january 2023: a reflection
“Normalize setting ambitious goals for yourself.”
i saw that quote online for the first time about a year and a half ago. A couple months before that, while in one of my internet research rabbits holes, I stumbled across an article that piqued my interest: “I wrote 1000 blog posts in 1000 days.”
At the time, it was August 2021, which was approximately 1000 days before I was going to be done with undergrad. You can see my thought process here. Now, I’m 466 days away from finishing undergrad which is just baffling to me. Anyhow, back in 2021, I envisioned that I would write 1000 in 1000. It’s about 500 days later from my original intended starting day, and seeing as I only started writing daily blog posts 31 days ago, needless to say, I’ve adjusted the original vision.
2021 and 2022 were interesting years for me. I’m in a much better mental space now which is why it felt right to finally start writing daily blog posts this past month. At this point, my goal is just to write often. I’m going day by day, week by week, and I suppose month by month now. If I’m able to write 1000 blog posts in 1000 days, good for me! But after doing it for just 31 days, I see just how difficult achieving that goal might end up being. I knew it was ambitious, but now I really understand just how ambitious it really is.
I’m not giving up on achieving that goal by any means, I’m just taking the process in smaller chunks now. If I make it, I make it, if I don’t, I don’t. If I keep this up, I’ll have written 1000 blog posts by September 27th, 2025. That’s over 2.5 years from now — a lot can change in 2.5 years so who knows if writing these daily blog posts will even be able to be one of my top priorities by then.
When I came up with this goal in 2021, I thought that it would be really impressive to be able to finish out my undergrad career by being able to say that I wrote something every day for more than half of my time as an undergrad student. But hey, starting right before the spring semester of your third year shows dedication too, right?
I don’t know what the future holds; what I’ll accomplish as a writer by September 2025 or how long I’ll be able to keep this up for, but I guess we’ll see.
Love you future Shan, I’m rooting for you.
