Goal-setting, journey of a thousand miles, yeah, yeah.
As an exercise (set by my current martial-arts school), I've been trying to set out my major goals and the steps I'll take to get there. I'm actually a setter-out of written goals from way back, and I'm always shocked by the time the end of each year arrives at how my life has veered from what I thought at the beginning was its path. Example: a few years ago I was actively pursuing an actual, grown-up career in emergency management. A lot of my goals had to do with gaining the expertise and running the projects I needed for that. These days I'm pretty well convinced that emergency management is not where I want to be: instead, I'm pointing my energy toward writing and making writing-related things happen.
It's an exercise in self-doubt, more than anything: I spent all that effort on emergency management, and found out it wasn't the right thing for me. Will I find out the same thing with writing? Or -- WORSE -- have it found out for me by critics either more or less kindly? I guess I can only find out over time.
When I'm hiking, I make it a point every once in a while to turn around and look at how the trail looks from the other direction -- because it will make it easier to backtrack in case I get lost, frankly. But it's also useful for seeing how far I've come. When I look back in a month, or in a year, what will the trail behind me look like? How far will I have come, and in what direction?
posted by Laura E. Goodin @ 2:53 PM (permalink)
2 comment(s)
2 Comments:
I'm of two minds on goal-setting. On the one hand, it's hard to know whether you've reached a goal if you don't set out what it is. I'm big on defining endpoints for work, for example, lest the work just go on and on.
On the other hand, it is often pleasant to just take a random plunge, and turn where you will, and see where it ends up. People seem less keen to pay for that sort of experience, I find. But it can be most fulfilling. This tends to be more the method to my life.
Or to quote the fictional Frank Bama, "The best navigators never know where they're going until they get there, and then they're still not sure."
No, I'm far more driven than that. The problem is that I keep thinking it's one road, and then years later I found out it's been another one all along. But I want to know!
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