Last year I had vague notions.
This year, I have goals.
A clean sheet of paper. Headings. Underlined. No, wait…bold, with italics.
Bulleted lists or numbered? Numbers seem more definitive, somehow.
Other people I know have five year goals. Last year, I couldn’t see past the end of a week. Sometimes, it was only a day. Get through the day. Get through another day.
I’m happy with a year. A year is a very respectable amount of time. Instead of grasping at spiderwebs and feeling them disintegrate between my fingers, I have a rope. Something strong, something permanent, something to follow when the path gets murky.
It will get murky.
Finances? Important. Budget. Plan. Monitor.
Buy property. Put down the roots that I’ve been reluctant to nurture.
Work plans? Now that I have a career, I should probably have career goals.
Re-learn my French? No, I’d rather learn Hindi. The Bollywood Oscars are coming to Toronto, you know.
Travel someplace new and exotic. Push the boundaries.
Finish the novel. This also requires starting the novel.
Do yoga. Work out. Watch less TV. Go to the theatre more often.
This is easier than I thought.
Relationships.
Blank.
The pen stops.
Blank? There must be something. Let’s try again.
Relationships.
Blank.
What do I want? I must want something. Write.
Blank.
Keep asking questions. Where do I want this to be at the end of 2010?
Blank.
It’s all right. Let’s leave this one blank, and come back to it later.
***
Apparently this blog will forever be tied to Sesame Street, and not necessarily in a good way. Lately, some people have found the Shoebox by taking a wrong turn en route to the following destinations:
Sesame Street on heroin
Sesame Street pissed off
And, my new personal favourite:
XXX Sesame Street
I feel dirty.
I can’t decide whether I should set goals for this year. Because I have just made a discovery recently that, in fact, I possess no talents of any kind whatsoever, and it paralyses my goal setting a bit.
At the very least, you have a talent for drama, my dear. And I should know…
Add “Move to DC.”
Are you offering your spare room? SWEET!
Sometimes I think that, depending on the issue, vague notions are better. They’re more flexible.
Normally I love this goal-setting time of year. But, lately? Eh, I’ve begun to think just having an *idea* of where I want to be and what I want to be doing is enough. Life is exhausting as it is. No need to stress myself out further by trying to map out the next year of my existence.
Either that’s profound (for me, at least) or horribly lazy. Whatever.
Here’s my goal: eat more cheese fries and donuts but NOT gain weight. I’m not good with other grown up types of goals (mainly because I’m lazy).
I’ve actually been getting Snoopy searches in which people end up on my blog. Weird I tell ya.
I think you are better off leaving the Relationships category blank. R’ships rely so much on other people that you can end up frustrated about not meeting your goals through no fault of your own. Sounds like you have all kinds of winning aspirations in other categories so dont let a little Blankness get you down.