Why I’m hoping to become Australia’s biggest try-hard in 2022
A fireworks pic seemed obligatory for anything new year related.
Happy New Year! I’m hoping that most of you were able to celebrate in some way over the festive season? I was lucky enough to have gotten down to Sydney for a couple of weeks to visit and celebrate with family and some close friends which was great. Particularly given I know that not everyone has had as smooth a time of it and may have been unable to celebrate as they would have liked, as COVID continues to disrupt the best laid plans and throw out curveballs.
Never trust a mexican in a skull mask pouring tequila shots straight from bottle to mouth. There’s no real coming back from that. Photo by hygor sakai from Pexels
The flip side of course, is that you may have celebrated a little too hard on New Year’s Eve and paid for it the next day! One of the best NYE’s I’ve had was followed closely by the probably the worst new year’s day I’ve personally experienced. All self-inflicted of course. It was one of those 40-something degree days in western Sydney, I was as hung over as possible short of throwing up my stomach lining, sun-burned and feeling rotten. I just wanted to get home and get to bed, but was still too drunk to drive home, so found myself in a mate’s backyard, holding a hose pointed up in an effort to keep cool under the fountain it created, too queasy to stomach any real food or water! It should not have come as a huge surprise mind you; if you are one of the last still standing when dawn hits after an epic Mexican-themed party and someone produces two bottles of absinth and proposes to share them among the only three still standing, I would strongly recommend you decline the offer! What you definitely shouldn’t do is drink them, then go and lie down by the pool and pass out. Especially if you have very fair skin like me and hadn’t gotten around to putting your shirt back on after earlier forays into the pool.
But I digress! Other than “never do that again” I’m not sure if I made any new years’ resolutions that day. Fast forward many-something years, and I find myself in a similar position. Not sitting in a mate’s backyard holding a hose because we couldn’t find a decent sprinkler and feeling generally miserable (thankfully!); but having gotten through a NYE without thinking about making any new year’s resolutions that is. It was actually a couple of days past New Year’s where I first realised that I had not had one conversation about new year’s resolutions leading into New Years, or on the actual day. Admittedly it was a fairly quiet (and quite lovely) NYE for me this year. It’s entirely possible that this is purely because most of us realise that NYE is hardly the best time of year to be setting meaningful goals and plans for the year. NYE has a habit of producing goals with about as much likelihood of success as Trump or Putin being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. It tends to produce goals like “lose fifteen kilos”, “quit smoking”, or “give up [insert your vice of choice here]”. Goals that with the lack of preparation or foresight inevitably fail.
This is a dramatic recreation of me on that new years day. I’d say it’s pretty close. Apart from being dark skinned, a woman, having hair and wearing a random fur coat rather than shirtless and sunburned outside under a sprinkler. But the not wearing a bra part is pretty spot on. Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels
But I worry a little that for many, too many plans and goals have had to be shifted, adjusted or cancelled over the last two years for some of us to seriously think about setting goals for 2022. Is that the case for you? Perhaps avoiding laying plans feels better than dealing with another disappointment? I hope this is not the case; because setting goals or plans and working towards them is pretty important to feeling challenged, fulfilled and content in our lives. As disappointing as it can be to fall short of a goal or have plans fall through (particularly when things out of our control are the cause of the failure), avoiding something for fear of failing at it is far worse. It guarantees the failure before you’ve even started.
I wasn’t very good at setting goals as a child, and I think in many ways I was discouraged to do so, especially by our peers. When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, calling people “try-hards” was very much in vogue. I’m sure most of you were familiar with it, were probably called it at some stage, and quite possibly directed it towards someone else along the way. I’m sure I did at times too. Thinking about it more recently, it is one of the worst things we can say to those around us; to degrade or shame others for effort. No one can achieve anything without first having a crack at it. And when we first try things, we’re likely to be pretty ordinary at them. Only through persistence and practice do we become good at that things we try our hand at. And we also build resilience; as we inevitably need to fail before we succeed.
I’ve known this for some time, but being a parent has really brought it into focus for me. Seeing my boys at different times struggling to cope with failure or disappointment, and letting the fear of something being hard (or perhaps more likely, the fear of being or feeling judged as a result of finding it hard) cause them to avoid it completely. It’s heart-breaking to see because if this approach becomes entrenched, it is almost guaranteed that later in life they will find themselves miserable for not feeling like they’ve achieved anything, and probably not even really know why.
A type-writer pic on an authors blog? Too cliched? Yeah, thought so…Photo by Markus Winkler from Pexels
Setting goals and plans can help steel us against these inevitable failures. They can encourage persistence despite set-backs, prepare us for the work that is needed to achieve the things we want to achieve. So, I’d encourage anyone feeling demotivated from the last 18-24 months to keep making those plans, set those goals whatever they are, and work towards them. Become a try-hard for the sake of your kids, or for anyone around you for that matter. If you spend some time setting some good goals and then really focus on them you’ll probably nail them all. But chances are you’ll hit some and miss others. Even if you only get one across the line, that’s one more than you would have managed had you decided not to set any in the first place. And you will help teach those around you the importance of having a crack.
So I’m planning to become one of Australia’s biggest try-hards in 2022. As mentioned, I didn’t specifically set any new year’s resolutions, mostly because I already have some plans on the go and goals I’m working towards. Here are a few of them I’m hoping to push forward:
Learn to surf (I mean, I live on the Sunshine Coast. It almost seems mandatory!)
Get away camping with my boys (I am a little tentative about this one. Could resist…)
Buy a house (depends on whether the house prices cool a little, but working towards it)
Finish the book I’m currently working on (working title Haplessly Ever After)
Work towards getting two completed manuscripts published:
Savage, a (long-anticipated??) follow up to Salvage
Lions and Lambs, an historical fiction set in ancient Sparta
Get my boys into a habit of meditating for 10 minutes a day (I know, the others look like a piece of cake compared to this one!)
Hopefully I get some of these across the line in 2022. If not, I’ll be a little disappointed but ultimately okay with that. Because either way, I’ll try hard at them, learn a little more, and will be closer to achieving them come 2023 than I otherwise would be. If you haven’t thought about what you want to work on this year, I’d encourage you to do so. And if you already have some plans or goals in place, feel free to share them; I’d love to hear about them!
Happy New Year!
Martin “try-hard” Rodoreda.