2019 has been, in many ways, a terrible year for me. My faith in a lot of things – family, church, my own creative interests and goals – has been battered to near-destruction. That I still have faith in any of these things – or faith at all – is a minor miracle. But it has meant that I got very little done in the past year; and that feels terrible in itself.
It might be academically interesting to explore the reasons why this year had brought my life to a near-halt, but I do not feel it would be practical to do so. It is more important to get moving again.
Over the past week or so, I’ve started keeping track of habits I want to form, and goals I want to set. Some are on the level of self-care; such as maintaining a proper amount of sleep each day, exercising, cutting down my sugar intake (which means primarily cutting down soda intake). Some are meant to repair my spiritual life. And some are designed to start re-exploring my creative side, see what interests I might still hold and in which direction. Writing, art, programming and modelling – and keeping this website running and updated.
So far, my efforts are paying off – I’m getting more sleep and exercise now, reading my Bible and praying again. My creative habits are not coming back as quickly as the others, but I have started drawing again.
My big goal for 2020 is to keep this up as best I can. Maintain daily short goals and build them into habits. To keep moving, even if at only a crawl, is better than stopping like I did before. If I can succeed at this, maybe I can start considering more ambitious goals. We’ll see.