silveradept | Fandom Snowflake 09 - Malo San Maka (Reply)

In your own space, set some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private.

Goals are tough things for me. They come with the possibility of failure if you set them at about the right spot, and failure is a thing that I haven't done well with in my life. That's a lot of privilege talking, but it's also the stark reality that all of that privilege hasn't actually been able to insulate or shield me from the realities of adulthood. The emotional crash hits harder when you realize that you've been playing on an easy difficulty and the game is still too hard to be able to succeed and thrive at. Goals are hard to create for yourself when you feel like just staying ahead of doom is going to take all your effort and resources.

That's catastrophising, though, and hopefully, needed perspective will arrive to keep the brainweasels out when they threaten to get in. Preferably not, however, by having my friends get hammered harder and invite comparison of one's relative privilege.

Another difficulty with goals is their scope. For some reason, hearing "goals" seems to invoke "major life choices and decisions", and, well, that privilege has actually got me to completion on most of those. Required education, check. Degree one, check. Degree two, check. Professional, full-time employment at a job I enjoy doing, check.

Become respected professional in field...insufficient data. How do you define respect? Publishing articles? Done. Giving presentations at conferences? Done again. Sparking a nationwide movement? Not so much. Being a well-known name with millions of Twitter followers? Not happening. Getting an idea approved at the workplace and having it come to fruition? Unlikely. (The Organization doesn't do a lot of solicitation of ideas from the front lines, and doesn't have a whole lot of process for dealing with them anyway.) Some other thing, then. Must be, and I'm sure I'll be happy to have it when it arrives.

So, goal-setting things that I see say that goals need to be small, measurable, attainable, and so forth. Think very directly, so that you can plot out the path to the goal, know when the goal will have been met, and take concrete steps on the path. If asked, though, I...tend to draw a blank. I don't want my goals to be "keep doing the things I'm already doing", but "do something new" is scary, because it's possible that someone might not actually like what I do. Or, people might like it, but it might not be the most popular thing ever, or there's someone else over there that's better than I am and I should just quit. This probably sounds familiar to a lot of other fannish people, who have each found their reasons to forge ahead anyway.

From talking about fears, worries, and processes in this entry, a few goals do all manage to appear.

Try things that are interesting
Be proud of yourself
Support others where you can

The decision to do Fandom Snowflake was based on looking at a friend's page and thinking it was interesting enough to do. Maybe I'll see an exchange or a prompt fill request later on and decide to do it. And then I have to remember to be proud of doing it and that it will likely be just fine and well-received because I took the time to do it for someone else in a fandom and pairing they want. Supporting others on their way is always good practice - they might be the people that have something good to wipe that I'll enjoy, too.

So, maybe they're not the most concrete of goals, but they definitely have steps that can be taken to feel like I'm getting them accomplished!