Q4: My Audit.
The Gap between the dream and reality, three months out from the end of the year.
Before we start, let’s set my goals aside for a moment and cover what is different from January 1 of this year. Because that is not a short list.
- Left my job as a corporate attorney to pursue entrepreneurship.
- Moved away from NYC and in with my sister.
- Started writing on Substack and Medium.
- Built an arsenal of well-being tools.
- Learned how to embody and feel my feelings on a deeper level.
- Learned I’m hypermobile, which is changing how I approach exercise.
This is not the topic of this essay. It just felt important to recognize before diving in.
Now, the goals. When I dreamt of leaving my job in the beginning of January, counting down until I could actually give notice, I had a few big goals:
- Rediscover play in my life;
- Replace my income as an attorney with my own business offering coaching and yoga;
- Build the business; and
- Build the fitness routine of an athlete.
These are admittedly lofty goals. And I’m not gonna lie to you, I don’t think that I’ve fully successfully done any of them, and, more importantly for the purposes of this audit, I don’t think that I am going to hit them by the end of the year. At least not formally.
Goal 1: Rediscover play
How very linear of me to treat playfulness as something I could rediscover and collect. Play requires safety. It requires presence. It requires an ability to be goofy or silly or comfortable and not care what other people think. So I’ve not “rediscovered play.” What I’ve done is started activities that I am bad at with the specific intention of (a) recognizing that I am safe to be bad at them and (b) enjoying them anyway. Some just for me, some in public.
- Rock climbing
- Pottery (rarely, but sometimes)
- Drawing and oil pastels
I have a whole list of other ideas, that I either haven’t been brave enough to try yet, or I haven’t pursued because of the resistance to this idea of letting loose.
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The gap: waiting for play to come to me. I am willing to be intentional about being playful. But I’m not doing a great job of putting myself in the environments where that will happen. The things that make my inner child giddy. The things I get so engulfed in that I forget to care who’s watching.
Goal #2: Replace my income as an attorney.
This one is a non-starter for this year. Why? Because as an attorney I was making multiple six-figures a year. And what I needed to do this year — before I rebuild my income — is rebuild my capacity for productivity without dread.
So I see a path towards making money to support myself in the business I want to create, and I am taking steps towards that path. But I am not replacing my income this year.
The gap: I need to actually bill for services to make money. I need to actually charge for products to make money. And I need to tell people about the services I offer in order for them to be able to buy.
Goal # 3: Build a business.
This one has mixed success so far. I have a website. I have brainstormed an ecosystem of services. I have begun offering those services in small settings.
The gap: being brave enough to actually do marketing. Firming up my offer so that I can just put it out there. In other words, the things the fear is still blocking.
Goal #4: Build the fitness routine of an athlete.
This is the one I am the most excited about. Because it’s the one that I have made the most progress on. Mostly because it’s been an arena for developing my relationship with myself, and has played a vital role in rebuilding that capacity I was mentioning earlier.
I have a committed routine of weightlifting 2x per week. I do Pilates once a week for core stability. I am training zone 2 with a run/walk combo and zone 5 with sprints. I play with functional movement. I do yoga a few times a week. I walk the dogs daily.
The gap: mental. I don’t think of myself as an athlete because I don’t see the “results” that I want. I haven’t noticed that I’m suddenly performing with the VO2 max of an Olympic runner, so it’s not “working.” I’m not able to run a 9-minute mile at zone 2 pace, so it’s not going well. I can’t deadlift 2x my body weight, so I’m not doing enough. You get the gist.
I’ve built the routine and I am SO proud of that. But the gap is to stop assigning unrealistic timelines or goals to the process, and to accept where I am starting from in order to take pride in the work I am putting in.
The larger takeaway.
I’m not doing this audit to rewrite my annual goals. Sure, I am planning to look at these gaps and work with what I can to progress the goals through the rest of this year. But the bigger piece for me is what this all means for me next year.
Looking at these goals, they have one thing in common: performance. They are all focused on productivity (building a business, replacing an income) or wellness (playfulness, fitness).
And that makes more sense than maybe anything else I’ve written when I consider the person who silently made these goals in the new year. A person who was still scared of the idea that in a few short weeks she would give notice. A person who felt like she was stepping off of a cliff. A person worried about the image of her productivity and career when she took the leap.
But what lies underneath the achievement of all of these goals is a growth in self-trust, in emotional well-being to sit with fear (and excitement) and act anyway, and a quiet commitment to the life I want, even if the pieces are still coming into place.
So no, this audit is not a place for rewriting the goals. Its job is not to point out where I’ve failed.
It’s data. Data on where I can fill the gap this year. And, equally, if not more importantly, it’s data pointing to the types of goals that I was ignorant of this year, but which might serve me to include next year.
Originally published on Substack.
