New year, new me

Post on 3 October , 2013 by Grace Conyers

True WarriorsI realise this is not the new year for most people, but I don’t celebrate life like most people, either. To me, this is my new year. I have survived another 365 days of my life and begin another 365 day cycle. To me, this is the new year. 33 years have past, and I begin my 34th year. Every year since I was young I’ve had a private ritual in which I reflect on what I’ve done over the past year, noted any accomplishments I can reflect on in darker times when I’m feeling down, and writing a list of things I am going to aim to accomplish over the next year. This is the first year I’m sharing.

This past

This past year I have not done much. I moved into an apartment in Indianapolis last August, and I spent most of the time between then and now either recuperating from a long, arduous move that took nearly a month and a half to do, unpacking, or struggling to find a job. The one thing I can say that I’ve accomplished since last year began is give up on a “normal” life.

Most normal lives include getting a job working for someone else and working your butt off while wishing for something else. Very few people are happy with their jobs, but some are. My goal for last year was to find a stepping stone to a career I loved. It didn’t happen. I applied for job after job. I heard nothing back from most, and the few I did hear back from was to say after the interview “sorry, but you’re not qualified due to a lack of car”. It was, to say the least, a disappointment.

While I worked through that, I thought about the things I could do to help put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads. I kept freelance writing for the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences which paid decently — when they took the time to edit and published my work. However, they were less reliable on their end of things than I hoped, so I started looking for other things to help fill the gaps.

It was then that I got a seasonal job at Teavana for the Christmas season to help pay for the heating bill and I came up with a brilliant plan. I figured if I couldn’t find work in my field, then I would really work on making my dream — our dream — of Insanitek come to life. I would work on really putting it together and pulling the strings one at a time. I began to look for more freelance writing gigs for science writing to build things up and gain clients. I also began to reach out to various areas looking for self starting, self motivated employees to keep things going.

The present

At the present that is where I stand. I gave up on that “normal” life that everyone thinks of and decided to start working on my dream in earnest because the economy was crap and not giving me what I needed at the time. I decided to stop wasting my time on peddling in place and start moving forward.

The future

Many things can happen in the future. I am not delusional when it comes to that, and none of my plans are “set in stone” as they say. Outlined below are my goals to achieve over the next 365 days until I turn 35 years old. The order of these is hardly important — after all, I’m not so foolish as to think that I can control time, space, or any thing else to accomplish things precisely as I lay them out here.

Self improvement

No one is perfect. There is always room for self improvement. These are a few things I want to improve over the next year.

  • Become a better writer, editor, and copywriter. Along with this, become a better science journalist.
  • Learn how to do Tunisian stitch in crochet, then become very good at it.
  • Become better at matching colours, then become more fashion forward and stylish (with my own flair, of course).
  • Learn how to do my hair in more than just a low pony tail, bun or barrettes…
  • Take more me time to read.
  • Become a better statistician.
  • Get my committee to cooperate and get my master’s degree.

Longer term, bigger goals

All the above is well and good, but those are things that I can do in “my spare time” once I carve it out. Right now I have two very big goals in mind that I want plan to meet by this time next year. I also write down my motivations for these goals so I can keep them in mind when I need a reminder (or a swift kick in the pants), as well as any obstacles that I know I have. I come up with the solutions to the obstacles as I’m ready to tackle it and move forward. To do it right now would be more than overwhelming, and the solutions I come up with right now may be irrelevant to the options that I have at the time I tackle that particular part. Note, though, that it is a constant work in progress and you’ll likely see the thoughts and results in this blog over time.

  • Get into the National Guard Reserves
    • Motivation: I need to get into the Guard to be able to help pay off student loans and be able to afford health care on top of other necessities, like food.
    • Obstacles
      • Get my weight down from an embarrassing 220lbs to 153lbs
      • Be able to run 2 miles in 20 minutes or less
        • This requires being able to heal my feet and be rid of plantars faciitis
      • Perform 45+ full body situps with no foot support in 2 minutes
      • Perform 15+ full body pushups in 2 minutes
        • This requires being able to heal my carpel tunnel in my left wrist so I can support my own weight
      • Find the time to get to basic, despite the fact that it is a solid unpaid 6 weeks of training.
        • This requires being able to pre-pay rent for a couple months, which means finding a pile of money or winning the lottery (I can wish, can’t I).
        • This also requires finding someone to take care of the kittens for this time.
  • Get all facets of Insanitek up and prepared for being independently operational
    • Motivation: It isn’t hard to imagine what my motivation is here. There are three main facets of Insanitek, all of them double sided. My job is to get them set up and running, manned, and independent so I can sleep at night. This should be an interesting adventure and challenge.
    • Obstacles: There are likely a lot of obstacles I am not seeing at this moment. I will discover those as I come upon them
      • Money. When doesn’t the little green monster bite your ankles? I can barely afford any of my own bills, let alone pay other people to help me run Insanitek. Thankfully the software is free so I don’t have to worry about that.
      • Reliable help is hard to come by. Even my CIO, whom I love dearly, has his own life to deal with so helping me from time to time on Insanitek is a strain for him. After all, he is a student busting his butt to get good grades. It doesn’t help any that most of the people we take on are much the same. They are here because they believe in the idea and want to see it happen. Alas, we all have to work and pay the rent in the meantime until we get Insanitek off the ground enough to support us. I think that out of all of us working on Insanitek, I’m the one with the most time.
        • What I can do here is take extra money I have and shop for wholesale things I can resell in the giftshop, thus doing something productive for setting up the whole plan.
      • Make the content… all the content. This would be a hell of a lot easier with help, but as I can’t afford to pay people much, and I also want to maintain a high standard, it’s a bit more difficult than I’d planned. After all, I’m the only one “reliably” creating content for Insanitek Ink or anything else. I’m only one person. There is only so much I can do.
      • Money? Yeah, money.