It has been too long since I last thought about real goals. Things beyond the mundane of finishing a task at work or remembering to make the phone call(s) I’ve been procrastinating about. I’m talking some big hairy audacious goals. Things like “what do I want to do with my life?”
Last time I had the patience or presence of mind to make goals was a good two years ago, when I decided I wanted to buy a house, get a puppy, have a baby (eventually). The bit about having a baby put a good hiccup into the planning for long term projects, since there was no way of knowing when or what that was going to be like. The past few months have gone by in a flurry since the kid was born. Seriously! Where did all the days go? And suddenly it’s been two years of home improvement, travel, family commitments, and sleepless nights later and I can breathe a little bit again and do things just because I want to for myself.

Writing blogs is one of those things (notice much of it’s content begins two-ish years ago). Writing has never been my best skill, but I’ve always enjoyed doing it, especially in a format like this where I can talk as much as I want to about myself. I grew up reading other people’s blogs and waiting for the day I’d be old enough to contribute myself. In a way, I’m glad my parents stance against social media kept me off of things like MySpace and LiveJournal (and even Facebook until it became necessary in college), so I don’t have as much public cringey content to look back and be embarrassed about, but I always liked the thought of sharing My Voice with the world.
To Share My Voice
That’s what this site has been about for me. Half a record of who I am in a particular moment in time, with glimpses of my own current events, and half a platform for me to share things I’ve learned over the course of that time, in hopes that someone might find me interesting and want to join in a discussion. In order to really gain that audience I have been craving, I’m going to have to be more diligent in cultivating a “following” on social media (as pompous and egotistical as that sounds). One of the best ways to do that is to be more consistent at posting (try telling that to my no-routine-baby!) which is the easiest and most obvious of my new goals.
To Be More Selfish
This one is a little counter intuitive, but I promise it makes sense. I’ve gotten myself stuck in a rut of putting others first to my own detriment. When my mental and physical well-being is put at risk, I need to make a change. My goal is to do one thing each day for myself, and to keep myself accountable for doing it, through friends or through social media. Sometimes that may look like spending an evening practicing the bagpipes, other times it might look like eating that second cookie. It might be saying “yes” to something that scares me, or it might be saying “no” to something that I enjoy, but that takes time away from something I enjoy even more. A lot of the time, I expect it is going to look like being still enough to listen to my own body and mind telling me to seek peace.
To Take A Risk
My most loftiest goal is take a risk, to spend time, effort, and even money on something that isn’t guaranteed. I want to be able to look back in a month or in a year and see a turning point. I’m not sure exactly what that will look like, but I’m tired of spending every day looking forward to another day that looks exactly the same. If I want to build a life for my family to enjoy, I need to make a change, and I most certainly need goals.
One of the biggest ways I think I’m going to be able to accomplish these goals is by sharing them. I plan to think periodically, maybe even monthly, about what specific, “smart” goals I can come up with to achieve in these categories.
Sounds like an excellent list to ‘keep’ some of yourself. I keep trying to blog more, but I got scared down by some huge drama – now I tend to keep a lot of my voice to myself.
Oh dear! Drama is never any good. It’s hard to find a good balance between being able to say what you want to in your own space and making sure that you don’t make yourself a target for trolls or other drama. I’ll take any advice you can give on the subject.
I’ve always been horrible at setting actual goals. At least attainable ones. Kudos to those that can and pull it off!
Where do the days go! Life with kids is crazy and writing consistently is so hard! I love your goals. I think I might also make ‘take a risk’ one of my goals as well.