On Making Goals

Happy Friday! I'm definitely looking forward to the weekend. I have some writing to catch up on, and some sketches and swatches to work through, but I'm really looking forward to taking it slow the next couple days. My Netflix queue has gotten really long over the past couple months, so I definitely want to take some time to settle in with a project and a warm beverage and try to put a dent in that.

My goal for my KAL sweater this week was to join the fronts, and I'm just a few more rows away from reaching that. One of my projects in 2019 is to set reasonable goals for myself. Too often, I try to just plow through things, or I'll tell myself that I need to finish something as quickly as possible. Then I get frustrated when I inevitably need a night off, and I feel unproductive and disappointed. So I'm trying something new.

This week, when I was setting my progress goals, I was a few rows away from finishing the upper back of this sweater, and I decided that getting the fronts picked up and joined was a good goal. Similarly, my goal on my current sample was to join the fronts and the back and get six more inches of the body knit. Once I've hit my goal for the week, I can put the project aside. Nothing is stopping me from going further if I want to, but I've taken the pressure off to keep going until I can't go anymore. So far this seems to be working well for me, and I think it will be really good for me to integrate it and make it a natural practice over the course of the year.

Honestly, I should have started this years ago, and it's amazing how much better I feel since I've started intentionally being gentle with myself as regular practice, and not just when I'm feeling too burnt out to move. I've spent my whole life worrying about not being good enough, or productive enough, or creative enough, or clever enough, and it's a big change for me to say that I'm already enough, and that I don't need to be any more or any less than I already am, and that it's okay to release that pressure. It's not an easy change—my default has always been anxiety, even with meds an therapy, but I think it's a good thing for me to be working on, and I'm really pleased with the progress I'm already seeing.