The Goal

My son, who is only 2, loves playing "soccer"...I want to make sure to play it with him as much as possible.

My husband enjoys red wine...I want to enjoy it with him, sitting in the kitchen, talking over our day while he cooks something fabulous.

My dogs need to walk...and I should probably take them more often; they're getting fatter by the second.

My goals are simple...and my biggest goal with this project is to keep it as simple as possible so I am more likely to keep it up.

What it comes down to is this: I need to write. For my sanity and for the sanity of those I love; but I find a myriad of reasons not to. I procrastinate. I have too much housework. Too much work I've brought home from work. I need to give my son a bath. I need to... you name it, I'll come up with it. And it isn't even intentional. It's subconscious. Maybe I'm afraid I'll have to keep doing it and that I won't be any good at it or I won't like it. So, I've come up with a reason to write that is about why I don't write and more: all the excuses.

The excuses are really the problem. Housework, take-home work, obligations A-Z, errands, responsibilities...and so little of it really matters to anyone, including me. But, it can be so hard to say I'm not going to do it. It is so hard to say that playing in the driveway or sitting on the couch reading, or watching a movie with my son are more important than "getting something important" done.

I'm going to explore that a bit this year. I think, to some degree, I'm a work-a-holic. In other ways, I'm lazy as hell. I need to expend more energy on the right things and less on the wrong. The real challenge here is to decide which is which.

We live in a society that is fast wearing itself out. America...the land of the free - yah...free to work yourself to death. And yet, what are we working for? So we can have a nice house, support an entertaining lifestyle, retire in comfort? Is there a way to successfully "have it all"? Live in the moment AND plan for the future? And what can help us find that kind of harmonic balance?

I remember several years ago hearing that Japan was the most overworked nation in the world...that the Japanese were actually working themselves to death - heart attacks being a common outcome of their upwardly mobile climb to the top of the economic/business food chain. And now studies show we have surpassed them! Yay for us! In a world of competitive insanity, this tops the charts. I, for one, want out of the race (not that I was much of a contender anyway). Besides, now that we've outsourced ourselves right out of self-sufficiency, I think it might be intelligent to realign my priorities in case of a major upheaval (which I see looming in our not so distant future).

So, my goal is simple. To embrace simplicity in all it's glory and find out what is truly important. And once I really accept it, I need to jump in with both feet and wallow in it. Get busy living a messy, happy, emotionally healthy life. Stop feeling stressed and pressured to live up to the subliminal expectations of a society that I'm not even sure I like much anymore, and which I'm sure has little interest in me.

It's a complex kind of "simple", I know.

My goal is the journey.