I love to start each new year out with a list of goals for the next 12 months… but this year I’m going to do take a fresh approach. I’m going to have my traditional list of goals – dreams, ideas, financial thresholds, professional aims, parenting ideas I’d like to play with and realise – and of ungoals - of ideas, parameters, expectations of mySelf that I am releasing this year, effective immediately.
This idea was given to me by an old friend, a college instructor and single mom, whose bold life has always inspired me and whose bold “get your shit together” email recently shook me up.
Here it is – the good stuff first!
Ungoals
Releasing dependence on negative relationships and friendships, effective immediately and permanently. I do not need to invest my life, finances, and energies in those who do not re-vest or reciprocate in healthy ways. This includes professional, personal, and family relationships of every level. It’s basic Boundary-Setting with a dash of Divaesque Style!
Releasing need to have spiritual/religious identity and self-conception that fits with others’ world views. I am not a “Christian”, a “Buddhist”, nor am I an atheist. I am simply and only myself.
Releasing need to identify with a diet-based subculture. I am not “Raw”, I am not “Vegetarian”, I am not “Gluten-Free”, I am not “Omnivore”. I am simply and only myself, 100% Intuitive and Whole, and I am enough. My dietary choices are something that has shaped and defined me for years, and I’m releasing the need to be box-able in other’s eyes.
Accepting that I am capable of anything I dream and design to do, achieve and become. This includes earning a high income and total financial freedom and independence at a young age, traveling around the globe, learning multiple languages, giving heart and soul and resources to many lives, raising my son in a beautiful and nurturing way without requiring a two-parent home, and caring for my own personal needs and health sufficiently.
And now the fun stuff:
Goals
Taste 52 new wines... white, red, rose and you name it! One a week, and if I miss a week, I’ll catch up with two the next. I’d love to drive up into wine country, Napa Valley, later in the year when the trees are dropping leaves and the atmosphere is charged with electric winter chill… and wet my lips on every red, white, rose, dessert, sparkling, ice wine I can get my glass around. And I’d love to sample multi-cultural wines every chance I get – Italian, French, Australian, British, American… who else makes wine?
Pay off both remaining Credit Cards: This is a “financial freedom” goal related to my aim of being 100% debt free by age 30. Total pay-off of cards: $7400 by year’s end.
Go to a Laker’s game in L.A. – self explanatory, of course.
Ride on a real upside down rollercoaster! There is something in the core of me that feels orgasmic when I think about plunging falls and soaring heights. I’m a person of extremes sometimes masquerading as a moderate – yet, masquerading is the wrong word, for I am genuinely both these things. Roller coasters are evidently an expression of the Extreme Diva… only, not as impressive as, say, scaling Everest, since I would be strapped in. Right?
Complete a 10k and a Half Marathon. 2012 is my Year of Discovery. Discovery of my Self. Discovery of my physical abilities. Discovery of my personal capabilities. Discovery of who I am beneath the layers of who I’ve created myself to be in the name of survival and surThrival over the last quarter century. Discovery of just how endless my potential is in the face of extreme odds — thus, I’m going to push the envelope physically and I’m becoming a runner. Because it feels good (except when it doesn’t) and because I want to do this for Me.
As the year progresses and new challenges crop up, I’ll morph and work my way over, around, and through Life. This list is subject to change, but I really don’t think it’s going to do anything but grow… like me.
Signing off for now to go cuddle my almost-ten-month-old Diva Baby,
The Diva