2018, meh

What will I remember when I look back on the last year?

Not much because my long term memory is basically no longer functional.

I want my focus for 2019 to be living an intentional life. For me, that means giving myself time and empty space to think and reflect, which I hope will improve my memory and help me clarify where I am and where I want to go.

A while ago I deleted Facebook and Instagram from my phone and logged out on my work computer, so I can only look at social media at home; I wouldn’t mind just completely logging out from them for a while. My near-constant state of distraction has lead my work to suffer, my memory to suffer, and honestly I think it’s contributing to my general sense of unease and dissatisfaction. I think it has also heavily contributed to my lack of having close friendships.

My saving grace has been the groups I join around the sports I do; currently that is the yeti’s cold water swim group, in the past it has been bike teams. However, I am not great at getting close to people, so I honestly don’t know any of the yeti’s that well and I don’t typically see them outside of the swims. I need to read a book about how to make and keep friends, because seriously I don’t know how.

I recently read a few books on these topics that are heavily informing my thoughts on intention and reflection; specifically The Bullet Journal Method, Make Time, and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (which I read a while ago but reread a lot).

I tried to do a bullet journal two years ago, but I don’t think I truly understood its value until reading the book by the creator. Rather then just a daily todo list, it’s a place for daily reflection, planning, and getting really honest about how you choose to spend your time.

Make Time is more of a nuts and bolts approach to creating time for projects; while many of the tips are pretty obvious, I think overall it is about being intentional with your time. Their version of a “distraction free” phone doesn’t even have a browser on it, much less social media!

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck is about really evaluating your values and beliefs, and getting real about whether or not you live by those values. It’s about letting go of things that don’t matter, and focusing on what truly does. This is the theme of the Bullet Journal Method, letting go of things that aren’t critical, so that you can direct your time and energy on what will make you happy and leave you fulfilled—but BuJo gives you the toolkit to do this on a day-to-day basis.

I feel like I’ve been floating for years without much direction, but I haven’t actually done much to change that. Complaining about it certainly hasn’t helped. When I do look back on 2018, I see how this is effecting my life; all spring I begrudgingly trained for Ironman Santa Rosa and then had a not very good race (shocking), and then instead of spending the summer camping and having fun, I sold my house and bought a new one. The highlight has been taking up swimming outside of Ironman, which I didn’t really start doing until September, just in time for the cold water season to start.

So I’ll be devoting 2019 to reflection, intentionality, and IRL social interactions (aka attempting to make friends).