I can't decide.
For the past few days I've been working on my goals and resolutions for the new year. I may be the only person left on the planet who finds this exercise fruitful. Last year, I concocted an 18-month plan, which is well on its way to completion. There are a few spectacular hold-outs in the completion department, but mostly I did pretty well.
So, out came the colored pencils and the calendar and my journal and... all my planning toys. I've figured out (sort of) the categories in my life. I know -in broad strokes- where I would like to be in each of those categories in five years. It's easy enough to work backwards and get to a one year plan, and backwards still further to a 90-day plan. Of course, I could come up with an hour-by-hour plan, but my obsessive-compulsive nature doesn't extend that far, you'll be glad to know.
But as I put papers into folders last night, I started to worry. Life's what happens when you're making other plans, and all that. By getting so precise with my goals and plans am I just begging the gods to throw back a few beers and have a good old laugh at my expense while they completely screw with me? Or... are there worse things than tempting fate? Tempting sorrow, perhaps. Or tempting disappointment that I never got around to pursuing some goal or another?
And of course, there's the ever-present possibility that the planning itself becomes the project. One must, eventually, put the colored pencils aside and start working the plan -which I mostly think is fun, too (unless the goal says something like "confront the fact that you are living in a messy house and FIX THAT." Housework. Blech.)
Balance....balance... where's the balance point? I have such trouble with that concept!
3 comments:
You are such a delightfully organized individual. I can just picture you sitting there with coloured pencils, mapping out your nearby destiny on your calendar. I love it.
I love your blog. I love the way you think. Thanks for being a blessing to me.
And I love your friends who tell you that a higher power removed someone unpleasant from your life. They are right, he must have been blind, poor dear.
Seriously, Andrea, I wish I could sit down and do something even remotely like what you do. Most of my life has been spent drifting and not knowing where I'll be in 5 years, much less a year, much less tomorrow. Now THAT is a huge waste of time.
I can tell you from experience, nothing is going to happen if you don't set goals and figure out ways to work toward them. I think I need to fly you out here for a counseling session so you can show "how to"
aaaah, balance....that capricious child of 50+ women....
I've spent the last five years with elegant lists of shoulds, coulds, woulds....no list this year....well, no *elegant* lists...just gonna be.
I hope that we will connect again this year - maybe over gardening...a road trip to The Flower Factory in Staunton WI? No lists, just possibilities.
Catherine
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