With each new year everyone is thinking of goals they would like to accomplish, bad habits they need to quit, and always that added holiday weight they need to lose. And for most people this motivation is heartfelt but short lived.
I myself am like everyone else. I have always been a person to make list and set goals usually to only avoid or forget them all later. I do it with the best intentions to improve myself in certain aspects. Sometimes the deadlines help ward off procrastination, other times once the timeline has come and gone I find myself disappointed.
This is especially true when you are chronically ill. When your body and your life are completely unpredictable from one minute to the next it is incredibly hard to set goals and keep them.
Every year I sit down and make a list of the things I would like to achieve in the forth coming year. The list usually in tells things along the lines of; get healthier, focus on and do more school, work on my art, socialize more, and go places. For the average person this probably sounds easy however for me it is completely unobtainable.
Get Healthier; that is something I absolutely want to achieve but that is way too broad of a category to cover in one year. I should make it easy on myself and go for “Research and try a new treatment or work on being able to handle eating more food”.
Focus on School; honestly I should graduate from college this summer. I’ve only acquired a year’s worth of credits. And as much as I love school, I can’t physically go and the college I attend doesn’t offer the classes I need to finish my degree online. So I’m basically screwed there.
Work on My Art; that is probably the most likely to happen. Even though being sick has killed my imagination. Not to mention going without sleep and only feeling like laying in bed all day makes getting up and building canvas and working on art installations a challenge.
Socialize More; more? Haha. I should say just socialize. I’ve got Facebook though and my best friend that lives and hour away so we’ll say I’m rating mediocre on that one.
And Going Places; obviously I don’t mean the doctor’s office. I would love to be able to take a trip and not to go see a doctor across the country, but at this point I might settle for that.
The intention of this was not to come off as depressing but simply to prove a point. Even though I’m not checking off goals doesn’t mean I’m not living. And just because I have learned to set my bar of expectations for myself lower doesn’t mean I’ve given up. I still have dreams. It’s all about realization and adaption.
My world is a very different one than yours and I along with millions of other people who are chronically ill just have to learn to tweak the world to fit us. Our mountains may be a little bit higher but our spirits are also a little bit stronger. So when we win our wars, those hidden dreams and low expectations will be blown out of proportion when we achieve them tenfold.
So cheers to the New Year! To living it to YOUR fullest and achieving your own goals, as grandiose are minuscule as they may be!
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