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F' that "end of decade" stuff
For a while there were memes going around Twitter of the form "There are X days left in this decade; what have you accomplished?"
This set ALL my hackles up. Year ends are arbitrary. Decade ends are equally arbitrary; they just don't happen as often. No one should measure themselves by such an arbitrary thing.
Sure, I get that it's wise to reflect on one's accomplishments and for some people I know "I'm still alive and a functional human being who's good to be around some of the time" is a giant effort and I appreciate those friends, too, and very much want them to continue being around.
Me? My biggest accomplishment was that I don't seem to have utterly ruined my children in the last decade. This was not at all a certainty at many points. But anyway, back to the rant.
One of the important things I try to keep in mind is that endeavors take their own time. If I'm working on a thing, or you are working on a thing, then trying to get it done by some arbitrary deadline is likely counterproductive. I have a personal love-hate relationship with deadlines in my regular life. They can be good motivational tools but we hates them we does, Precious!
I was pleased to see that - at least in the Twitter circles I frequent - the first wave of memes was soon followed by a series of affirmations of the form "you are a good and valid person regardless of accomplishments" and "don't force yourself into measurement based on someone's external notion of accomplishment" and generally disparaging arbitrary deadlines.
You call it a bubble; I call it a carefully curated group of inspiring humans.
This set ALL my hackles up. Year ends are arbitrary. Decade ends are equally arbitrary; they just don't happen as often. No one should measure themselves by such an arbitrary thing.
Sure, I get that it's wise to reflect on one's accomplishments and for some people I know "I'm still alive and a functional human being who's good to be around some of the time" is a giant effort and I appreciate those friends, too, and very much want them to continue being around.
Me? My biggest accomplishment was that I don't seem to have utterly ruined my children in the last decade. This was not at all a certainty at many points. But anyway, back to the rant.
One of the important things I try to keep in mind is that endeavors take their own time. If I'm working on a thing, or you are working on a thing, then trying to get it done by some arbitrary deadline is likely counterproductive. I have a personal love-hate relationship with deadlines in my regular life. They can be good motivational tools but we hates them we does, Precious!
I was pleased to see that - at least in the Twitter circles I frequent - the first wave of memes was soon followed by a series of affirmations of the form "you are a good and valid person regardless of accomplishments" and "don't force yourself into measurement based on someone's external notion of accomplishment" and generally disparaging arbitrary deadlines.
You call it a bubble; I call it a carefully curated group of inspiring humans.
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I try to set goals so that I have a direction to march, but I'm not all that wedded to the finishing date. I'm making progress at the pace that makes sense for the circumstance. My "drug free by 45" goal isn't going to happen, and I'm ok with that. In this case, I'm already taking less than half the drugs I was 10 years ago, so yay for getting halfway down that specific road towards that particular goal. ("Drug" in this case is "prescription." I don't smoke or drink or take anything recreationally.)
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Still, as I said, I'm walking in the right direction.