One of my biggest goals last year was to run 10km – for me it is not just a distance goal for the sake of having a distance goal, but rather cultivating the health and fitness required to complete the goal. Prior to last year my chronic migraine episodes kept setting me back, and in 2023 apart from the few months of managing my covid infection I managed to run regularly enough. That kind of regularity: the capacity to go out of the door before sunrise and do something exerting for an hour or so – it is really not about the metrics I’ve managed to accomplish but the underlying baseline that is very precious to me. It is both physical and psychological, to keep on wanting to do something that is immediately exhausting but only rewarding in the long run.
So bearing the mindset that it is the improvement to this baseline that I wish to seek, I would like to aspire to do just one pull up in 2024. I can barely lift 5kg of weight with one arm right now, so it feels a somewhat unattainable goal for me. But one can aspire right?
Being able to do one pull-up would mean
- I am healthy enough to have regular weight-training sessions – no migraines and covid
- I have become much physically stronger than I am now, or ever
- psychologically I am able to maintain the consistency of training
- I am training well enough to have enough momentum and progression
- I still care enough about my body to work towards this goal
- no dramatic events with my loved ones or the world
Perhaps these things sound easy but I have gone through long dark periods of my life when I simply gave up on my self and my life. Also getting covid is like a piece of cake in this world even with all the precautions I can do, so it would be a huge stroke of luck to my covid-free for this year.
Other nice-to-haves
Age has taught me not to be too ambitious in terms of setting goals, or else it is just setting myself up for feelings of defeat. So I’ll be happy enough if at the end of 2024 I’ve managed to accomplish one single pull-up, since that will mean the system underlying my health is healthy. But I’ll just write down some nice-to-haves for the record, so I can review them at the end of the year without judgement.
improve my psychological state
Last year I wrote:
I think one of the greatest skills in life is to be able to switch contexts and psychological states quickly: not holding on to the past or dwelling on things longer than we should, being able to recognise a rut and know how to dig our selves out of it
I think I am still very early on this journey. Due to my personal historical baggage I tend to dwell a lot, but I want to get better at digging myself out of ruts. One of the biggest mindsets shifts I have had in recent years is to see such internal shifts as a matter of practice. I am getting better at generating mini turning points when I am in a rut, but once in a while I get swept into a deep pit of depression where I lose all will to live. Sometimes losing the will to live is not just about actively seeking to die, but rather passively dying inside without being capable of doing anything that would inject just that necessary bit of aliveness. I am learning to go through the motions of doing things I think will enrich me even if I feel dead inside. During these times I think I just need to ignore my depressive feelings a bit and focus on shaping the my brain instead. My soul could be dead, but my brain is always willing to learn. I just need to remember this.
cultivate my creative spirit
Apart from writing I struggle with having any sort of creative output. I feel like a lot of it is due to fatigue and the fact that I have very little life force or spiritual energy. My partner has this huge bonfire driving her every single day, whereas I have this tiny little flame that is threatening to go out at any given time.
I don’t really know how to stoke this fire or if it is even possible. Should I accept that I am just built differently or rather had too much trauma to be any other way?
For now I choose to believe that the creative spirit can be cultivated. I think it is very important to have that sort of creative capacity to fall back upon, because being creative is not just about artistic output but having the creative resourcefulness to meet life’s challenges.
So I continue to practice – in zen they teach it is all about taking just one more breath – I try to do small little creative acts to pepper my day and my life. Even if they amount to nothing there is a reservoir of me trying.
have an uneventful year
These days before I sleep I whisper to my partner – hope tomorrow is an uneventful day. As I age I learn to really appreciate the days that pass without drama. I hope there will not be unwanted sudden phone calls, new wars breaking out, new viruses running rampant. It seems like such a simple wish but based on current trends it seems impossible. I’ll still hope for it though.
But just like last year, if there are any unexpected events that may occur, I hope to meet them with as much equanimity as I can muster.
everything feeds into the other
If I’m lucky enough to have everything develop in tandem, I believe I’ll start to see creative breakthroughs in my life. Again this is not about creative output but I tend to be stuck in chronic unhealthy loops, so I hope to discover new ways of perceiving the world and my self. It all seems haphazard and scattered now, and whatever wins I manage to accumulate seem minuscule and insignificant, but I want to believe I am gathering different pieces of myself towards a sense of integrated wholeness.
But life often doesn’t seem to work the way we want it to be, so I am glad to settle for just one pull-up. At the very least it is not too abstract of a goal and has actionable steps towards it.
One of the most interesting things about writing yearly posts like these is going back to look at what I had written for the last year. Did I manage to do some of those things I had hoped for? Were there things I had aspired for but changed my mind along the way? Am I still stuck at where I was last year? Did I regress? It is also helpful to reminded of who I was and who I wanted to be. Sometimes I forget that my previous selves were different from me, sometimes they have lessons to teach me.
If I am still alive this time next year, it will be an enriching experience to review this post, once again.