Day by day, in every way, I’m getting better and better

I have a lot of little goals in my 2021 list, as I always do. Work my brain by doing puzzles. Observe people in the street — their body language, their clothes, their faces. Walk further; I do a lot of walking with the dogs, but it’s rarely as much as two miles. Take more photos and improve my photography skills.  This is stuff I easily fall behind on, but I think I’ve found a way to keep up: make them something I do daily.

Not that I have “do it every day.” as a goal in my list. it’s just that if I shoot for daily, I’m sure to get it done weekly. Well, pretty sure; last week’s chaos almost threw me off but Monday – Wednesday were enough to get ’em done. This is advice I’ve seen in a lot of books: if you need to make $10,000/100 cold calls/write 50,000 words, approach the project as if your goal was $20,000/200 cold calls/write 100,000 words. That way no matter what the setbacks, you’ll have budgeted enough time and effort to make your real goals.

I’ve never found that good advice. Whatever the fake goal I set is, my mind insist on interpreting that as my real goal. As it’s higher than I can make, that ends up making me feel I failed. In this case, however, it seems to be working (of course, the week’s young). Maybe because they’re relatively simple goals, on stuff that isn’t vital, so I’m not stressed. And they don’t require the same level of thought and creativity as setting really steep writing goals does. So I doubt there’s a lesson I can apply to my bigger ambitions.

Eventually if they become regular enough I can stop listing them as goals. With meditation, for example, it’s now part of my regular routine, even if I don’t write it down as a goal. Ditto bread-baking: I resolved to bake bread (including muffins, rolls and scones as an option) at least twice a month last year; I think it broke me out of a slump, so that’s not on the list this year either.

Now if only I could be as efficient in my writing goals …

To wrap up, here’s a photo showing how shaggy Trixie is these days, and one of Wisp sprawled in her favorite snooze place, on the back of the couch.#SFWApro.