eight days to my goal deadline

Let's take a look again at the five goals I made nearly three months ago:

Make FIVE phone or skype calls to keep in touch with long distance pals.

Well, I'm failing here. I have skyped with Shep and Tab twice and we called them another time. I also keep in touch with Chadley via work chat. I skyped into my brother in-law's 30th birthday party, but I don't really count family. If I did count family, I've skyped with my sister oodles of times. Also, I saw Nathan and Annie, who are totally long distance friends, for church and lunch a few weeks ago. But really, I'm failing at this one. Bum.

Have FOUR new anything once experiences.

One, two, two and a half, three. That's 75%. A solid C, which is technically passing.

Write THREE posts per week.

I've posted 17 times since the original goal post (ha - goal post), some of which shouldn't count. It has been 12 weeks. Therefore, I'm running an average of about 1.4 per week. That's 47%. A solid D, which is technically passing in some schools. I hang my head in shame.

Complete TWO works - hopefully finish the play I've started and write a children's book or even just a poem.

Let's see. I've completed zero works. That is an epic fail. I did come up with a great idea for a novel though, and I wrote the first two pages of that. So, yeah.

Move into ONE apartment, for goodness sake.

YES. I did this one! We are now living in a townhome in Westminster, and this has been my excuse reason for most of the aforementioned failure. Before we moved, I was spending all of my energy in locating an apartment. Then we moved, and I was spending all of my energy in moving. And now that we're starting to get settled, I'm writing this post. Blam. Back in the swing of things. 

Anyway, I do still have eight days, so I might be able to squeeze a few more things in here and there. We shall see. 

five goals for the next three months: an update

Last month, I wrote out five goals for the next three months. I'm about a third of the way in, so let's see how I'm doing:

Make FIVE phone or skype calls to keep in touch with long distance pals.
I'm slightly behind on this one already, but I do have one skype call under my belt. 

I skyped with Shep, Tab, AND Heidi. So if I end up not meeting my skype/call goal, I'm totally going to justify this one call as 3/5 of this goal.

Have FOUR new anything once experiences.
Also slightly behind on this one, though I've had one already, and I'll have one next week.


Write THREE posts per week.
On average, I'm meeting this goal. Mostly because Mikkele said she didn't think I'd meet this goal and I took that as an extra motivation. Thanks for not believing in me!


Complete TWO works - hopefully finish the play I've started and write a children's book or even just a poem.
I'm totally failing at this one, though fairly often if I'm in the car and the radio is off, I'm brainstorming a children's book. That counts as a step toward the goal, right?


Move into ONE apartment, for goodness sake.
The plan is to meet this goal in the first half of October, skating in at the deadline. 

Eat snow

Today, I had one goal: shop for groceries. 

Today's list of accomplishments: groceries shopped, snow eaten. 

I guess that makes it a good day, I would like to collect my bonus points now, thank you. 

I've been spending more time than I anticipated meditating on my incapacity to come up with a resolution for this year. I had lots of time to think about it this weekend when we went on this retreat, you know, the one where I was not joining a cult? They provided child care, which meant I had more waking hours away from Sofia than ever before in our lives. It was emotionally distressing at several points, I suffered worse from separation anxiety than she did I think, but it also provided enough space for me to be able to start forming coherent thoughts for the first time in - I don't want to calculate exactly how long. 

One of the retreat exercises included meditating on John 5:1-17 & Isaiah 5:1-7. In summary: Jesus is the vine, we are the branches, God is the gardener. God does the pruning that we might allow the life of Christ to flow through us and bear fruit. When we don't remain in Him, bad things happen. There is a whole lot of meat in these passages, a great deal of high minded, spiritual profound meat. But you know what God needed to teach me this specific weekend? The simple lesson that my life needs some pruning, and by my life, I mean my to-do list. 

I had two majors in college and went to grad school in an entirely different area. I've held jobs in about ten different fields, and have had career aspirations in about five times as many fields. I'm all over the place. On a prideful day, I like to think I just have so much to give the world, that's why I'm so "diversified." But on a day like I had this weekend, I was humbled and had to admit I'm just spreading myself too thin to be worthwhile in anything. I think I'm just grasping for worth, wallowing in insecurity about my identity. I keep thinking I have this figured out, and keep coming back around, face to face with God's truth, that I'm not secure in the right things. 

So I sat down in the still quiet time, sans squealing babe, that has become so unfamiliar. I brainstormed the list of "projects" I feel like I'm juggling these days. In less than ten minutes, I had 30 items on my list. thirty. ugh. No wonder I am always wracked with anxiety/anger/fear/despair when Sofia wakes up from a nap and I haven't had enough time to get "it all" done. I went back through the list, anxiously, but prayerfully, and started making the hard decisions about projects I need to let go of. I could only let go of about half. But when I got honest, there were only about six that were bearing fruit. Only about six that seemed truly of the Spirit. A few others might be worth returning to another day, but I am deciding to focus on these six and work to let go of the other things tugging at my heart/mind/creativity/sense of obligation. Talk about separation anxiety. 

But I'm supposed to honoring God in all I do, I have to remain in Him, I have to humbly submit myself to Him to be pruned. So, we'll see how I manage. Can't say I feel too secure or comfortable in this new zone just yet. But today I kept it to one goal for the day, and that goal got accomplished, and then some. A goal that supports one of my six key projects. So I will accept that today was a good day. Dear Lobsters, if you love Jesus, would you pray with me that I would survive some pruning so that God might bear fruit through me? Thanks much.