I've Graduated! Time for Summer Goals
Live Humbly
So I graduated from college last Saturday, which is kind of crazy. I mean it felt like just yesterday that I stepped into my first lecture of freshman year, or finished a summer of LT at New Life, or moved into my room in Nagoya. But here I am, a Michigan engineering alum, ready to take on the world. So what now? What do I want to do with myself now that I’m not bogged down by group projects and bugs in my code? Well it’s summer now and I haven’t started working yet, which means I finally have the time to pursue all the side hobbies I’ve been wanting to do.
Since college did a great job of sucking up all my time, I didn’t do as much art and such as I wanted to. I made a bunch of art-related goals at the beginning of the year, but have since failed to keep striving to accomplish them. As an attempt to remedy this, I bought a passion planner midway through the semester, since I’d heard great things about it and wanted to give it a shot. Well surprise surprise, I still failed. The planner is nice for keeping track of things I need to do, but drawing or blogging still didn’t make the list. I realized that it was probably because I didn’t explicitly plan out time for it, since all I planned out were school related tasks. Doodling in the margins was as much art as I got to do.
However, towards the end of the semester when senioritis was in full force, I decided I needed to change my life habits. I made a list of things I’d always wanted to do, and sat down to plan them out. The main ones are
- Continuing this blog
- Creating more colored drawings and paintings, either digital, watercolor, or acrylic
- Spend more time reading the Bible
To actually get these done, I figured I’d need to change my planning habits as well, which means setting aside timme for them by writing it in my planner. In the past I only wrote down school-related tasks since that’s all I color coded, but now that my life isn’t guided by classes, I needed to figure out new color codes for new categories (which is pretty exciting!). After thinking about what I’d need to feel balanced, I’ve decided that the main things in my life will be
- art - my art projects
- work - because i’m gonna be a real adult with a real job
- exercise - staying healthy
- social - hanging out with people
- events - like travel and whatnot
- God - prayer, reading the Bible, spending time with God
- misc - because you always need a misc category
The nice thing about planning my time like this is that theoretically, if there’s an even color spread in my planner, then my life will be balanced. So the key component is actually motivating myself to put down whatever is distracting me (probably my phone) and get moving!
I wanted to challenge you to go for your goals as well! Here are some things to think about:
- What are some things you’ve always wanted to try? Painting a picture? Traveling to a certain city? Running a marathon?
- What are the obstacles keeping you from accomplishing these things? Lack of motivation? Lack of time? Lack of money?
- Is there someone you can ask to help you overcome these obstacles? Who? Why?
- What is one thing you can do right now to take a single step towards your goal?
For me this season will be a time of building new habits, so I encourage you to give it a shot as well. Feel free to reach out to me if you want an accountability buddy or anything!