New Year, Same Ariel

I have never been much of a “New year, new me” kind of person.

I suppose I find the ritualized pattern of broken promises of grand, “life-changing” change over a 365-day period rather depressing, which turned me off to the whole idea. On the other hand, I have also been more focused on either a full re-invention of myself after traumatic life events or simply a general day-to-day existence rather than planning and speculating on how I could, would, or should be a better Ariel at a later date.

But this year, with two weeks off for the holidays and traveling back to cities with particular significance several Ariels ago, it felt like an appropriate time to reflect on the progress I have made since I lived those different lives. It also felt like an appropriate time to reset—or to set—some priorities for 2019 for two reasons:

to help keep me on track for living the kind of life I want to live;
to hold myself accountable for my actions and choices over the next year.

How I Set Priorities for 2019

Over the course of my journey, I have discovered the importance of living a life based on what is most important to me. When setting priorities, starting with the areas of my life that I consider to be most valuable seemed like the best place to start.

In the end, I identified five areas I want to work on over the next year. I will set short-term, realistic goals/priorities for each category on a monthly basis and spend the month working to improve—or in some cases, to build—my everyday habits in those different areas with the ultimate goal of improving my overall quality of life.

1. Health

I have been suffering from health-related issues since my teenage years. At the age of sixteen, I contracted an aggressive, atypical form of pneumonia that resulted in missing three weeks of school, a ten-day stay in a hospital, and diminished lung capacity. From there, I have experienced a series of persistent, unexplained neurological-seeming symptoms with no clear neurological explanation, culminating in the loss of most of the sensation in the left side of my body along with headaches, disorientation, nausea, and a side of intense, sporadic abdominal pain because the lovely (non) neurological problems are not nearly fun enough on their own.

Health Goal for January 2019

Start figuring out my health problems and develop healthy habits.

Figure out the Belgian health system:
- Since moving to Belgium, I have been putting off going to the doctor because of work, travel plans, and an overall sense of exhaustion. As one of my priorities, I need to make sure I am learning to use the health system, finding a primary care physician, and starting my new series of tests to figure out what is going on with my body.
Develop healthy habits:
- Make changes to my diet by prioritizing nutrient-dense food over “easy” foods.
- Exercise regularly by taking Igneous out to exercise regularly and by going back to the gym.
- Get quality sleep by managing my time better to make sure I am getting a full eight hours and by cutting out mentally stimulating activities before bed.

2. Relationships

Ambition, until recently, has always been my primary motivator; I always assumed there would be time in the future—when I made “enough” money, when I had the “right” job title, when I lived a “stable” life—to invest time and energy in my relationships with the people around me.

But when everything in my life was turned upside-down, my job, my title, the money I was making, none of it was what helped hold me together. The people, and dog, around me did.

After the unexpected death of a good friend of mine a couple years ago, I learned we may not have as much time as we expect for all the things we want to do. I learned there may not be as much time as I thought to eventually get to all the things I was putting off and writing off as “tomorrow Ariel’s” priorities.

Relationship Goal for January 2019

Dedicate more time to the people who matter to me.

When I adopted a dog and eventually, I met my now husband, my life stopped being only about me. In addition to completing all my tasks and chasing my own dreams, I was responsible for doing my part to build and maintain those relationships. But I did not, and do not, always devote the amount of time I should to either.

Spend more quality time with the husband:
- Find more activities we can do together, other than passively watching TV shows and movies.
- Go out to do something new together at least once per week.
Exercise Igneous for an appropriate amount of time on a regular basis:
- Take Igneous out for a minimum of two and a half hours of real exercise on weekdays.
- Take her for longer adventures over the weekends.

3. Food

I come from a family where food is at the heart of all our activities, but our food is by no means healthy. Two days ago, just before returning to Europe, my stepfather even stated, “If it doesn’t have a box with instructions on it, we don’t eat it,” when discussing how to eat the purple sweet potatoes I left in their fridge before heading to the airport.

I was raised on the traditional, unhealthy, packaged and/or fast food American diet. Over time, the food I grew up eating has worn on my body, damaging some of the cells and creating problems within my body that may take years to identify or to even begin to remedy. I started noticing a dramatic difference in how I was feeling by changing my eating habits to whole ingredients, primarily consisting of fruits, vegetables, and small amounts of meat, legumes, and tubers.

However, with moving to two countries in the past year and the significant life changes that come along with that, including the changes that come from living with a partner with different dietary habits, I have been eating significantly more foods I had previously cut from my diet, and along with them, I have seen a decrease in my overall physical wellbeing.

Food Goal for January 2019

Prepare and eat healthy meals throughout the month of January.

With the increased flexibility in my work schedule after my three-month probation period, I have will have more time during the week to experiment with new nutritious recipes during the week.

Prepare primarily plant-based meals: I love working with new ingredients and preparing creative, colorful dishes that I know are good for my body. I typically cook with plants because I feel most functional when I consume primarily vegetable-based dishes so much so that those are the foods my body now craves.
Eat fewer “easy” meals: At the end of a long work day, the last thing anyone wants to do is spend an hour and a half laboring over a hot stove. When Jesse and I find ourselves in this position, it is easy to just let him cook some pasta and call it a night, but eating too much pasta causes more digestive problems than it is worth.

4. Personal Development

I have always been interested in self-improvement. Whether relating to my career, my writing, my eating or living habits, my random personal projects, or even my relationships with the people around me, I devote a significant amount of time to developing new skills and learning something new.

Of course, with each dramatic life change, I have developed as a person, but even with each new environment, new job, or new opportunity, I find opportunities to these activities, which I hope to continue in a more focused, structured way in the future.

Personal Development Goal for January 2019

Publish blog content at least three times per week.

Writing, at this stage in my life, can take a lot of time. With the weird intersection between my most extreme form of perfectionism and the influence my darker, more painful personal experiences have on my writing, I often find excuses to procrastinate writing, which prevent me from achieving my ultimate goal: sharing my work.

Develop a regular writing schedule, which will allow me to improve the frequency and caliber of my writing while improving the overall process.
Accept that not all of my writing will be perfect, by recognizing I will never publish anything if I wait until my writing can perfectly capture what exists in my head since the sensations and thoughts cannot always be fully expressed through words.

5. Fitness

Much like my unhealthy eating habits during my childhood, I was a relatively unhealthy child with my activity level. I walked often, much more than the average person, but other than walking, I hardly moved more than I needed to. During my physical education classes, I did nearly everything I could to get out of participating, including often walking out of the class with friends to buy snacks instead of participating in the day’s activity.

Within my first year away from home, I took up casual running through the hilly neighborhood I was living in. I followed up, eventually, by increasing my running and going to the gym, but it was not until I got into yoga and committed to rock climbing that I started exercising on a regular basis. However, whenever I move to a new city (which is often), I procrastinate getting back into a climbing gym or fitness routine by setting up other life activities first.

Fitness Goal for January 2019

Exercise, in some way, at least four days per week.

Boxing or some form of Martial arts:
- Since being assaulted in my early twenties, my comfort in my own body and in the world—despite dramatic improvements over the past couple of years—have not been the same. The feeling of potentially being overpowered by someone has always stuck with me since it can, theoretically, happen again.
- By taking up boxing or some kind of martial arts, I will be able to build up the strength and skills I would ever need to protect myself, should I ever need them. Furthermore, I believe this will help restore both my comfort and my confidence within the world and within my own body.
Rock Climbing:
- I fell in love with indoor climbing when I was ten years old. However, it was not until my early twenties when I really got into climbing. From Santa Barbara to Boston to Milan and now Brussels, it has been one of the most calming, therapeutic, and exciting activities I have participated in. But it always takes me a while to get back into it after moving.
- Fortunately, I have started organizing some climbing days with some of my coworkers, which gives me an opportunity to share something I love with some great people and to do something I would otherwise put off.
Yoga:
- Yoga has always been a way for me to slow down and check in with my body. It is something that provides me with great value. I go through periods where I practice several times a week, and at other times, I go weeks where I do not think about my breathing or movements or asanas once.
- Throughout the month, I want to get into a more stable practice of two sessions per week to help my body heal from my other physical activities and from the common ailments of our modern world, particularly working a desk job.

The Goal of Setting Priorities

The people in my life do not have the same formula for what makes their lives worth living. My brother, husband, and other family members are significantly less focused on the way food and exercise play into their everyday life experiences, partly because they do not seem to have such a significant impact of their overall quality of life. For each of them, their areas of focus, and therefore, their potential 2019 goals, are different from mine.

However, after hearing about this activity, several of them are thinking of doing a similar activity and trying to reset their priorities, such as Jesse’s interest in increasing the amount of attention he dedicates to the kinds of foods he is eating and how they affect his body to see if this helps resolve some of his own persistent ailments.

We all have priorities and areas of our lives we wish to improve. Sometimes, we recognize that things we considered to be priorities in our minds are pretty low in reality, meaning we dedicate very little time and energy to them. It is my hope that with this list for the month of January, and for this overall practice, to help me stay on track for the year of 2019.