Everyday Canvas

Setting Goals

Prompt: We're halfway through the year, where did the time go? Did you set goals for the year? How close are you to accomplishing them? Do you measure your goals monthly, quarterly or yearly or simply let the ball where it may. What do you hope to accomplish in the last 6 months of this year?

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Long term goals have never worked for me because life had the insidious intent of butting in my business...always.

For that reason, I never set goals too complicated to handle. Maybe it would be different if I were alone in my life, without any input or distraction from others around me. Then, I might be able to hack it; yet, I am grateful for the people I love as I would be miserable without them. They are more important to me than any long-term goal.

One other reason I don’t set goals is because I get frustrated if I can’t meet them. Because of that, I do not enter the ‘Dear Me’ contest the site runs every January.

Yet, I do appreciate the value of goal setting for one’s future since a goal is a target to aim at. Setting long-term goals can be helpful and they should work for people who are starting a new venture or a business.

Short-term, reasonable goals, on the other hand, I can sometimes manage, provided they are met within a given, tiny time period. Sometimes a month, maybe two, at the longest. For that reason, what works for me are the deadlines set by others, circumstances, or sometimes by me.

For example, if I have to finish a writing a page within the next hour, I’ll do it, but if I tell me, within a year, I have to write, edit, and revise a novel, then make it certain that it is accepted by a publisher and that it is good enough to win a major award, that won’t happen. I’ll write the novel, though, but I can’t vouch for the rest of it. Thus, the goal will not be met and I will have frustrated myself for nothing.

So, I kind of live each day as it comes, but this has more to do with aging, too. Although I wasn’t always this shallow, I learned to roll with the punches over the decades, and I found out that life is easier this way.