Betsy Horvath

Category: Goals and Aspirations

  • Start With Today

    This isn’t exactly what I thought I’d be writing about this week, but, as we’ve seen this year, plans change.

    So, right around Tuesday last week, my life-train suddenly derailed.  Not a horrible derailment in the grand scheme of things, but a derailment nonetheless.

    I wish I could tell you it happened because of an exciting incident full of pathos and intrigue. But honestly, it was a surprise.  I, mean, I was doing good.  Chugging right along. Cars on the rails. All systems normal.  And then… then… BOOM.  Suddenly I’m in a ditch with my wheels spinning in the air.  Suddenly I’m deep, deep, DEEP into a reading binge that I couldn’t seem to find the will to stop, not sleeping AT ALL, eating like CRAP.

    Mistakes were made.

    And for the whole week, I accomplished pretty much nothing of any use. Including writing the blog post I thought I’d be writing.

    When I finally blinked myself awake on Friday, I found that I’d lost days of my life without anything productive whatsoever to show for them.

    I submit to you that I am a walking, talking, poster-chid for how something that is definitely good–reading–can also be the dynamite blowing up any good intentions. I’m not sure why I get obsessive about reading, but if I’m not careful, it can be a catalyst. Or an excuse. Or an escape. Maybe for you it’s shopping, or social media, or binge-watching Netflix, or playing video games.  I guess it doesn’t matter which obsession we choose, the end result is the same–days of our lives missing that we will never get back.

    That’s when the regret and guilt come.  So reliable I can set my watch by them.

    Generally speaking when I have an incident like the one I had this week, and the regret and guilt come, I respond in one of two ways.  Either I try to escape the consequences, so I go deep down into the rabbit hole again.  Or I try to make up everything I should have been doing all at once so that I can fool myself into believing I’m still on track.  Of course, then the pressure of trying to meet those impossible expectations has me breaking again. It’s a vicious cycle.

    So, as per usual, when I blinked my bleary eyes open on Friday morning, my first thought was – “AAAAHHHH!  I’ve wasted so much time!  I have to make it all up!  I have to do it all now! Go, go, go!”

    My next thought was, “You idiot! Look at all the time you’ve wasted. Well, you might as well just keep reading.  No point in trying now.”

    But then, something that is not usual happened.  Either my brain short-circuited, or I had an epiphany.

    I suddenly thought, “You can’t make it all up and you can’t avoid it.  It’s not possible.  That time is gone and putting unrealistic pressure on yourself will not bring it back.  Trying to escape the consequences of your decisions won’t make them go away. You might want to turn back time, but you can’t.

    All you can do is start where you are.  Move forward from where you are.  Start with today.  Okay, it’s not Monday now.  It’s not Tuesday, Wednesday or even Thursday.  Forget the goals you had for those days.  Those days are gone.  What were Friday’s goals?  Start with them.”

    Huh.  Start from where I am?  Go figure.

    Deep breath.

    The things I wanted to do during this past week still need to be done.  So they’ll go on the schedule for next week.  But next week I’ll have the experience of the past week to look back on as a warning for where I stepped wrong.  I think I can see where the train went off the rails now, so if I feel that same wobble, I’ll know to beware.

    The train will go off the track again, it’s inevitable.  But I can’t go backwards and try to make it all up.  That’s impossible.  We can’t turn back time.  We can’t change the past.  We can’t avoid the present. All we can do is press forward into the future and try to make better decisions next tune.

    As you think, you travel; as you love, you attract. You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you. You cannot escape the result of your thoughts, but you can endure and learn, can accept and be glad.

    James Allen

    PS – The whole time I was writing this post, I had Cher’s song, “If I Could Turn Back Time,” going through my head. The lyrics don’t exactly fit what I’m talking about here, but, hey.  I see no reason why I should be the only one with an earworm, so, here’s the video.  As a side note, it’s been a while since I’d seen it, so I’d completely forgotten that Cher, at the time a middle-aged mother of two, was dancing around on a ship full of sailors wearing what amounts to boots, stockings, a jacket, and a strategically placed black ribbon.  *bows low in awe*

  • Puzzle Pieces and Five Words

    Sometimes I feel like my life is a giant jigsaw puzzle with all sorts of puzzle pieces scattered on the floor around me.  The challenge is putting those puzzle pieces together to make some sort of a picture.  Which means there’s a lot of trial and error involved to find out how they fit.  Sometimes more trial.  Sometimes more error.  And sometimes I just pound the pieces to make them go together because that’s the way they SHOULD go! Goldarn it!

    Very often I think I know how to put the pieces together to make the perfect picture, pound them until they fit, and then go about my business.  Eventually it dawns on me that… “Heeeey! The reason things aren’t working is because I didn’t put the pieces together correctly.”  After all, forcing the pieces together might give you a picture that looks perfectly fine, but it doesn’t mean it’s right.

    And that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? With a regular jigsaw puzzle, you can see the picture on the box so you know what you’re supposed to end up with.  But in life, you kind of have to figure it out as you go.  The picture you make depends on the pieces you have.  And those darned pieces can be put together in many different ways.  So you try, and then you shift them around and try again.

    This is made even harder when the world is going through times like these.  And it’s also hard because a lot of times, you know that you do sort of need to do everything you’re thinking about.  Every picture you’re trying to make for your life seems valid.

    We have so many conflicting pieces all trying to get attention, and they can all seem to be equally important. Sometimes they ARE equally important.  How are you supposed to know what to do first? How do you know how to put the pieces together correctly?

    A lot of people try to use goals to give them order, but, as I’ve mentioned before, detailed goals don’t work for me.  If I have a goal, I tend to go out of my way to find a reason not to achieve it. Or I get overwhelmed.

    After spending a few weeks in quarantine trying to pound my puzzle pieces together with mixed results, I realized that I needed to get back to basics.  Not goals.  Not objectives.  Instead, I needed a baseline structure to start from.

    So, because I’m a word person, I came up  with a few words to help provide me with a direction. Words to help me figure out what’s important to me, and, perhaps more urgently, help me decide the order of importance of what I need to do. Then maybe I can figure out what to focus on instead of running around  like a muppet.

    So, I settled on five words that I like.  The order they’re in is important, too – although there is some overlap, each word builds on the one before.

    The five words I settled on are:  Energy, Strength, Independence, Creativity, and Simplicity.

    So, next week, we’ll chitter-chat about Energy, what it means for me, and why I put it first on the list.

    “If you don’t make the time to work on creating the life you want, you’re eventually going to be forced to spend a LOT of time dealing with a life you don’t want.”

    Kevin Ngo

     

     

     

     

     

  • Simply Start

    I love the beginning of a new year.  I know that the divide between years is an arbitrary construct people agreed on so we wouldn’t get confused, but still.  I always think of the end of the old year as a yellowed piece of paper full of scribbles finally being yanked off a tablet.  And underneath is the new year—a fresh, bright, clean page.

    Which is part of my problem.

    See, that bright, clean piece of paper, the new unsullied year ahead, if you will, just begs me to set goals.  Where do I want to be when this new page is full of scribbles and gets yanked off?  Where do I want to go this year?  In the next ten years?  What steps do I need to take to try to get there?

    Setting goals is easy.  I’m hell on wheels at setting goals.  I can goal the heck out of a year.  Most of the time my goals have goals.  And sometimes those goals have baby goals.  If I’m not careful, every aspect of my life can have goals attached to it.  Goals are comforting.  Goals give structure.

    Sorry.  I meant to say that goals give the illusion of structure.

    Because, as we all know, a goal is really only good if you are working to reach it.

    And therein lies the problem.  That whole pesky “reaching it” thing.

    What happens to me, and I’m sure what happens to lots of other people, is I make all sorts of goals.  I see a picture in my mind of where I want to go with my life and who I want to be.  I look at everything I need to do to get there.  I carefully plan it all out, and then…nothing.  Because there’s just way too much to DO before I make any progress at all.  I’m not good enough!  I’m not smart enough!

    In other words, I get overwhelmed.

    And when I get overwhelmed, I freeze.

    Ah, hello self-sabotage, my old friend.

    If I feel—no, KNOW—that I can’t meet my objective anyway, whether the finish line is this year or ten years from now, what’s the point in trying?  So when my conscious mind says, “You have to do this!  You have goals!” my precious, beautiful, helpful, subconscious prompts me to take a nap instead.  Or eat incorrectly.  Or become obsessed with a new phone game.

    Over the past week or so, I’ve been going through my annual battle, setting goals and objectives for all aspects of my life and feeling more and more overwhelmed and discouraged at the amount of work that needs to be done.

    That means I’ve been doing a lot of napping and I got obsessed with a new phone game.

    Then, last night, a new—dare I say, unusual—thought occurred to me.

    “How about you just start?” the thought said.  Honestly, it sounded exasperated.

    I blinked at my phone and sat up straighter in my recliner, startled by the uniqueness of this idea.

    “What?” I gasped.

    “Start,” the thought persisted.  “You know, just start.  Don’t think about starting.  Start.”

    I thought about the thought for a moment.

    “Doing what?”  I asked.

    “Whatever.  Does it matter?  You know perfectly well what your objectives are.  Or you have a pretty good idea.  So do something to take a step towards them.  Start.  Somewhere.  Anywhere.”

    “Huh,” I said, mulling it over.  “Start.  Stop trying to work it all out and just start.  Huh.”  I thought about the thought some more.  “I can probably do that.”

    More thoughts came.

    You want to be an author with a lot of books published?  Write the next chapter in the one you’re working on today.

    You want to be healthy?  Don’t eat stupid today.

    You want to hike the Appalachian Trail? Climb a mountain?  Visit all of the national parks?  Hit your Fitbit steps and exercise today.

    You want a house that looks nice and cute? Do the dishes today.

    Start.

    Who knew it could be that simple?

    Is taking a small step enough for me to meet my objectives?  No.  Of course not.  Hell, no.

    But I’ll never meet my objectives if I don’t start.

    Is simply starting enough?  No.  Of course not.  I have to keep going.

    But I won’t keep going if I don’t start.

    So I’m not going to write an obligatory post about goals this week.  Oh, I’m sure I’ll be sharing my goals as we go on, and whether or not I’m meeting them, but for this first post of 2020 I wanted to encourage myself—and you—to just start.  Start somewhere.  Start anywhere.  But just start.

    After all, if you don’t start, you’ve already finished.

     

     

     

     

  • Planning, Planning, Planning

    Happy New Year, everyone!  Welcome to 2019!  Goodbye, 2018 and don’t let the door hit you in the rear on the way out!

    Okay, okay.  2018 wasn’t all bad.  No year is.  In fact, in a lot of ways, 2018 was a very GOOD year.  People I love started new lives, got married, graduated, found new opportunities, became new people.  *I* found new opportunities and became a new person as I started a new life.  But that didn’t make it any easier to live through a veritable tsunami of change and difficulty and sadness.

    Just as an aside, I was so paranoid on December 31st that I refused to leave my house.  I thought 2018 might grab me as it whisked away into the night.

    But I made it! And now here I am, standing on the glimmering shore of a brand new year!  2019 will have it’s own difficulties and challenges.  It will have great rewards and, I’m sure, problems.  And it’s all spread before us, shining, basically untrod.

    Ahhhhhhh.  Breathe.

    In preparation for entering this new phase, I’ve been spending the last month or so planning, planning, and—wait for it—planning.

    Seriously, guys.  So many spreadsheets.  And flow charts.  And cork boards.  And computer documents.  I bought a new pack of highlighters and pencils and brand new erasers.  I got an appointment book and new calendars.  I created detailed schedules and even set a few hard deadlines.

    Frankly, I’ve been planning my tuchus off.  I am determined to hit the ground running this year.  The way I hit the ground last year was not particularly helpful, so I thought try something new.

    I’ve worked out backstory and general outlines for the next five books in the Hardy Falls universe, as well as a detailed outline for the book I’m going to start writing tomorrow.  Because I know more about the backstory now, I also know what needs to be incorporated into the novella I wrote last year and that can finally be finalized.  I have the newsletters planned out for the next 12 months, and I know how those stories will interact with the books (more on that to come).  I’ve also planned out a few other projects that are a little more nebulous.

    I will continue to blog—hopefully with more regularity.  Harry and the Muse and the rest of the gang will be back and all of my psychological issues will come out to play for your enjoyment.

    Golly, that’s a lot to do.  And I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am to be doing it!!!  Welcome, 2019!  I’m glad to meet you.

    I hope you are all hitting the ground running too.  Let’s get this party started!

     

     

  • Simplifying Objectives

    As I’ve mentioned before, one can have a production schedule. One can have the best darned production schedule in the history of production schedules. One can have dreams and aspirations. One can have goals.

    But if one gets what was either the Head Cold From Hell or a sinus infection, one is not going to be either creative or productive for a long time, and one’s production schedule will flit away like dust in the wind.  Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.  Now that The Sickness has finally returned to the pit that spawned it and I’m feeling better, I can decide how I want to proceed.

    Obviously, I did not meet my original goals for the first two months of the year. I did manage to get a few things done before I was taken out, but not much.  On the other hand, once my teeth stopped aching, lying around on the sofa gave me time to think.

    One thing I realized was that my plans were getting way too complicated. I have a tendency to do that “if this is good, more will be better!” thing.  All it usually does is get me off track, leaving me distracted and confused.

    That’s especially true in an area like this.  Writing is important to me, but I don’t have a lot of confidence that I know what I’m doing, especially when it comes to the publishing/marketing side of things. So when people who DO seem to know what they’re doing give extremely good advice, I assume that I must follow it. They are right, and I am wrong, and I must do what they say to do because of course that is the right thing to do.

    But in the end, the pursuit of writing is a creative endeavor, not something that can be analyzed and quantified. There is no “right” way to do it. There are things you probably should do – like tell a good story and use good grammar – but there is no one path to pursuing success. So even though everyone says that THIS is the way to be successful, in the end it doesn’t matter a whole lot.  Ultimately, there is only you and the blank page and your desire to tell stories.

    Besides, as soon as you start to do what everyone tells you to do, that will be wrong, and they’ll be doing something else.

    Most of the time the advice given by “experts” is well-meaning and undoubtedly true under certain circumstances.  But not everything is true for everyone’s situation.

    Anyway, lying on my sofa, I realized that I, once again, was trying to follow everyone’s advice, and I was trying to follow it all at the same time.  This pulled me in many different directions and distracted me from the only thing that’s important – finishing my next book.

    Which brings me back to my production schedule.  I’ve changed it, and it’s very simple now.  I’m going to finish my next book (”Welcome to Hardy Falls Book 2”) in time so it can come out when I want it to come out. Then I’m going to finish the next book so that it can come out too.  The other projects I had on my schedule – writing and non-writing related–will have to be shelved for now.

    I’m still going to write down tasks and dates–it helps to see it on paper instead of just keeping it in my head. It’s easy to forget what you really want if you don’t see it in front of you. But I’m not going to live by that paper because, as was demonstrated to me so ably in these last few weeks, life happens. My production schedule is more just broad strokes now, instead of specific dates.

    I’m also not going to try to write two blog posts a week like I was because that pulls my focus away from where it needs to be. I’m going to try to do one a week, but only if I can think of something to talk about. Forcing myself to write a blog just because it’s time to write a blog is not my idea of fun–and the blog has to be fun. I will be writing a newsletter once a month because I love learning more about my friends in Hardy Falls, and the stories I write for the newsletter helps me grow the town.

    I’ll definitely be doing some basic marketing – like writing good descriptions and getting good covers, but for now, that’s all I’ll be doing in that area.

    I am well underway with the second draft of “Welcome to Hardy Falls Book 2” (which really does have a title, but I want to think about it before I share it), and I’m pleased with how things are shaking out so far.  My objective now is to become more efficient with my revision process, but I think I’m figuring out some tricks to help speed things along. I’m angry with myself because I feel like I wasted a lot of time between the first and second draft (again), but I was trying to do too many things that seemed like good ideas (again).

    So, here’s my new production schedule– do the first thing. Then do the next.  Keep going and keep it simple.

     

     

  • What Are You Aiming At?

    Come here, my friends. Have a seat on this comfy sofa. Turn off the news. Disconnect from social media (well, after you read this blog post). Stop streaming Netflix. Just sit. Take a deep breath. In…Out…

    Good.

    Now, I have a question for you to think about. What are you aiming at?

    We are all archers in this life. We all have a bow and a quiver of arrows. We all have a selection of targets. Which one (or more) are you aiming at?

    Some of you will say “I’m aiming at nothing”. If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it. Trust me – that’s how I’ve spent most of my life. We still draw our bows. We still shoot our arrows. But if we aim at nothing the arrows go all over the place because we’re not directing them anywhere.

    You can’t get away from shooting arrows – that’s just the nature of life. But you can aim them.

    And, just like an archer, we can be looking at a target, but if our aim is just slightly off we might miss it altogether. A slight adjustment when shooting the arrow can be the difference between a bullseye and putting the arrow into a nearby tree.

    My aim has been slightly off lately. It’s so, so easy to do, barely noticeable until you see the arrows aren’t hitting the center of the target you’ve chosen. I get caught up in the step by step process instead of seeing the real objective, or get swept away by the whirlwind of everyday life, or sucked down into a million rabbit holes. My arrows go all over the darned place. If you’ve read my blog before, I’m sure you know that this is something I struggle with constantly. I’m sure it’s a constant struggle for you, too.

    In my case, it occurred to me that although I have identified one of my targets as “to be a successful indie author”, I’ve been pointing the tip of my arrow at the “successful” part instead of the “author” part. And, for me, that’s off.

    Sometimes it’s harder to see that your aim is just slightly off than it is to recognize you aren’t aiming at all. For example, I really do want to be successful. Of course I do. Nobody says “I want to be a failure doing this thing I love.”

    But I can’t force myself to be a success. I can learn the skills I need to master and do what I can to support the likelihood of success, but whether it happens is not really under my control. It can’t be what I aim at. The center of the target actually is the writing. Success is the byproduct, not the bullseye.

    Do you see the difference? I hope for and try to support success. But I must aim at creation. Success will not come without creation, but creation can come without success.

    I have often felt that if you feel like you are a round peg forcing yourself into a square hole, you must step back and evaluate what’s going on. That feeling was my first indication that I was just slightly off target – the feeling of needing to use force to get into the groove.

    Again, I’m going to do my darnedest to try to be a success. I’m going to sit at the feet of people who are further along the path than I am and listen to them and learn everything they’re willing to teach me.

    But I’m not them and the way I ultimately try to make this work will be my own. I have to aim at the center of my own target, not theirs.

    Which brings me back to my question. What are you aiming at? Is it a career? A money goal? A relationship? Do you want to be like a particular celebrity? Or are you aiming at escaping real life altogether?

    Then I have to ask, do you want to hit what you’re aiming at? Is your target worthwhile? Is your aim true, or slightly off? Or are you forcing yourself to aim at a particular target when really you want to turn around and shoot your arrow in the opposite direction?

    We are all archers shooting arrows. Where do you want yours to hit?