Getting Your Shit Together

So the other day I was scrolling through my twitter timeline and I saw a tweet that said “My 2016 resolution: get my shit together” and although I can admire someone who feels compelled to get their life in order, I feel like that resolution standing as it is, by itself is not enough.

I’m not going to assume that the person only had that one item on their resolutions list. I am going to assume that the person who wrote that tweet was my younger self. And it was well within my capabilities to tweet such a thing when I was 18, had I known how addictive twitter was back then.

If that was me tweeting that, I would tell myself to change the word “resolution” to “goal” (cue hashtag goals joke hahahaha okay can we move on now Anwar?). The word resolution has been so associated with a thing you just say you want to do at the beginning of the year and is perfectly acceptable if you don’t achieve it, since hey, it’s just a resolution right? (cue 1080p resolution joke hahahaha 4K dah lani hahahaha please move on now Anwar please?)

Now that you’ve changed it to goal, dear Anwar, look at what you have under it: get your shit together. Now ask yourself the question: how? How are you going to “get your shit together” exactly, Anwar? What would “having your shit together” look like? Be specific about it. And be realistic about it.

An 18 year old Anwar who has his shit together would probably look like this:

- reads regularly.

- does his assignments on time.

- trains for rugby regularly.

- writes songs on the guitar regularly.

Probably. I don’t now what you want, Anwar. But you do, so you decide. But for the purposes of this blogpost, and also seeing that you can’t speak for yourself, teenage Anwar, let’s just assume that that’s what a you that has his shit together would look like, yeah?

So you now have specific goals. Now you have to have specific plans for each of those goals. Again, it’s the same thing. Be specific. Be realistic.

Those plans would probably look like this:

- read ten pages of one book on the bed right before going to sleep. Don’t go to sleep until those ten pages have been read.

- put starting points for each assignment on your phone calendar and pasang alarm (paling lewat, ten days before it’s due). Spend at least 60 minutes on each assignment kat library every weekday after class.

- Training is 6pm sharp every day, 4 days a week. Monday: lactic acid tolerance. Wednesday: recovery speed. Thusday: Strength training. Saturday: Agility work.

- Record one demo song a month on the webcam. Love songs pun love songs lah. Asalkan lagu. Start writing every first day of the month and continue writing until it’s done. By the end of the year, have 12 songs done.

And now you have some goals and plans to achieve those goals. Good job Anwar. But you do have to remember, you won’t “get your shit together” just by writing all these good and wonderful things. You have to put in the hard work. And yes, it will be hard. And yes, it will be work. But it will all be worth it. So, so worth it, dear adolescent Anwar.