Got Goals? Bloghop: Rethinking Things

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I somehow managed to skip the entire month of December, which I suspect is something I've never done in all the years I've been blogging. But the truth is, I've been procrastinating on doing this post.

I've been looking for either that sense of optimism with which I attacked my goals pre-2014... or the grim-but-hidden-under-a-thin-veneer-of-optimistic determination I've resorted to since that damnable year, but as the end of 2018, I found very little other than introspection.

Yeah. As I'm writing this, I realize I'm either going to have to heavily self-censor before posting, or just accept the fact that sometimes, being honest means being a bit of a downer.

So maybe let's just start with some good news. That would be that I'm fairly certain that after five years of disaster following disaster... my family and I are doing... okay.

But the truth of the matter is that getting us here meant that I had to make some serious sacrifices in my writing, social networking, publishing, health... Basically almost every aspect of my life. So 2018 ended on a high note... But it also exacted the heavy cost of everything I'd tried to defer paying on for five years.

And... After the reckoning... I just realized that... I, the person you had known from this blog, had mostly been obliterated in 2014 and the years that followed. And as things grew harder and harder, the more I withdrew from social media, because I simply couldn't maintain a facade of being happy. And it's not just my social media. It's my social life in general. I have to admit that I largely withdrew from everything, simply because I couldn't stand the thought of lying, but also didn't want to be that person who complained and bemoaned their fate the whole time.

It didn't matter as much for the better part of five years, because there's barely breathing room to think about anything but surviving the next disaster. But now that the dust is settling, I'm starting to realize that almost nothing I had before is left to me. It's quite an isolating, indescribable feeling. Perhaps the closest thing I can relate it to was going into a war for my life and somehow managing to win... and still come home to discover I lost everything anyway.

Where does one go from there?

This is something I've been grappling with since November, but there are no easy answers. But this past five years have been the closest thing I've experienced to living in a story. Right down to the dastardly evil deeds, face-heel turns, and a massive climactic moment. Right now, I'm feeling like I'm at the resolution stage of that story. 

And I've learned I'm a being of incredible power and resilience. A force of nature of unlimited potential. 

But I find myself yearning back to easier times. Repeatedly trying to do things that hearken back to those times in the hope that if I can get back onto that track, I can go back to the same trajectory I had been on. 

The thing is... that's not possible anymore. 

It's kind of sad to realize, and yet, it's exciting too. Because at the heart of it, it means that I'm at a new chapter in my life. I get to start from scratch.

The problem I'm having as of now (and the reason why I left this post until the absolute last) is that I don't know how far I want to take this "from scratch" idea. Because I actually feel like I really have to re-evaluate my priorities and how I'm going about them.

Which means that some things that I've been doing for the better part of a decade might end up being cut out of my life or otherwise cut right down to the absolute basics.

So for now, I decided not to set any official goals other than my five-year goal of earning $7,500 per year from my writing skills. For now, I need to figure out what I want, in what order, before I lock myself in for the year.

How are you doing? Are you setting goals for 2019, or are you also holding off for a bit to figure out what you want?