Happy Blue Year, Part IV: Goals

Last year, I wrote out a New Year's dream: to sing at an open-mic night. Didn't do it. (To be fair, I spent half of the year living in a town that didn't have open-mic night.) I think part of it was because my language was too vague; it was a dream that I wanted to do but didn't really take seriously.

So this morning, in the spirit of my "getting out there," etc., I wrote out a series of goals. These are different from resolutions because they are not necessarily mandatory; I resolve to clean up my Ashtanga practice because if I don't, I won't progress and I might even hurt myself again. But goals seem a bit more concrete than dreams, without the feeling of having "broken" them if I don't manage to achieve them all.

The first goal I wrote out was "cooking school" and you will be happy to know that in under an hour's time I had located and enrolled in monthly Middle Eastern cooking classes at the Lebanese Taverna. Already I feel like I have accomplished something!

Here are the others:

• Cooking vacation (that is to say, "find some kind of cooking-themed vacation package, enroll, etc.")
• Yoga vacation (there is actually a place that does a combination cooking/yoga resort vacation, but... it's in Kerala)
• Meet more people interested in Ashtanga (either through a Meetup.com-type-place or by simply posting a sign on the wall of my yoga studio which reads "Ashtanga Students' Happy Hour, because classes are so quiet and no one ever talks and wouldn't it be fun if we all got to know each other?")
• Attend 5-year college reunion
• Go to at least one conference in my field
• See Arcadia at the Folger Theatre
• Take day trip to NYC and see a taping of The Daily Show
• Take day trip to NYC and see TMBG live (see, that's why that $50 AB&B gift certificate will come in handy)
• Enter the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest... every week
• Eat at The Grill From Ipanema (but not alone)
• Eat at Lauriol (ditto; see, I walk by both of these restaurants several times a week and I've always wanted to go in but never have)
• See the Richard Avedon Portraits of Power exhibit (is running through Jan. 25, so had better get moving)
• Start attending open-mic nights both to meet new people and to see if it's something I want/would be able to do

... and two more which are secrets.

What's interesting is how many of these goals are ridiculously achievable. What's stopped me before from doing these kinds of things was a misplaced sense of frugality, which in retrospect I took a little too far (trying to save $15 by not going to SPX was idiotic). But I have my little nest egg tucked away and so it is about time to start exploring the city a little more.

And I've already enrolled in cooking classes! Woo-hoo!