I'm kind of failing at this goal keeping business, aren't I? I thought the idea was to make little, easily kept goals so you can take baby steps and make progress. But what do you do when you trip over your baby steps? I haven't been faithfully keeping any of the goals I started the year with, particularly my writing goals. It's so easy to get wrapped up in life in general until even the things you care about get pushed to the side.
This is especially a problem for me during the semester while I'm in school. I'll start out doing a pretty good job balancing things, then homework assignments start getting longer, nights of sleep start getting shorter, extracurricular activities get more frequent, classes get harder. I'm constantly reading and writing for school, so when I get any amount of "free time," it's hard to talk myself into reading and writing things that aren't required. Then I feel guilty for not keeping my goals, but if I take time to keep up with them I feel guilty for taking time on something that's not strictly "productive." It's a vicious cycle, so it's hard to keep up.
Funnily enough, the comment I usually get is "Oh just wait, it only gets worse." Well thanks. That's encouraging. (No disrespect, and I'm not thinking of anyone in particular.) I know these people mean well, but it's really not the most hope-filled comment ever! I understand that it will get worse. It always does. The things that stressed me out to no end in junior high felt like nothing in high school, and the things that absolutely killed me in high school seem easy now. It does keep going, always getting busier, more stressful. But maybe that's because the older and more mature we get, the more we can handle (hopefully). But even when the workload changes, I think that the emotions stay pretty similar. We're all given different tasks and different burdens at different times. Mine isn't the same as yours. Maybe you can handle more right now than I can. That doesn't mean I should try to compete to keep up with you. Maybe I can handle a bit more than you. That doesn't mean you're not as stressed or busy as me. "Comparison is the thief of joy." One of my favorite performers recently shared this thought on his social media page, and it really resonated with me. It's so true, on so many levels. (Maybe it will get its own post!) When we sit here and compare our busy schedules to take some sort of strange pleasure in who is getting the least sleep, who has the most credits, who works the most hours, how can we hope to encourage and build up each other? We just get further strangled in our crazy schedules.
Anyway, sorry, that was a side note on some issues that I've been pondering lately. Maybe I will hash it out further at some point. The point is, we're all busy. It's kind of unavoidable in this hectic world we've created for ourselves. And when we're busy, sometimes it's at the expense of the things we love. And when the things we love get buried under "to do" lists, we start to trip over our baby steps.
So, I guess this is another apology for tripping.
Forgive me my craziness and the things that get lost in the bustle. But even if I trip, I'm pretty determined to get back up. And I'm going to keep plugging away at it. Maybe it won't always look like I think it should. But maybe somewhere in those faltering steps, there will be progress. Maybe I'll be able to dig deep and discover why I made these goals in the first place, why they're important to me, why I should bother to keep getting up. Please be patient with me on the journey.
