TO GOAL OR NOT TO GOAL...

But I'm a list and therefore goal kind of girl. So goals work for me---not goals set in concrete but so I know basically where I'm headed for the year.

And of course January starts and the year spreads before us so young and we are so eager for all that could happen. Then before we know it it's half way through the month, not a thing has been achieved (apart from being too hot here at the moment to think let alone do anything)....and so I begin to think of goals.

Some are so much easier to plan.

The garden for instance....

I look at this bed and know that the slate I placed on the sides are okay, but I want to dig them down a bit and set them in, not just lay them as the divider between bed and lawn. 

I want to put my bird house on a pole and actually set it up in a bed, not have it on the ground where it has lain for too many years (yes years).

I want to revamp a few beds, to cut back, prune, remove...this is easy. Gardening goals are never difficult. 

I'd like to do something with this old bee box Steve Found - yes made out of an old vacuum oil company box..how cool would that look...as a planter? or perhaps magazine holder?

Like I said, some goals for the year are so easy to decide. I have a small table I want to paint, Opa's table to fix (wonky legs) and stain darker....walls to paint, bed to buy.

Then of course there is the perennial goal...eat less and move more. Technically the moving bit should be easier with a daughter training for the Oxfam walk - why would any normal person want to walk 100km in 48 hours is beyond me, but she's eager for more walks. 

But writing goals are the suckers that cause me problems. I find it hard to really know what I want to do.

I know I want to write- but this year do I want to work on poetry - short story - novels - including ones I have written in the past?

Do I want to focus on adult, young adult or children's work?

Is it the year of actually writing---or the year of editing, redrafting and then sending finished work out?

This is the hard stuff- decisions to make.

I know goals are never set solid---that they can be tweaked and moved, reinterpreted...even totally scrapped and others added ---but I would like to start the year with something I WANT TO DO...not one I think I should do, or that people tell me I'm good at. 

Hmmm...decisions, decisions, decisions...

Am I heading in the right direction? Who knows, but I suppose if I keep on taking it one step at a time, I'll end up somewhere.

Somewhere different to where I began.

It's only if I do nothing, that I stay exactly where I am.

Here's to decisions...

Vicki 

http://vickithornton.weebly.com/