Finally Writing Goals

So this week I finally managed to put some 2014 goals to paper.

Yes, I know it is April.

What surprised me was my supreme reluctance to undertake this task. It is a little surprising - even to me.  It is not as if I did not spend time working on these at the end of the 2013 with my usual process of dividing and subdividing.  It is not as if I did not draft them and have the available for final approval.  I just could not bring myself to do them.

I came up with excuses of course.  At first my excuse was that I did not have a planner/book for 2014 (I changed formats this year).  But then I got one.  Then my excuse became "Well, I am not really sure that these are my goals" - but I made no forward movement in actually writing them down.  Then my excuse became "I am not sure that these are really the goals that I should be striving for - I need to have less, more focused goals."  And so on.  You get the idea.

But on Monday night I finally made myself write them down.

The odd thing to me was that as soon as I wrote them down I found that I could (or was close to) crossing almost half of them off already.  In April.  That has almost never happened.  That should have made me happy, correct?  It did not really - instead I sat looking at the ones that were remaining.

Of the eight listed, six of them are completely within my control to accomplish.  They are everything a goal should be:  specific, time bound, concise, clear.  The problem is the two that are neither of these yet are the most important: the most important of these is find a new job/career.

Why did I sigh?  Bogha Frois said it concisely to me more clearly than I could have said it to myself:  because it ultimately out of your control.  I could work and study and search and find, only to find myself at the point that this is not something I can achieve.

It bothers me even as I think about it now.  I have eight goals listed, four of which I am super close to having achieved.  Why is it I cannot look at those accomplishments and instead focus only on that which I have not done?