A Different Perspective on 2023 Goals

Every year on New Year's Eve we review the goals that we set for the year and see how we did, and then we make new ones sometime the first week of January. 

This is the second year that I have found myself morose when reviewing the year, which makes me wonder if we should change it up a bit. 

I think for this year, I felt like I didn't hit a lot of my goals. Bryce did amazing and got most of the ones that were him alone. It left me feeling not so great. 

To be fair, many of Bryce's goals had to do with finishing his PhD and all the steps involved for the last pieces of a very long, 8 year journey. So while those goals were wrapped up this year, they were years in the making. 

Also to be fair, I had my total knee replacement this year, and so spent January through May being injured and trying to get ready for the surgery, and then May through the present recovering and rebuilding, like, my left leg. So gardening goals? Fitness goals? I have to give myself a bit of a pass on that. 

It made me sad though that it felt like major life changes in a positive way for Bryce, and surgery was my big accomplishment. 

Bryce said, "I think you're selling yourself short, you know. You underwent MAJOR surgery, which you chose to do at this point even though it was scary, and then you worked your ass off to recover and PT and get yourself up and running. That's not a small thing." 

I appreciated it very much, because up until then, I was thinking, "Great. My biggest accomplishment is a surgery someone else performed on me, how freaking passive is that?" 

But he's right. I did see the initial specialist in January of last year and was basically told to suck it up buttercup and that I was way too young for a total knee replacement, and to just limit all of my activities. I could have listened to him. I could have resigned myself to pain and sedentary nonsense. Instead, I went and sought out a different specialist, a surgeon a colleague had seen and gotten her own TKR from at about my same age. And he said, "Oh yeah, your knee is complete trash. If you decide to go ahead, you can have a new knee this year." (paraphrased ever so slightly)

So, it was my decision. It was an empowering thing. And it WAS scary. I watched an animated video of the surgery that was very impersonal and removed yet still terrifying, and then it autoplayed into an ACTUAL LIVE PERSON SURGERY, and I still did it. I CHOSE to move forward. Even though it was a horror show.

I also have to keep in mind that it has ONLY BEEN SIX MONTHS. I had my old, decrepit knee taken OUT OF MY BODY with power tools and had a new, titanium model malleted in really not that long ago at all. 

And I was able to hike when we went to Vermont, up a slippery, rocky, narrow hill trail, and it felt GREAT. And not just because of my amazing surgeon. He could have done a great job, and if I didn't work hard to get it to bend and literally rebuild my quad muscle from nothing, and fight through the pain and discomfort, I wouldn't have been able to do that. 

Bryce is so good at reframing things and seeing a different perspective that pulls me out of a self-flagellating funk, not just for my knee but also when we ended our fertility journey. It was a similar conversation, and he made the point that if we chose to end our home study, WE were taking control of the decision. So it was a choice, a moment of empowerment, instead of just a passive thing. 

I can be really hard on myself. I'm so fortunate to have Bryce to help me check my sense of reality and to remind me of my strength when I sell myself short.