I must confess that I have completely forgotten about my goals for 2011. A quick look at my goals for 2011 showed me that I probably won’t reach half of them. And you know what? I don’t care. After 3 years of getting increasingly worse, with January 2011, as an all time low, I have started to slowly improve. I am way too excited about the things I can do to be bothered about the goals I forgot.
Blogging
This is my 34th article this year and my goal was 36. For those of you who don’t know, I have 2 active blogs: Life with ME/CFS and All things *nix (and an inactive personal blog).
Cycling
Cycling has always been my favorite way of transportation even after I came down with this disease in 2001, although it had a large impact on the distances I could travel. The worst period was from September 2010 till February 2011 when I was unable to ride a bike. My goal for 2011 was 13 km. As a single distance 13 km is going to be a close call, but as the total distance during the course of a day I managed to do it last week.
Nordic Walking
Both my physiotherapist and doctor advised me to do some Nordic Walking for my low back-pain which has been bothering me since September. The first time, 1 km, was a disaster: I was homebound for 3 days with PEM or PENE as it is now called. I reduced it to 500 m for the second and third time and it felt good. Gonna keep on doing it. Trying for 600 m next time.
VPS
VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. The goal is to be able to set up and manage my own web server and host my own websites. This project started almost 2.5 years ago and at the time I thought I would need 6 months to master it. I was wrong, so wrong. As brainfog increased and cognitive skills decreased, progress was reduced to a snail’s pace. In July my concentration improved and I started to make some real progress. In 2-3 weeks from now I will move my first website to my very own web server.
Question
Having goals is important and there is no doubt in my mind about that. However, is it a good thing to write down fixed goals given the unpredictability of this disease?
If I can manage 13 km of cycling this year, then the goal for next year should be 20 km. What if I would be able to hold a part-time job? If this will be the case, I will gladly transfer spoons from cycling to working even if it means not reaching my goal.
The same for cognitive abilities. Currently I am only experiencing an improvement in concentration, not in short and long term memory. So I will continue to use my cognitive spoons on blogging and tinkering on my computer. The moment I notice a significant improvement in memory my focus will shift from blogging/tinkering to studying — preparing for my next job, whatever, wherever and whenever that may be.
Should I write down goals for 2012 or just go with the flow? It wasn’t that I had completely forgotten about my goals; the ones that mattered most to me were always on my mind, I just forgot to check what the other ones were.
What do you do?
| I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to reach my destination. |
| Jimmy Dean |
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Johan,
I think that goals are OK if they’re really vague or gradual e.g. do more of this, less of that rather than specific X of Y OR if they’re really small/short-term like my goal this week is Z. Otherwise they can actually have a real negative affect on you (of course I’m only speaking from my own experience), you feel guilt for not doing them or failure. So I write down my little goals, and then when I hit them write a new little goal. That way its incremental and if all goes well you have lots of little successes, and if not it was only a little goal anyway.
Hi Simone,
Weekly goals are probable more realistic than annual ones. One small step at the time.
Goals…Definitely! Time Frames….Definitely! But I do the 1 thing at a time “model”. And, that “1 thing” changes constantly. What may be important to accomplish on any given day, can change at any given moment. And sometimes, all I can do, is what absolutely “has to get done”. I used to make lists. ow I make project lists. The order of goals shifts and changes, but I stick to it, then move on after the project is complete. And I have 4-5 projects going sometimes. Did I mention this disease is chaotic and I can’t find my list? Kidding….Lists vs. No Lists…….To me, Goals are what matter and never giving up is my #1 goal.
@Julia,
Yep, the #1 goal is never giving up. I don’t know if I will draft a list with specific goals for 2012 like I have done for the previous years, maybe some general ideas or projects.