![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptThe seventh day of the month that asks us to look backward and forward, and today's Challenge, challenge number four, is very much about the looking forward part of it.
The waiting period of 02020 started with the idea of "this will be a break so that you can accomplish those things that you have not had time enough to make a priority" for anyone who wasn't part of critical infrastructure and maintaining essential supplies. (For those people, the nightmare started immediately and has been unceasing since, only growing in intensity and danger the longer the lack of useful response proceeds, and for that, we are profoundly angry with you.) When it became clear this was not going to be a quick response, the attitude shifted to the idea that a person would be able to manage both their telework responsibilities and their domestic responsibilities, as well as any responsibilities they may have had to ensure their smalls were receiving education. (And there's still some pretty serious bullshit around what an appropriate learning environment means that is only further showcasing how little schooling is about educating.) Once it became clear that was an unsustainable ask (and, unsurprisingly, that it was a heavily gendered ask), for once in a lifetime, expectations seemed to drop, rather than insisting that with more of a product or service or other such thing that someone could, indeed, still have it all.
By the end of 02020, at least in a lot of the circles I was gathering information from (which happen to include a lot of minoritized people, so the widespread police violence of 02020 affected them significantly as well) had very softly landed at "your continued existence is an accomplishment in itself, and anything that you can do on top of that is bonus achievements," since they have already seen and known that things that were already difficult were going to get worse. (Even if a couple of things might have gotten more accessible, now that everyone had to use the tools, rather than just people who needed them.) As goals go, "kept myself alive" is something to accomplish, given how many people were shut out of achieving that one (and how many others deliberately courted death for themselves and others).
It's very tempting to say that 02021's goals all collapse into "Keep myself alive until the risk has lowered sufficiently that there is space capacity and ability to think about other things," and if that's you, then that's a reasonable expectation to set for yourself. You know yourself better than I ever will, and what capacitites you have and what your situation is that makes that goal the only one to focus on at this point. That's certainly a primary goal for 02021 - survive to see the other side of it.
There are other goals, however, that I would set before myself in addition to simply survival, because I do have the capacity to think about them and act on them in addition to making sure that I stay safe and keep my household safe.
This could be the year that Grief finishes, depending on the chapter designations and how much WTFery there is in the remaining segment of this book and the one unexamined book remaining to me in the Dragonriders of Pern series. I will certainly arrive at the end of the second author's run before the year is out, so I would like to have the time and energy to put some, if not all, of the second author's run of Director's Cut Grief into AO3, to preserve it in case Slacktiverse disappears at some point.
I also intend to continue doing as many exchanges as look interesting to me, because it helps to get the words out onto something and because I like writing to various spec and prompts. And I often end up doing more, in terms of words, than I think I have, when I look back on the things that are being counted, much less all of the words that are uncounted.
I've already set up some professional opportunities for myself for this year, and I very much intend to keep pursuing those as they come to my attention and and if I feel like I have the capacity to do so.
I'd like to finish a few more games in 02021 than I did in 02020, but that means giving those things time, and time is the thing I often find myself shortest of when trying to decide between different things to do.
I really want to say something like "I will crush a systemic problem in 02021 and hear the lamentations of its adherents," but a lot of my reading reminds me that there are very rarely individual solutions to systemic problems, and the work that is involved in dismantling them will take a very long time, with so many people (and their wealth) invested in ways that uphold current terrible systems. So, truthfully, shouting that I'm going to take down a systemic problem is only setting myself up for failure, and that seems like the worst idea when it comes to goals.
I feel like there should be a "new" goal here, something in the form of "I'm going to try something new this year," but truthfully, a lot of new things often end up with materials of their own and I don't have the physical space to want to have to have a "new" thing come in. (It doesn't have to be physical.
Maybe the very condensed version of the goal for 02021 is to be the best person that I can be, to celebrate them when they are awesome, and to find a way of making them better when they're not. (I'm going to need a lot more help on the former than the latter.)
In your own space, create some goals.Which takes on some additional meanings, I suppose, given how absolutely derailed plans were in about March or so of 02020 and have been restored either well or poorly, based on whether your government had competent people who were focused on public health and safety or partisans who were looking for a grift to enrich themselves with, who preferred to disclaim the existence of a very real threat because they believed doing so would ensure their electoral victory in the contests of 02020, or who could not allow the prospect of their political opposition doing anything that might be seen as favorable.
The waiting period of 02020 started with the idea of "this will be a break so that you can accomplish those things that you have not had time enough to make a priority" for anyone who wasn't part of critical infrastructure and maintaining essential supplies. (For those people, the nightmare started immediately and has been unceasing since, only growing in intensity and danger the longer the lack of useful response proceeds, and for that, we are profoundly angry with you.) When it became clear this was not going to be a quick response, the attitude shifted to the idea that a person would be able to manage both their telework responsibilities and their domestic responsibilities, as well as any responsibilities they may have had to ensure their smalls were receiving education. (And there's still some pretty serious bullshit around what an appropriate learning environment means that is only further showcasing how little schooling is about educating.) Once it became clear that was an unsustainable ask (and, unsurprisingly, that it was a heavily gendered ask), for once in a lifetime, expectations seemed to drop, rather than insisting that with more of a product or service or other such thing that someone could, indeed, still have it all.
By the end of 02020, at least in a lot of the circles I was gathering information from (which happen to include a lot of minoritized people, so the widespread police violence of 02020 affected them significantly as well) had very softly landed at "your continued existence is an accomplishment in itself, and anything that you can do on top of that is bonus achievements," since they have already seen and known that things that were already difficult were going to get worse. (Even if a couple of things might have gotten more accessible, now that everyone had to use the tools, rather than just people who needed them.) As goals go, "kept myself alive" is something to accomplish, given how many people were shut out of achieving that one (and how many others deliberately courted death for themselves and others).
It's very tempting to say that 02021's goals all collapse into "Keep myself alive until the risk has lowered sufficiently that there is space capacity and ability to think about other things," and if that's you, then that's a reasonable expectation to set for yourself. You know yourself better than I ever will, and what capacitites you have and what your situation is that makes that goal the only one to focus on at this point. That's certainly a primary goal for 02021 - survive to see the other side of it.
There are other goals, however, that I would set before myself in addition to simply survival, because I do have the capacity to think about them and act on them in addition to making sure that I stay safe and keep my household safe.
This could be the year that Grief finishes, depending on the chapter designations and how much WTFery there is in the remaining segment of this book and the one unexamined book remaining to me in the Dragonriders of Pern series. I will certainly arrive at the end of the second author's run before the year is out, so I would like to have the time and energy to put some, if not all, of the second author's run of Director's Cut Grief into AO3, to preserve it in case Slacktiverse disappears at some point.
I also intend to continue doing as many exchanges as look interesting to me, because it helps to get the words out onto something and because I like writing to various spec and prompts. And I often end up doing more, in terms of words, than I think I have, when I look back on the things that are being counted, much less all of the words that are uncounted.
I've already set up some professional opportunities for myself for this year, and I very much intend to keep pursuing those as they come to my attention and and if I feel like I have the capacity to do so.
I'd like to finish a few more games in 02021 than I did in 02020, but that means giving those things time, and time is the thing I often find myself shortest of when trying to decide between different things to do.
I really want to say something like "I will crush a systemic problem in 02021 and hear the lamentations of its adherents," but a lot of my reading reminds me that there are very rarely individual solutions to systemic problems, and the work that is involved in dismantling them will take a very long time, with so many people (and their wealth) invested in ways that uphold current terrible systems. So, truthfully, shouting that I'm going to take down a systemic problem is only setting myself up for failure, and that seems like the worst idea when it comes to goals.
I feel like there should be a "new" goal here, something in the form of "I'm going to try something new this year," but truthfully, a lot of new things often end up with materials of their own and I don't have the physical space to want to have to have a "new" thing come in. (It doesn't have to be physical.
Do you want to write that fanfic that has been on your mind? Make that essay on the meta of your favorite fandom? Learn a new language? Read your stack of To Be Read books? Finally watch every episode of every version of The Twilight Zone?)So, perhaps in the same vein of people who choose a word for the upcoming year as their lodestone, perhaps my "new" goal is something about state of mind, rather than physical activity (although attempting to achieve new states of mind is often paired with new physical activities.) Something like "I want to be kinder to myself this year" is a good goal, although that particular one seems to be getting pushback from my brain, which has aliased "being kinder to myself" with "absolving myself of responsibility for harms my actions may cause and proceeding in ignorance or obtuseness," which, I think, is my brain hlepfully reminding me of the various things I've read about the difference between deep self-care that is about making sure your core stays strong and pausing to regenerate so that you can continue and the more surface-level, consumerism-focused idea of self-care. (Which gets further tangled in that sometimes the thing that is the best self-care for yourself is to do that consumerist thing, because that's going to give you at least a small dose of genuine happiness. Brains are weird, okay?) Or my brain hlepfully reminding me that there are already too many people who do terrible things and then demand all of the discourse in the room be about how apologetic they are and that it's not a signifier of their internal character and there's nothing left to talk about the actual harms they did. Possibly with a "don't be That Asshole" attached, and it is concerned that being more forgiving and kinder to myself will lead to this sort of apologia in a slippery-slope sort of way.
Maybe the very condensed version of the goal for 02021 is to be the best person that I can be, to celebrate them when they are awesome, and to find a way of making them better when they're not. (I'm going to need a lot more help on the former than the latter.)
