Tag Archives: goals

2016 To-Do List Challenge Part 3: Partial Credit

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Full disclosure: I did not complete all 12 items on my to-do list. Gosh darn it, you guys. I KNOW.

After the success of the first six items, I was keen as mustard to crack on. And then… I didn’t really crack on. I made moves towards completing all the remaining items but didn’t get any of them quite over the line, which is disappointing. But [partial] credit where [partial] credit is due – I had a lot to try and squeeze in. The key message seems to be doing something/anything/a bit is better than doing nothing. Right?

Item #8: Invent own cocktail and serve to friends

Why was it on the list? I had visions on Tom Cruise-esque shaker-flipping and fancy-pants colourful drinks with punny names and high alcohol content which I could whip up and serve with a flourish along the lines of “why yes, this is my signature drink, the Gin Weasley”. Or, in other words, I don’t really know. The ‘serve to friends’ bit was important, because it meant the drink had to be drinkable and not just a random mix of whatever spirits happened to be in my cupboard.

Achievement? I admit I gave this one a red hot go. I researched cocktail making, learnt about a thing called ‘the golden ratio’ that is apparently key to cocktail flavour success.

I turned a little bit mad scientist and got really, very drunk in ‘the lab’ (my kitchen).

I did not nail the cocktail. At all.

(They were all terrible).

Item #1: Go horse riding

Why was it on the list? Duh, because horse riding is ace.

Achievement? Research only. I know where to go, what is costs, and what I need to do to make it happen – I just didn’t get it done by year’s end.

Item #11: Take a short course

Why was it on the list? Learning is fun.

Achievement? Turns out December is not the time to try and do a short course of any kind. Who would have thunk it, right? Partial credit though, because I will be knocking this over in the first couple of weeks in January. I’ve got plans.

Item #9: Play cricket in a park

Why was it on the list? I’m what you would call indoorsy. This seemed a good excuse to get outside. Preferably with a side of picnicking and beers.

Achievement? Purchased cricket bat from op shop. Did not use.

Item #10: Road trip

Why was it on the list? Road trips are the best.

Achievement? Created road trip playlist. While that is important, not much progress here at all. Trying to squeeze in a road trip and a bunch of Christmas catch ups simultaneously is not easy. Perhaps if I had driven somewhere slowly? Like, really slowly?

….

Item #12: Walk Lofty

Why was it on the list? God knows. Do I want to walk up a mountain? No, no I don’t. But I feel like I have failed as an Adelaidean by having never attempted old mate Lofty.

Achievement? I could say the Christmas heat wave thwarted this one, but that would be a half truth. I had tentative plans to smash this out with a friend, and weather and scheduling did prevent that, but in all honesty, the catch up was always more likely to be beers than mountains. Sigh.

beer

Beer > Mountains

So there we have it. Not quite a success, not quite a failure.To be honest, the best lesson from the entire exercise was that there is time. There is time to start, to try, and to complete a lot. 6/12 is better than 0/12, and the remainder will probably (maybe) be polished off early this year now some of the wheels are in motion. If you know anything about cocktails and can save me from myself, the Gin Weasley still needs to happen.

‘Til next time,

Sig

 

 

 

2016 To-Do List Challenge Part 2: Whoa, we’re halfway there

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Whoa-oh!

lizard-on-a-chair

Lizard on a chair

^ I’m so, so sorry, but this has by far been my favourite meme of 2016. I couldn’t resist. Well played, internet. Well played.

So, not to boast or anything but this list business is going swimmingly. I admit that after my last post on the matter I felt like I may have bitten off more than I could chew, but so many people have got behind the idea and have helped me figure out how this whole adventure can work. And suddenly, I’m actually halfway there!

Item #6 – learn to play a musical instrument 

Why was it on the list? As a kid I was relatively musical. I didn’t have much talent, but I loved making music and had lots of lessons in various instruments. And then I stopped, and that makes me kind of sad. Late in 2015 there was a brief foray into the ukelele which involved lots of you-tubing and one fairly mediocre triumphant cover of that 3-chord classic ‘You are my sunshine’ but the cheap, multi-coloured uke I bought refused to tune properly so now sits on a shelf, a monument to half-realised dreams.

Fortunately, my friend Jess is musical, with a background in piano and song and even a history of teaching people like me how to make the ol’ black-n-whites play a tune.

Cut to: item #7 – learn to use chopsticks

Why was it on the list? Because it’s a life skill and has been on each of my annual goals lists since oh, forever. It’s what I call a rollover goal and anyone who has been to Sushi Train with me knows the struggle is real. How embarrassment. But for this one I sort of cheated reinterpreted. Item #7 became:

Item #7 – learn to use chopsticks

So I give you this…

Yep. I was harbouring a secret musical gift. Who knew.

Item #2 – go to outdoor cinema

Why was it on the list? I was super bummed that I missed the moonlight cinema sessions last year (and the year before, and the year before) because it’s stacks of fun. As luck would have it, my mate Rose stumbled upon a free outdoor screening that the City of Unley were putting on at the Capri Theatre on Goodwood Road. Free, you say? Sold!

The best part about outdoor cinema is packing a picnic and let me tell you: when we picnic, we picnic hard.

picnic
picnic2

The screening was Eddie the Eagle, a film I would not normally have seen, but its schmaltzy sentimental (and apparently historically loose) vibe was good for picnicking and made for easy watching in a outdoorsy setting. I wouldn’t want to watch anything that required too much concentration at outdoor cinema anyway, so this suited me just fine. So, is ski jumping on the list for 2017?

No, thank you.

Item #4 – go rock climbing / abseiling 

Why was it on the list? Honestly? I have no earthly idea. I can’t remember why this made it onto the list at all. Probably I saw it on tv and thought it looked cool. I do know it’s something I have never tried before, so maybe that’s a good enough reason.

Rose and I hit up Magpie Springs at Willunga – a cute but jumbled sort of hippy / yoga / cafe / gallery / winery set up which Google told me also had a climbing wall that it seemed would fit the bill. It’s not a huge wall and, no kidding, we mocked it. This was going to be a piece of cake. Well.

That shit is hard.

Item#3 – go on a wine tour

Why was it on the list? Um, because wine tours are awesome and visiting cellar doors to chat with the winemakers is always worth it.

Since we were down that way, it seemed a good opportunity to hit up McLaren Vale for a self-driven mini wine tour. We took in Alpha Box + Dice, had a pit stop for pizza lunch at Pizzateca, and finished off at Samuel’s Gorge.

Boom. Wine tour. Done.

Item #5 – write and post a handwritten letter

Why was it on the list? Letter writing is a bit of a lost art. It’s rare, but personally I love getting mail that doesn’t come in a window-face envelope and knowing someone has thought of me enough to take the time to write. I thought sending a personal letter to a friend would be a nice, thoughtful, old timey, heartwarming thing to do.

And really, it was the quickest and easiest thing on the list so there is no excuse for not knocking this over sooner.

I don’t want to overshare the contents but I wrote the letter and loved the process. Handwriting brought out a different style of writing than email or text and jeepers does my penmanship need a little love.

 

TLDR: current tally is 6/12.

‘Til next time,

Sig

2016 To-Do List Challenge Part 1: the best laid plans of [second] mice and men

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At the start of the year, I wrote a to-do list. I felt like in 2015 I got caught up in the have-tos and must-dos and somehow skipped a lot of just-for-fun stuff that I should have been doing, if I thought about how I really wanted to spend my time. So, when it came to thinking about 2016 and how I wanted it to go, I wrote a list 12 fun things that I wanted to do with the aim of accomplishing one per month. It was probably some idea I saw on Instagram about living meaningfully or something, and I’m always vaguely optimistic in the new year. Anyway, it seemed a good plan, so I wrote my list and I was pretty chuffed about it.

todo

And do you know what? It’s the end of November and I have not done a single one.

Not a single one!

And I’m really disappointed. It’s not like they were even hard big-ticket things, like writing a book, or things that required a lot of money, like eating French cheese in Paris (both bucket list items, in case you were wondering). Some of them would have needed an afternoon at most, so time can’t have been a factor either. Am I just the walking epitome of slackness? What are you doing, April?

Luckily, I love deadlines and happen to [legitimately, not in a cliche job interview way] work best under pressure. Sure, there’s only a handful of weeks left in the year, but I think I can – potentially with a few clever reinterpretations or edits based on time restraints – smash out all 12 in this last leg of the year. There is nothing more satisfying than a completed to-do list, after all.

I already have a very vague bare-bones sort of plan of how to make it work. 2016: game on.

‘Til next time,

Sig

Mental game: the ‘run and hide’ method

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A lot has been written about goal setting specific to roller derby. A few years ago, my team mate and derby idol St Eve (aka Eve Inbetta) wrote a  great post that I found incredibly helpful on how to set meaningful derby goals – you can read it here. But while much gets said about how to set goals and why having them is a good idea, not much gets said about what to do when you follow all the steps, do all the right things, and still fall short of your goals. Mental game training is all about resilience, but when things just don’t work, repeatedly, despite your very best efforts, it can seriously dent your confidence. It certainly did mine.

I’m not a natural athlete by any definition. And while derby was once lauded as a sport for non-athletes, the way the game is played today is far more suited to those with a natural sporty edge. I take derby seriously, I try to set realistic goals, I work hard on fixing my mental game and improving my weaker skills. But ultimately I ended up taking a very long break this year because not a single one of my goals for the first half of 2016 came to fruition and, I’m not gonna lie, it hurt. A lot. It’s not like I was just casually plodding along, hoping for the best.

I tried HARD and I failed.

I have thought long and hard about why this was and what it meant, and why I felt so humiliated. I’ve been skating with my league for 3+ years. Had I set unrealistic goals? I didn’t think so. Am I just a bad skater? I’m not great but I’m not awful, surely? It’s easy to say don’t compare yourself to others, but when people take to something you struggle with like ducks to water, it’s hard not to wonder what secret they have that you’re missing out on. I did my best, what more could I do? I’ve pondered a lot during my break whether there is even a place for me in derby if I can be around for this long and still not achieve some seemingly very achievable things.

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Why don’t you work?

There’s a great saying about falling down nine times and getting up ten, but let me tell you how exhausting that can be. As an over-thinker, over-analyser, and my biggest critic, soldiering on was only serving to dig my hole deeper. I was too close, too critical, too sore. It’s no surprise to me that eventually I had to run away to lick my wounds. This mental game business is hard work, and while goals are important and there are ways to set good ones that put you on the right track, success is never a given. It’s a sucky truth that sometimes things just don’t work out.

Taking a break has not been easy. As much as I needed to clear away some thoughts and set my derby brain in order, the trade-off has been feelings of displacement and serious FOMO. Still, taking a break was the right thing for me and if it has taught me one thing it’s that I’m not ready to give it all away. I hope I can find my place again soon.

So how do you build yourself up when you fall short? Shit dude, you’re asking the wrong girl because I have no idea. But when I head back to training in November, I’m going to start by trying a few of these and seeing how it goes:

  • Focus on more process goals and fewer outcome goals
  • Take a step back; don’t over analyse
  • Ask for feedback; ask for help
  • Celebrate small wins
  • Be kind to yourself

If you have any advice, I’d be keen to hear it.

‘Til next time,

Sig