Topix Questions 41: Do You Set Goals? & 42: How Important is Personal Appearance

Question 41/424:  Do you set goals?  If so, how?  Care to share a past or current goal?

Goals are a touchy subject for me, which sounds ridiculous but it’s true.  When I was in high school I was very goal oriented and was rather intense when it came to doing whatever it took to accomplish those goals, including berating anyone around me who I deemed as slowing me down or standing in my way.  I’ve grown since then, and since graduating most of my goals have gone unreached.

When I moved into my first apartment at nineteen, my only goal was having a place to live that was closer to my job so I took the first available apartment.  Once I had moved in, my next goal was to get into a different place where my dog could come and live with me.  I gave myself – and my then boyfriend – one year to get the money together to move into either another apartment that was “dog-friendly” or into a modular home so that we could have two bedrooms and my dog living with us.  I’ve told this story before, but the reader’s digest version is that he clearly did not prioritize that goal and wound up being unemployed, leaving me to support the two of us and his kid while making only $10 an hour.  So saving up for a new apartment wasn’t going very well.

When I was in my next relationship, I was less focused on moving out of my one-bedroom apartment because I at least felt comfortable knowing I could afford it on my own.  But my then boyfriend wasn’t comfortable living in the place I had lived with my ex so he prioritized moving into a bigger space, which we did, but I still couldn’t have my dog so I always felt sad about that.

When it came time for me to move out of the place he and I shared because we had broken up, I was once again in a desperate situation and took the first apartment that was available to me which was once again, not “dog-friendly”. I told myself again that I would stay there for a year and in that time I would get my debt under control and I would find another place to move – this time the goal for sure being a house-type structure (whether that be a trailer, a condo, a duplex, or a rental home). Well that goal was set 9 years ago and I’m still living there and I still can’t have my dog.  So I spend a lot of time beating myself up for the fact that the dog I love and wanted to live with me so badly will likely pass away before I manage to get my shit together enough to accomplish the first goal I set for myself at 19.

I’ve also set goals about going back to school.  I technically did accomplish that in 2013 when I signed up for a single class to further my skillset at my job.  Unfortunately the class I took wound up being a huge waste of my time and money and made me kind of throw away the idea of going back to school.  Despite the class being a huge waste of time, I did set the goal for myself to learn how to draft and manage Chapter 13 bankruptcies after spending years only handling Chapter 7 bankruptcies.  It took a lot of time and a lot of networking but at this point I consider myself pretty proficient which I can feel good about knowing that I did manage to learn a new skill and accomplish a goal that also resulted in a raise and extra income.

I’ve had a lot of goals related to paying off debt, and unfortunately I find myself in a vicious cycle.  Whenever I get close to paying everything off, either I find myself being too generous in helping other people or I have a huge bill come up that requires I put more debt onto credit cards.  I’m not proud of this, but sometimes life has more curveballs than it has soft landings. I am still working towards paying off all of my debts myself and purchasing a home hopefully within the next 5 years. I’m also looking into school again, although I’m only going to seriously pursue that if I can go back without incurring more debt because that just doesn’t make sense to me at this time in my life.

So all of that to say, I do consider myself a goal-oriented person, I have just had a lot of setbacks when it comes to the goals I’ve set for myself as an adult. Without goals, I would feel aimless, lost and without reason to continue. It’s important for me to set goals even if sometimes the idea of failing to reach them depresses me. I know eventually things will work out, things just take time and as Earl Nightingale said, “The time will pass anyway.”

 

Question 42/424:  How important is personal appearance; dress, hygiene, etc?

I did a quick Google search to define “Personal Appearance” and it states: “with regard to bodily condition or characteristics, manner or style or dress, and manner or style of personal grooming, including but not limited to, hair style and beards”.

Generally speaking I think that personal appearance is not very important to me whatsoever.  I try really hard not to make assumptions about people based on how they choose to dress, style or color their hair, or what tattoos or piercings they do or do not have.  I have known too many wonderful people who may not conform to “societies standards” to underestimate someone based on how they present themselves alone.

When it comes to how people choose to dress, more often or not I am more envious of peoples’ confidence to wear exactly what they want and how they want it than I am concerned about judging them for it.  Even things like, wearing pajamas to the grocery store. I know a lot of people who look down on people who do that, but personally I’ve just always considered it admirable that some people can just not worry about how they’re perceived and just choose to live their lives exactly how they see fit. At the end of the day, someone wearing casual clothes to the grocery store does not affect me in the slightest and also doesn’t affect their ability to shop or pay for their groceries, so why should it matter what they wear?  There are exceptions to that rule.  Because I work in a law office, and prior to 2020 clients had to go to an actual courthouse and speak to a Bankruptcy Trustee, and sometimes I would question why some people dressed no differently than they would on a Saturday afternoon lazing about at home. Even in that situation, however, I’m sure people have their reasons, and ultimately there is no rule or law stating you have to be dressed in your Sunday best to attend a court appointment.

As a plus size person, I often have to make a conscious effort to turn off the fatphobic thoughts in my brain when I see other plus size people dressing in ways I wouldn’t personally be comfortable with.  In my heart I truly to admire those people and wish I had their confidence, but unfortunately I have had enough people in my life berate me or make fun of me for how I look or dress and those words still echo in my mind sometimes. I also try not to allow myself to make assumptions about people based on their weight because I know from personal experience that weight and weight loss are often far more out of our control than people like to admit, and a person’s weight does not determine their value.

As for hygiene, I think that is a harder one to be indifferent towards. While I won’t assume someone is unclean based on how they look, if someone smells, that is a much harder thing for me to ignore.  Even if I think someone’s hair doesn’t look clean, if I can’t smell them then I really don’t mind.  Most girls I know don’t wash their hair everyday for good reasons so I don’t think much about that anymore. So unless a person’s body odor is overpowering, I probably won’t even notice whether they have “good” hygiene or not and likely won’t have much to say about it regardless.

We all have our preferences or our opinions when it comes to things. Personally, when looking for a male partner, I’ve never been attracted to facial hair.  I always wonder how clean beards and mustaches are on men, and I can’t help but pay close attention to how much food falls into their beard or sticks in their mustache if I’m eating with someone who has one.  Another opinion I hold is against septum piercings.  I’ve never been a fan of them, even when my best friend had one (and many other facial piercings), the septum piercing has always been the one I dislike the most. Also the few friends I have that have had septum piercings also have talked about the “so weird it’s good” smell of septum piercings and I just can’t get behind that. I do also have a slight bias against the sagging pants trend that seems to be never ending, however I really only pass judgement if it looks like the person genuinely cannot walk without holding their pants because at that point it really seems like more of a tripping hazard than a fashion statement.

Again, at the end of the day how someone chooses to present themselves in society is usually not really indicative of the person they are inside, and I think it’s important to push past our internalized critiques and get to know people for who they are not just how they look.