Auditing my Life

Katie and I together in a rare but blissful occasion

Over the holidays, my best friend Katie was in town and I got to spend TWO WHOLE DAYS with her. This is a big deal because for the past few years, she’s lived in on the west coast so Shona/Katie times are too far and few between. Katie has been my best friend for nearly 10 years, since we met on the first day of Freshman orientation at McGill. (he was from New York State, I was from New York State, and neither of us was into the debaucherous frosh week...aaaaand our friendship was forever sealed.)

When Katie and I get to spend the day together, there’s always some existentialist questions that we need to confer with each other. Whether it’s the fate of a relationship, confusion about jobs, or frustrations with the people around us, we usually have some pretty intense conversations.  Katie is the friend who will tell me when my bad ideas are terrible, ask me the questions I don’t want to ask myself, and be my biggest supporter to follow my dreams.  I can confidently say that she has influenced several of my big life decisions, including...suggesting to start my own sustainability consulting business! (thanks, Katie!)

So when she sent me an article about us both independently doing a Life Audit, I knew I should listen. Her friend Ximena Vengoechea had written a great article on How and Why to do a Life Audit, which is basically brainstorming your goals and seeing if they match up with what you are currently working toward. I would highly recommend the article – check it out!

It took me a few hours, but I settled in with some tea, turned up the heat in my very chilly apartment, and I began to audit my life.

First, you’re supposed to take a stack of Post-It notes and write a goal on each one until you get to 100. According to the article, most people can come up with around 30-40, and the author came up with 121. I thought that coming up with 100 would be easy for me since generally there are lots of things I want to do in life. And I wanted to think of more than 121 because...well I don’t know why, I guess I was just being competitive. (I know, trying to compete with someone you’ve never met about who can think of more life goals is totally ridiculous. One of my goals is not to compare myself to others as much).

I came up with 60 goals. I could have made more small goals or more lofty goals, but I figured unrealistic ones like “become fabulously wealthy” and “stop climate change” are not that useful for the purpose of this exercise. My bed ended up covered in Post-Its.

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