Reviews and Plans

[Apart from using a fountain-pen and a Ciak notebook in my review, this hasn't a huge amount to do with Paper, Pens or Ink! Sorry.]

I finally found time this morning to go through my goals for 2011 and think about what had been achieved (and why) and what hadn’t been achieved (and why). I can’t think properly without writing, so I ended up filling up pages of my ‘thoughts’ notebook (which is where random ideas that are unrelated to writing go – things I need to rant about, contemplations, musings… that sort of thing).

I only really got down to any serious goal-planning in July. Before that, my life was much more haphazard! Some of my goals I reached (some I surpassed) and some I failed utterly miserably at. But, the key for me, was not only to list what had worked and what hadn’t, but to think why.

I won’t bore you with the minutiae, but what became blindingly clear to me as I did my review was that I had done the things I believed in.

“A goal is a dream with legs”

The key word in that sentence is dream. I generally had not attained goals that were not part of my dream, either because I had not made time for them or had done them with so little heart or soul they hadn't succeeded.

There are many things I could do in my life.

There are far fewer things that I dream of doing.

There are even fewer things that I yearn to do.

One thing that is not limitless though is time. I don’t have the time to do all the things I could do. I may be lucky enough in this life to do all the things I dream of doing. But the chances are, I won’t even get the time to do all the things I yearn to do.

And then the voice in my head asked, "How many lives do you think you will have?" and when I said, "Just one," it asked me to ask myself:

If I'm not yearning to do it, or it's not essential... why am I squandering my life on it?