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Training myself to think small
Apr. 20th, 2010 06:38 pmThis is the big challenge for me this year, and probably for at least one more: to get out of the terribly damaging rut of grand plans that I turn out not to be able to complete, and then failure and melancholy, and the cumulative exhaustion of it all. I do have some big hopes for my life and some necessarily big steps to take to get there, along with smaller ones, but I'm saving all that for later discussions. For the moment, I'm really working to keep myself focused on the day-by-day, and the few immediate steps after those.
Thus I'm intending that in this round of journaling I won't, for instance, join Flickr's group for folks taking a picture a day for a year, even though in fact I hope to take and share a picture a day most days. Nor am I committing to read this many books, nor to watch that many films, or whatever. When it works out to do some gaming, I'm not going to aim for anything larger than "this adventure, and that one after if folks are having fun". My exercise is all "what I need to do each day until this point, and then see what to do each day after that". And so forth and so on.
It's hard. I like to think in terms of big plans. It's a rare opportunity, overall, but I come from a background of sufficient privilege in terms of wealth, race, and gender to make it tantalizingly obtainable...but, in the end, not quite, given my limitations. So I'm training myself to live the kind of life I can live and can enjoy living, and to build up a new foundation of satisfactions.
Thus I'm intending that in this round of journaling I won't, for instance, join Flickr's group for folks taking a picture a day for a year, even though in fact I hope to take and share a picture a day most days. Nor am I committing to read this many books, nor to watch that many films, or whatever. When it works out to do some gaming, I'm not going to aim for anything larger than "this adventure, and that one after if folks are having fun". My exercise is all "what I need to do each day until this point, and then see what to do each day after that". And so forth and so on.
It's hard. I like to think in terms of big plans. It's a rare opportunity, overall, but I come from a background of sufficient privilege in terms of wealth, race, and gender to make it tantalizingly obtainable...but, in the end, not quite, given my limitations. So I'm training myself to live the kind of life I can live and can enjoy living, and to build up a new foundation of satisfactions.
