Prompt: Beyond avoidance. What should you have done this year but didn't
because you were too scared, worried, unsure, busy or otherwise deterred
from doing? (Bonus: Will you do it?)
Author: Jake Nickell
I am blessed due to my fascination with setting goals. Many of my compadres bristle at the G-word, preferring softer words like "intention" or "dreams" or "hopes" but I have always felt perfectly at home wearing waders through Goals and all the messyness and pure (sometimes murky) fun goals create.
Why get tangled up in verbage? And I digress, as I am avoiding admitting what I should have done, what was the penultimate goal on my list.
I have talked about this very issue/concept/goal/product/outcome since reverb started.
In 2010 I was supposed to finish my book.
I was hoping for more, actually, because I am so close, I thought I would finish more than one book.
Oh, the pain of admitting this.... no, not exactly pain. More like embarrassment and "oh, really?"
For more than ten years I have had people asking me about where to find my books. I can tell them about anthologies I am in, books that hold my quotes, ooodles of magazines and newspapers and poetry collections and websites and that book, or those books? Have been elusive. Not for lack of material, either. We are talking more than 1,000 blog posts of publishable material. More than that many issues of my ezines.
This is the goal I am going to be the most passionately serious and playfully detached with myself with in 2011.
I swore off goal setting until after the end of December, I mean, making my usual end of the year lists and all that stuff, so I think what I will do instead is... craft a mantra, a daily, simple, loving mantra paired with a simple question to live each day that reminds me to take the tiniest yet most significant step (or even any step) toward getting my books in print. Not in safe anthologies like I have done before or poems in other editors poetry books, but get my own singularly my own books done. In the can. Complete.
I will play with this in January and witness my progress.
If any of you out there want to cheer me along... I am ohhhh so open to that!
As for the goals I did manage to reach in 2010, and the ones that popped up which I wasn't expecting... I love how this one worked out: "Stretch cultural view of beauty in older and/or “imperfect” women…" I am going to keep this one alive though I think I made forward progress, at least in my microcosm of the world. The two music videos I was in definitely addressed that one from completely different angles. I'm going to keep it in 2011. I giggled aloud about this one, so much so that my daughter said, "What are you laughing at?" Goal #91said: "Communicate consciously with people whose personalities are challenging to me." I actually achieved this one, too. Much of the time.
And primarily, for now with my avoidance strategies under the light, I am going to be passionately detached in January about getting my book(s) out there. I am going to be focused and work with my whole heart and soul and I am going to be a non-judgmental witness to my process. I am going to live the question, "What sweet step, what forward motion may I take today to bring my book to form?" each day.
My shoulders are loose, my arms are light, there is a smile on my face.
You reverbers truly help me in not feeling so rotten about avoiding what I meant to do more than ten years ago. My book(s) are going to be so much better now than they would have been then, anyway. ^giggles^
follow me on twitter: @juliejordanscot
Recent Comments