Goals

If you're at all interested in music or Tim Roth, find The Legend of 1900. It's a glorious film - a little slow around the 5/8ths point, but maybe I was just tired and needed a nap. It's about a man who was born on an ocean liner and becomes a beyond-brilliant pianist. Never thought of Tim Roth as sexy, but seeing him on the piano - sometimes sweaty, sometimes so poignant it made me feel like a voyeur - well, let's just say it aroused me in all kinds of interesting ways.

Just as charming is his attitude to things he doesn't like; simple and direct, which of course reminds me of our beloved Kiki. When he's a child playing the liner's ballroom piano in the middle of the night, the captain and not a few of the passengers come in to listen. The captain stares for a moment or two in shock, then approaches the boy and says, "My boy. You must know that this is against all the regulations!" The boy stops for a second and says, "Fuck the regulations." Then he keeps playing. This is a recurring phrase, which is endearing.

On to the primary message of this post. We have in the past discussed goals - their importance, or lack thereof, etc. I am having problems with goals, and it seems to come down to the relatively simple error that I think I am capable of more than I am. You can probably imagine how much that pisses me off.

It's not just in Sanctuary. It's at work, too. I can usually meet the critical, high-visibility deadlines, but when I walk into work saying, "ok, I'm gonna finish two internal audits, follow up two corrective actions, and submit five revisions" it sounds perfectly reasonable to me. And it Never. Fucking. Happens.

Fuck the goals.

In the same vein, it seems reasonable that I should manage to write or revise 1000 words a night. That's only three pages. Is it because I start so late that I can't keep my eyes open? Friday night I worked up to around 700 and then sleep sucker-punched me and I was asleep before I even knew what happened.

At any rate, setting these apparently unreasonable goals - even though they sound entirely achievable to me - is creating no small amount of resentment on my part. I mean, if I can't meet these paltry goals, why set them at all?

Fuck the goals.

Obviously one less dramatic solution is to just adjust the goals so that they remain challenging but more achievable so that I establish a pattern of success instead of failure. Feeling like a loser every day is starting to wear on my self-esteem.

Fuck the goals.

PMS figures into this, I'm sure. And next weekend I'll be leaving for a week at the beach, which sounds glorious on the one hand and terrifying on the other. One of the critical methods I use to maintain some mental stability, on top of the meds, is to stick to the routine. Have a home base, to have something familiar waiting for me when I explore. In other words, "Don't ever get off the boat, man." If you've ever seen Apocalypse Now, you might remember the disastrous consequences of getting off the boat in the middle of a jungle.

I'm doing what I can in terms of planning to make sure I have familiar things around me when we get there - things I can control, because we'll be vacationing with my sister-in-law, her husband, her two daughters (ages 5 and 4), and my father-in-law. A lot of fucking variables.

That's not even considering the shit waiting on the other side once we get home. The day after we get back, my mother-in-law is coming for a three-day-visit, and she will be, no doubt, entirely grossed out by the state of my house, no matter how much we clean before we leave.

The day after she arrives, my dog Sheba goes in for major surgery to have a tumor removed from her leg.

Two days after that, Brian starts school.

The week after that, Aeryn goes back to school.

Yeah, things are going to be a little nuts. But that doesn't mean I have to be. And a first step is, I think, to make 800 words a night instead of a thousand. Once I get used to that I can push it farther. At any rate, I'm still working and still moving forward, even if it feels, as they say 'round these parts, like molasses in January.