want to write more.
I have goals I want to achieve. I can’t achieve them if I’m not writing. I want to be writing most days out of the week, even if I have to just write down my thoughts about how the day went. Something to keep that writing brain moving. I’ve set this goal every year for the past few years, but this year, I’m going to actually figure out how to implement it. While I’ve released some writings I’m proud of, this last year, I want to be working on so much more, and I don’t want another year to go by where I say “I wish I would have written more.”
I want to initiate more collaborations with other creators.
I get so nervous to reach out to fellow streamers to do stream projects with me, or reach out to other writers who may want to help each other edit and the like, and I want to get better at looking past the negative thoughts that tell me I shouldn’t reach out to them. My brain tells me that people won’t want to work with me because they don’t think I’m cool enough, because they don’t like me for some non-specific reason I can’t actually name, or that they’re going to think I’m weird for even asking. Logically, I know all of this is baloney, but having those internal thoughts is sometimes enough to keep me from reaching out. I don’t want to let that stop me from making cool ideas happen with cool people.
I want to start being less afraid of my feelings.
I have a lot of reasons why I’m scared to express my feelings, whether it’s feelings for someone, or feeling like I’m being wronged, and I’d like to be less afraid of putting my feelings out there. Whether it’s letting friends know exactly why I value them, telling people why something they did or said slighted me, or heck, even letting people know that I’m romantically interested in them. There’s always a little bit of fear before I express my feelings about these things, like I might be wrong, or I shouldn’t be feeling this way, or like it’s going to make things incredibly awkward, but I have to get used to trusting my feelings. The feelings are real. They’re sometimes to powerful to ignore.
Though there are a lot of smaller goals I want to achieve, these are the big ones that will help me achieve the smaller ones, along the way.
I know it’s cliche to say “new year, new you” and make grandiose new year’s resolutions, but I like the idea of a new year granting some motivation to kick start some goals. People tend to make fun of new year’s resolutions, but I’m big on utilizing any reason to be motivated to start reaching for the stars. Who knows? Taking advantage of that motivation could lead to all kinds of achievements.
2020 was a mess. We can’t ignore that fact, but that doesn’t mean we can’t go into this new year with a sense of hope. Hope for things in general to get better, and hope that we can break free from some of the confines this year put on us. I heard a friend say that they think 2021 is gonna be a bit of a “clean up” year, where we work toward undoing the damage from 2020, and I wholeheartedly agree with that. While the cleaning up will be very present and very necessary, we can absolutely find some ways to achieve our goals along the way.
What are some goals you plan on working toward, this next year? I would love to hear about them in the comments!
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