Last month, I posted here about setting our annual goals, and a bunch of you weighed in with your dreams and aspirations. How are yours going? [Read more…]
Monthly Goals Check-In
Let’s Pop the Cork on Our 2011 Goals!
Do you ever feel like your days are being nibbled away by chipmunks? My days seem to disappear in hundreds of tiny bites. [Read more…]
My Blog in Review for 2010
The stat monkeys over at WordPress.com mulled over how my blog did in 2010, and here’s a summary of its overall health (the following preso is theirs):
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
Crunchy numbers
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 8,400 times in 2010. That’s about 20 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 80 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 104 posts. There were 56 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 38mb. That’s about 1 pictures per week.
The busiest day of the year was November 7th with 320 views. The most popular post that day was Cougars vs. Leopards.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were huffingtonpost.com, facebook.com, mail.yahoo.com, en.wordpress.com, and lynnespreen.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for any shiny thing, anyshinything.com, anyshinything, lynne morgan spreen, and carolyn sollano.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
1
Cougars vs. Leopards November 2010
20 comments
2
About Lynne Morgan Spreen November 2009
8 comments
3
Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Rules for Writing a Short Story November 2009
4 comments
4
Poor Jane Fonda. Poor Us. December 2010
38 comments
5
About the Blog October 2009
5 comments
Lynne here: I tell people if they’re thinking of starting a blog, you can’t go wrong with WordPress.com. I didn’t even know they did this kind of year-end summary, but it’s another reason to feel good about them. And they didn’t even have to pay me to say that.
On Tuesday, how about we talk about your personal goals for 2011? Be thinking about it. See ya then.
Is It Okay Not To Have Awesome Goals in Mid-life?
In my last two posts, I reminded you that if you don’t know what you want, or if you live your life in service to others to the extent that you never know what you want, or if what you want isn’t really what makes you happy but rather, what gets you through the day (like “I want to organize my desk”), you may die unfulfilled. You may sleepwalk through your one precious life. What a tragedy.
HOWEVER. (Sound of self-righteous throat-clearing.)
Just a few days ago, I read a letter to an advice column from a confirmed slug:
Dear Advice Person:
Is there anything wrong with a single, childless 50-year-old whose only goal in life is to coast to retirement, having saved enough to make retirement comfortable and carefree? I keep reading about having a grand purpose in life, working in a field that you love, being creative, etc., and it just sounds like too much work to me.
I like to have good, clean fun and I don’t like to be responsible for other people. I give to charity, but I don’t want to work in a soup kitchen or be hands-on with helping others. My job is not very fulfilling, sometimes boring, but it pays well enough, and I don’t feel overwhelmed or like I can’t produce what is required of me. I get along with the people at work, and I don’t find myself dreading going to work.
Do I need to challenge myself? Do I need to set more goals? Is coasting such a bad thing?
The Coaster
Lynne again. Hmmm. So what I hear you saying is that my life, that of the rat on the wheel, born of some existential anxiety, may not be the norm. Maybe you don’t NEED to have a big damn goal. Maybe your life is fine just as it is, being a middling member of middle society at middle age. What’s so wrong with that, as long as you go at it consciously and are happy?
Not a darned thing. I think the important thing is to have self-knowledge, to be aware of what makes you happy and go after that. And if you do, and you have no interest in bringing clean drinking water to Africa or peace to the Middle East, I still wish you happiness. We should all be as self-aware and mature as The Coaster.
What Do YOU Want (Part 2)
When you go to bed at night and feel satisfied that you managed to knock off most of the things on your To Do list, do you ever think about the sum of that list?
Is it really an accomplishment? You can get going really, really fast but, at the end of the day (I hate that cliche’ but in this case I mean it literally) did it get you any closer to your goal? Do you even have a goal? Is it to get through the day, errands accomplished? Accounts settled, calls made, kitchen restocked with bread, milk, cereal – is that your life?
When you are on your deathbed, will that have been enough?
I was reading about Jonathan Franzen in Time magazine recently, and he says with life becoming busier all the time, more than ever we need to slow down and read a good book. “The place of stillness that you have to go to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, where you can actually engage productively with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world.”
The same article quotes Soren Kierkegaard and “his idea of busyness: that state of constant distraction that allows people to avoid difficult realities and maintain self-deceptions.” Is this at the heart of our To Do list? Besides making sure there’s always milk and bread, are we just staying busy so we don’t have to ask ourselves, “Did I get what I wanted? Is there still time?”
I think that movement without a goal might add up to wasted effort, time, and life. If I know where I’m going, I can evaluate whether the things I’m doing are getting me there. And if you have the kind of brain I do (fluttery and imprecise), you have to slow down from time to time and meditate. It’s hard, but it’s like exercise – I definitely see a result. My mind clarifies, and I can identify what my priorities are and whether my current activities are moving me toward completing those priorities.
And whether those priorities make sense, in view of the big picture of my mortality.
Here’s how I meditate: I force myself to STOP. I walk to the spare bedroom. Set the timer for 10-15 minutes and bury it under a pillow so it doesn’t startle me. Sit in the comfy chair, close my eyes, and let thoughts rush in and out of my head like a strong breeze – let the thoughts come. Let them go. Don’t stop them. Don’t make mental lists. Don’t conduct analyses. Don’t think.
Listen to the sounds of the house – the dishwasher clunking away, a lawnmower nearby, the gentle whisper of the ceiling fan. Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth, while saying one word: rest.
Rest.
Rest.
Do You Ever Think About What YOU Want?
What drives you? What do you want out of life? What do you want out of every day? Do you even know? Sometimes we get so caught up in the daily grind, taking care of everybody but ourselves, that we forget to think about it.
Some years ago I was looking forward to a weekend of alone-time because hubby was going fishing. I delighted in the thought of attacking my to-do list, not hearing the TV, not smelling cigarette smoke – well, this is my ex-husband I’m talking about so I’ll leave it at that.
Problem was, as soon as his truck disappeared around the bend, I sank down on the couch in such a funk. Completely lethargic. Blue, for no reason. Couldn’t motivate myself to do anything. It worried me. Was this depression, and where had it come from? Eventually I got up, walked from room to room, snacked on junk food, watched TV, and basically killed time until he returned. What a waste of a perfectly good weekend!
Eventually, we split for other reasons. As I worked through the divorce and learned new life skills, I came to realize that, much like women everywhere (and not a few men), I had been trained to place the needs of others before my own. I was reactive, not proactive, and when my motivation (other humans to serve) went away even for a short time, I was left with the question: “What now?”
And I had no answer. Back then, I had no idea what books I wanted to read, vacations I might want to take, movies I might want to see, or hobbies that lit me up. Nothing.
I wasn’t exactly wasting my life. I worked fulltime in a demanding job and commuted an hour each way, so I used up every bit of energy I had. When I had free time I tackled my to-do list. Given that reality, everything I “wanted” to do sounded like this: I want to clean out the linen closet. I want to organize my files. Yuck, right? But until this moment of clarity I hadn’t seen it.
I was unhappy to think that I had been so unsupportive of myself, that I was sleepwalking through my life, not appreciating the gift that it is. Time passes. You can’t get it back.
In the years since, I have changed. I now try to ask myself these questions regularly: What do I want? What would make me happy right now? The answer is usually simple: I would like to sit on my patio and read a magazine. I would like to phone my sister. Sometimes plans are longer term: I would like to play that golf course over in the next town. I would like to stay in Sedona a couple days. And maybe I plan it, or maybe not, but at least I’m more in touch with who I am as a person, as an individual.
Another tactic: Every night before I fall asleep I list five things that made me happy that day. Even if it’s simple (“I enjoyed the camaraderie at my book club”) it qualifies. I usually end up running way past five. By thinking about what made me happy I am able to value my days more powerfully, and again, be more in touch with what I enjoy.
I am not a selfish person, but it’s good to get in the habit of finding reasons to live for yourself. Even if you share your life with others, you have to be able to answer the question: What do YOU want? What would make YOU happy? Otherwise you might be in the same spot I was, having to respond: I don’t have the faintest idea.
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