Goals are lovely things. Short term, long term, those hard-to-grasp midterm goals, they’re useful and give you a sense of accomplishment when you’ve set them.
I’ve a few goals. Write novels for publication, write short stories for publication, live in a house, have my finances clean enough that I don’t need to think about them any more, get our debts ordered (an odd thought; do they ever run short of debt and have to order more?), get enough sleep for as a habit instead of an anamoly…. I find that I’ve listed my goals in what I have come to consider Long term to Short term order. The last goals listed are making such a ruckus in my life (or, in the case of sleep, such a drain of emotional energy and mental capability) that I can’t pursue the othes well.
Since the others are the ones that are important to me, that’s making me sort of fussy. I spend my days fiddling around with the UNIMPORTANT goals, like getting enough sleep or getting out of collections, when there are LIFE CHANGING IMPORTANT goals out there to work toward, like writing a short story that will sell for a few dollars.
I used to think that, since the short term goals were immediate (and thereby more urgent), the implication was that my long term goals were not important. Not so, I now realize. The short term goals are almost not goals at all.
My long term goals are Things To Achieve or Lifestyle To Live. My short term goals … very much resemble a list of Obstacles To Overcome.
So…perhaps my fussiness comes from having my eye on goals of achievment and existance, but my daily life is centered on slaloming through life’s pot-holes, not attaining anything or existing in a perfect fashion at all.
No WONDER I’m fussy.
…
Today I will go buy me something classy, like this, and use it daily. I’ll set it for 15 minutes (number picked from the air — they float all around me these days, like pollen or gnats, but quantifiable) each evening and write during that time as the cat spins ’round; emails, journal entries, notes of bathroom wall scribbling, short stories, novels — writing. I don’t care what kind, at this point. It will be a daily exercise, no matter the state of my brain-death, in Attaining instead of Dodging.
So. A short term goal that is positive. Good on me, I feel.
Crossposted from Epinephrine & Sophistry