Rediscovering Goal Setting

This has been a year of shifting focus and restarts, from returning to my work after full-time daycare of my grandson to caring for an ill parent to rearranging my home to make room for my son and his two toddlers to share my home with, to providing daycare to his daughters, to caring for my mom during the last few weeks of her life’s journey to finding my way through the first month of grieving the death of my mother and the work of settling her estate and back to carving out time to return to my work.

There are times I question my ability to meet the demands I place on myself to do all the tasks I think need to be done, to be there for my family and still meet my inner demand to create, to express myself and to immerse myself in storytelling.

I am starting to find the nooks and crannies of unused time in my life and pulling them together into stretches of quiet solitude to call my own, time to reflect, time to read, time to just be and it is changing the mosaic of my days, creating a pattern, a routine and a structure bringing order to the several months of reactive, chaotic, dealing with what is immediately in front of me at the moment life, I have been living.

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I wrote this on September 29^th and surprise, surprise I didn’t take the opportunity to post it until now due to additional demands on my time and unforseen events that needed my attention.

This past year has been an up hill battle to carve out time for myself. It is my nature to care more for others needs than my own and easy for me to put my ambitions, my desires, and my goals on hold.

As the year winds down and I think about my life and what I want to accomplish, I have to admit that I and only I am responsible for how I choose to spend my time. I can still be there for family and friends. I can still participate in activities and make adjustments in my schedule as needed, but I can, also, set aside time for me and expect others to respect that.

I started doing that in October when I committed to running a 5k on Thanksgiving morning with my daughter, son-in-law, a couple of nieces and a nephew. At first I didn’t think I would find the time to train, but I put my training runs on the calendar and on the scheduled day I would keep the thought of running with my family firmly in mind to motivate me to put on my running shoes and get out the door.

It worked!

For the first time in over six years I was able to train for and complete a 5k run. I felt on top of the world and realized I could accomplish any of my goals regardless of the unexpected or even the expected obligations, events, and requests for my time that arise over the course of living life by scheduling time to work on my goal and keeping the goal in mind while I work.