Long term goals

Short term problems

Hello darlings –

Are you starting the semester this week or next? I hope you KICK ASS. I know you will. Don’t let me down.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, a fun announcement! Together with Kelly Clancy of Epilogue Editing, I’m hosting another MEE Centered Writing Retreat!! That’s right! You can come write with us January 2-6, 2024 in Texas Hill Country. All the goal setting. All the writing sessions. All the snacks. The details are all here and the application is here, but please let me or Kelly know if you have any questions! (Bonus: we are planning our next summer writing retreat in Mexico City and the application has information about that as well!)

Goal setting

Welp, here we are again. It’s the end of August. That means that we are (yet again) facing down an academic year. For me, that means Goal Setting Time. Fuck yeah! (fake it until you make it). That means (for me) that it is time to set some annual goals. Here are mine for this year, where I’m trying this thing where I do three stupid goals for the year, each month, each week, each day.

My goals for this year.

If you want to see how I did on last year’s goals, you can look at them here. Here are my 2022-2023 goals. I’ve annotated them with notes about what I got done and what I didn’t get done. And yes, it is extremely rude to point out that many of my goals are the same this year as last year! RUDE!!!

2023 is also a BIG YEAR for me because it marks a decade of my journey into trying to be a productive human being/academic by setting annual academic year goals. Want to see what kind of goals baby Mirya set? My 2013 goals are here! And what a fucking hot mess! (seriously: way too many goals, not specific, all outcome oriented, and guess what?? I failed to meet a LOT of these!)

Long term goals:

A decade into this goal setting nonsense also means that it is time to set five-year goals!

Now, you might say: Mirya, you need to calm the fuck down with this goal setting nonsense. And you would be absolutely right and absolutely wrong at the same time! No, you don’t need to set goals to be successful. Many of you aren’t. But goal setting is actually productive! And if you have… uh… some anxiety (SOME???) and are concerned about your capacity or ability to move from, say, grad student to PhD candidate or PhD candidate to PhD or job candidate to employee or tenure track to tenured, goal setting can help you overcome paralyses associated with high anxiety.

For me, five-year goals are a chance to think broadly about what I’d like my CV to look like in the next five years and make some guesses about what I’ll work on into the future. Sometimes I am good at guessing. Sometimes I’m not. This is not a chance for me to judge myself but instead for me to think about the various metrics of my career that I can (and cannot) track and how I might take steps to improve them. Much of this is totally outside my control! But what in life is not?

Here’s what my goals in 2018 looked like for 2023 (as always, please don’t look at this if it is going to make you hate me, hate yourself, or hate the world). Honestly, I am pleasantly surprised with my progress on these goals. Look at that! We did it Joe!

I’m still working on my five year goals for 2028, but here’s the start of them if you want to follow along.

Do you set longer term professional goals for yourself? I’d love to hear about that process! Comment on Substack, email me, or come find me on Threads (@miryarose) or Bluesky (@Mirya) (hell yeah got that one before all the other Miryas showed up!!). I love to hear about your goal setting!

XOXOX

Mirya