Personally, I am not a fan of New Year resolutions but it never hurts to have a bucket list for the year to come.
In this spirit, I hope to:
- Travel more for leisure. Maybe even start a travel blog…
- Work on my translation specialism in reproductive medicine
- Find more time to practise simultaneous interpreting
- Go hiking, indoor rock climbing, more aimless vagabonding…
- Improve my French…
- … maybe also my Spanish
- Not to stress, just do my best and forget the rest
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…” – EPICTETUS, Discourses, 2.5.4–5
The Stoic philosopher and former slave Epictetus is reminding us that it’s wise to clearly differentiate between the things we can and can’t influence. We can only set out our intentions or make new year resolutions, but some factors are simply outside our control. For this reason, my intention is to avoid stress and go with the flow – along the path that brings out the best in me.
