Patagonia Diaries should be back next week. But this post was somewhat time-sensitive, hence it came first.
Last year I went to a play, where, in a very intimate setting, a woman covered her life story with us. She wasn’t someone famous or well-known, just, someone.
She started by reading a letter from her mother and right away my eyes got watery. A lot of what was said in that letter resonated with me because I saw the similarities with my family’s history.
The trend continued throughout the evening. The most emotional parts of her performance to me were those that I could draw analogies to in my own life.
Speaking to her backstage, she echoed the same thought. She said the idea wasn’t a narcissistic effort to have a bunch of people sit there and listen to her life story for an hour, but rather that participating in an emotionally-charged performance like that (not only was it strong but also very interactive) would cause us to reflect about our own lives.
And so here I am. Last year, I published my goals for 2023 on my website and I wanted to do the same this year (yes, it’s almost March, I’m late), but somehow it felt weird to put it on the website when my writing is now going almost exclusively here.
So I decided to take the challenge. I’ve wanted for a while to explore different ways of writing, and thought: can I come up with a way to make me outlining my 2024 goals interesting enough that others would want to read?
Originally I thought I’d dive deeper into the concepts around the artist who presented her life story, and make a parallel with how through reading my goals, you’ll reflect on yours.
But I felt that wasn’t enough, and, in a wild turn of events, I pulled in another draft I had in the drawer and decided to merge the two.
So if you care for my literary experiment, hold on tight, we’ll get to my goals at the end somehow. But first, let me tell you about the gym, and about money.
For the longest time, I was the person in my friend group that went to the gym most frequently. But around halfway into last year, I fell in love with climbing, and shifted all my focus towards that, meaning lifting took a backseat.
As a result, I now have friends that have either surpassed me or will soon in how much weight they lift at the gym, which, I’d love to say I don’t care about, but of course I do.
I don’t care as much about it as I care about climbing, so things are pretty stable on a day-to-day, but I’ve certainly pulled a muscle working out with one of them and trying to show to “myself” that I still got it.
And now, the same thing is about to happen in my life when it comes to wealth.
As a result of having moved around and lived in different countries, I’ve met a lot of people from different backgrounds. Plus, having worked in tech for a Silicon Valley (ish) company, I’ve also met a lot of talented and successful people.
Combined, that means I’ve got friends that are finance bros, tech startup founders, senior people at Big Tech, people climbing the corporate ladder, and so on. If you expand that to acquaintances there’s even some artist, athlete, or big company exec in there as well.
What that means is: somebody’s getting rich rich.
And following my friends’ trajectories, it seems like that might happen pretty soon.
Now, I’m not doing too bad for myself, mind you. But as I write this, I’m going the other way — I quit my job last year and started to strongly re-evaluate my values and what truly matters to me.
Yet, it’s the same as with the gym. I do still care.
There’s even been studies about this, and human well-being is still strongly tied to relative success (often manifested as wealth and status).
Some guy, I don’t remember who, said you should invest in all your friends’ startups. At least that way, if they get rich, you also derive some happiness from it.
I haven’t done that — in part because some people “won’t take angel checks under 100k” (yeah I’m looking at you, bro). But I also can’t invest in the career of my friend who’s in finance, for example.
So yeah, like my gym rat friends, these people will also pass me by in this other metric of “success” that is money.
And I will care. But I just hope I don’t care so much, because I care more about other things. That's what I think the solution is. Care more about other things, and be secure in that decision. For me, there are more important things, and if I’m on the path to achieving them, then there’s nothing to worry about.
Which consequently brings us to, finally, my goals! 🎉
For the sake of future Yakko, the poor friend, what the fuck do I care about, and how does that translate to what I want to do this year?
Above all, I’m still keeping tranquility and being more myself as the top goals like I had last year. It sounds corny but I think making a conscious effort towards these has actually had a positive effect on me.
Then, I want to publish one post per week. So far I’m doing good and lived up to this in December, January, and February. I’ve never liked the idea of adding too much structure to writing as the creative process works in mysterious ways, but I think it’s important to keep the habit in order to improve. It’s also something I love doing anyway. Plus it doesn’t mean write one every week (although it does mean one a week on average). In anticipation of the Patagonia roadtrip I had a burst of inspiration and left four posts scheduled in advance, for example.
I also want to be in the best mountain shape of my life. In some ways this is sort of already true, but internally I know what it means. I want to very explicitly have my fitness goal be focused on “the mountain”, rather than “the gym” or something else. Within this, I’d like to improve my cardio, my climbing fitness (fingers, mobility, and endurance in particular), as well as keep improving on my ability to carry heavy loads over difficult terrain for long periods of time.
In what is somewhat a subpoint of the above, I want to climb harder. This is intentionally ambiguous, as I think that setting target grades might be a slippery slope, although I do have some numbers (and letters) in mind. However, as my ulnar nerve issues have improved due to physiotherapy, I should be able to climb more frequently this year, and hope to do so. I certainly want to get outside of my comfort zone and climb more challenging routes, as well as be more structured in my training. In a related point, I want to climb at least one of the Rio de Janeiro classics, but hopefully three. Top of the list are Corcovado, Pão de Açúcar, and Dedo de Deus, but there are a bunch of other options too like Pedra da Gávea and Agulha do Diabo.
Still on a similar point, I want to do more alpinism. Climbing feeds into alpinism but since I live in a country that does not have alpine terrain, I need to make sure I keep my skills updated (and hopefully improve on them) every year. This therefore will require a trip somewhere.
Outside the physical realm, I want to make sure my Spanish doesn’t go anywhere, as it’s gotten to near-fluent during this last trip. I could set a similar goal for Finnish but I struggle to practice languages without immersion and am not sure I’ll immerse in Finnish again this year, but let’s have it as a “nice-to-have”.
Finally, I also want to double down on my passions and beliefs. At the moment I’m getting the rust off and gearing up for a triumphant return to the tech industry after a sabbatical. My objective would be to work on things I find interesting and meaningful. Yet were I to find a passion elsewhere, I want future self to double down on it and pursue it, and not just follow the status quo just because.
That’s that. Yeah, I do want to read more, and make sure I tick off a few more literature classics, and surely would like to deepen my knowledge of this or that. But having learnt from last year, I think I’ll keep at this. Let’s see how it goes.
So, what are you looking to achieve this year?
Love your writing and the journey to self-discovery. Not sure what my goals are but started this year by controlling my breathing and drinking more water. Also, working on gratitude.