The Ten Trials
What I want to accomplish in the next year.
The ten things that I want to accomplish in the next year:
Learn to play guitar with enough mastery to play complete songs by ear.
Write a song, then perform it, accompanying myself on guitar at a musical open mic.
Write three feature-length screenplays.
Design and code a game/app.
Finish a century bike ride.
Start a profitable at-home business.
Do 100 push-ups.
Do 10 pull-ups.
Produce and distribute a completed webseries.
Learn how to draw well. From life and my imagination.
Not all of these are certain, and a few could probably be considered stepping stones to a larger goal. That said, I want to commit myself to achieving these in one calendar year from today, October 2, 2019. The century ride that I’m going to train for is actually going to be four or five days away after the year mark. I’ll give myself a few day’s grace period, but all challenges will have to be met by then in order to receive my self-administered gold star. Some of these challenges will be completed sooner than others, but I plan to start as many of them as possible, while keeping in mind that even though I am not working full time I still only have so many hours in the day, days in the week, etc. and can probably only work on a few at a time. I’m still figuring it out.
Let’s talk a bit about why I chose these goals and skills. They have these things in common:
The success is measurable.
Mastery of the new skills can be observable by others.
Goals that are not skills have deliverables.
I have purposely chosen things that aren’t nebulous like “becoming more organized” or “becoming a better writer” because I want things that will have something tangible attached to their success. The items in my list are in the order that I wrote them down, and are not prioritized by importance, difficulty, or personal satisfaction. This list is subject to change as I begin to figure out what it will take to actually accomplish these feats.
There are a few intangibles that I hope will be accomplished osmotically by doing these challenges. Like learning how to shoot and edit better video, record and edit audio better, take better photographs, get in better shape, be a more disciplined and faster writer, develop a deeper relationship to music, learn to program, and many more that I haven’t thought of.
A note about this newsletter:
This is the first email I am sending for this newsletter. I won’t be doing that for every post, so don’t put me in the spam filter just yet! I dearly love one of the writers whose newsletter I follow, but I don’t read the three or four emails a week that I get from her. I don’t want to wear out my welcome with y’all, so I plan to only send a newsletter every week or so.
Another note about this newsletter:
My self-help journey/series of stunts is not the only thing I want to share with y’all. I will have posts about food, writing, country music, and whatever else tickles my fancy. These posts will only be on the website, and not be emailed to y’all.