Decide what I want to achieve in 2009 and make the appropriate goals

The thing is that I quite like the simplicity of my life…... it’s just bloody lonely is all.

This is so damn hard. I spent hours early this morning trying to work it out and getting absolutely nowhere. It got to the point where I even (horror of all horrors) thought for a fleeting moment about closing my account….....I quickly came to my senses on that one at least.

It hit me today that I think I am ready to move again. I think I have always had a subconcious knowledge that Australia is not where I will spend the best years of my life and the restless and impatient part of me keeps shifting around trying to find where that is. Something keeps telling me to sell up and shift back to England but I am not sure that is the right thing either, I do know that I want to be able to go back moe often. I have after all tried that twice (before I had so many finacial commitments here) and ended back here after a few months. With a bit of hindsight I am beginning to think that the reason that happened was because I wasn’t completely OK with being in Australia at those points in my life. I am OK with it now, and I could probably lead a comfortable, relatively easy life….. but it doesn’t feel right. Part of the reason that I became a teacher was because it was relatively easy to get work in other places….... I can leave my job here for up to 3 years at a time on unpaid leave and still have one to go back to with all my benefits intact. It just takes almost a year to get anything processed.

Maybe I am completely wrong, maybe I am just sick of being restless and looking for a bit of grounding…... either way the goal setting for 2009 isn’t any easier.

This is from my free-write about intentions for the coming year, which I planted a little later than the new moon, but it’s still just a wee baby sparkly crescent moon, so I think it’s still a good time for planting intentions.

• Work up to running and walking, dancing and swimming, reading and socializing, studying and being ambitious about successful research and academic work.
• Weigh 135 lbs or less, not skinny – fit and strong and lithe and energetic and robustly healthy.
• Disciplined 3-meals + 1-snack routine, with early dinner, lots of water and strong veggie focus. SHUN sugars, which are unhealthy in LOTS of ways. Emphasize whole foods, nuts, fish, eggs. And emphasize locally grown food.
• Pray for discipline.
• Meditate. Make my mind still. Spend time in nature daily.
• Practice giving, circulating good energy.
• Pray for openness to love. Operate not from a place of fear and self-defense, but from a place of confidence in my own safety in the hands of a benevolent universe. I want to feel strongly that rejection and aging cannot change me or anihilate me because my BEING is an indestructible energy.
• Focus on being a generous force of good and concerning myself with the well-being of people around me. Fund the energy for this by practicing gratitude and reminding myself of the security of my own well-being.

The big emphasis in this goal-reflection is on feelings, which I know are not goals. But I want to be more aware of what sort of feelings and thoughts I want to hold, perspectives and attitudes. So I’m going to emphasize some spiritual/awareness goals for myself. And I think other goals will be more achievable if I do this. Not that I believe the whole law of attraction business completely, but I do think that a centered quiet mind has more capacity to pursue clear goals than a frantic moody and self-obsessed mind.

What I want to figure out is how to REMIND myself in an ongoing way about the importance of all this. make a poster and write in big colored markers about these ideas?

How do people stay with their realizations and conclusions about how to improve things? Because I always seem to lose track of realizations and have to wait for them to come back to me in due time.

Feel free to offer advice if anyone has any about this idea of keeping focused.

I want to earn a masters degree. This will be straight-forward. Just go to school and do it. I should finish in December 2009 if I don’t do anything stupid.

I want to write – and to feel good about what I’m writing. I want to finish some work with a beginning, middle and end. Stories, essays, anything, so long as they’re finished and I am able to show them to someone.

I want to read. Novels and short stories. In a systematic way. Instead of wasting my liesure time.

I want to work on building and solidifying some real friendships. I want to be a good, generous, loyal, strong and helpful force in the lives of some friends.

I want to meet a guy. Someone lovable. Someone who values the things I value. Someone. (this is a hard one to shape goals around, but I can make goals around looking in the right places and feeling open to this.)

I want to exercise more. Cook healthier meals, and lose the last 10 lbs. By my 36th birthday, I really do want to be fit, toned, healthy and strong. And have a body in pregnancy-ready shape for a (hopefully) 2010 pregnancy with or without a partner.

I want to earn a good amount of money and find a way to pay for school that doesn’t involve taking on more debt.

I want to be happier. I want to feel better. Take meds more regularly. Work out. Socialize. Have a healthy schedule. Not drink as much. Stop running away from bad feelings and start bravely taking on the world.

I want to love people more. I want to be more generous. Volunteer. Give my time and energy. Support others more.

I want to find my spiritual center of gravity, and get centered on it – somehow. Meditation, prayer, contemplation, involvement with community. Something. I need an anchor.

I want to grow up this year, a bit. I want to feel more capable, with more resources, more to draw from, draw on, internally. I want to stop complaining and looking around for someone to swoop in and rescue me from my life. I want to stand on my own two feet.

So, now to operationalize these goals. i think I’ll have to sit down with pencil and paper and timelines to sort out how to make these nebulous goals into clear steps.

<—nebula

<—clear steps

can’t decide…... and I just realised that I had two goals that were virtually identical…... there was no progress on either.

Torn between the unatainable dreaming goals and the dull, boring but realistic ones.

I’m going to do some thinking about it and planning, and then make my official goal-setting day be on the new moon for good luck.