Day 3 - Dreams vs. Reality

Yesterday I completed a long list of goals in four areas of life which I labeled along the lines of the four elements:

Earth - Groundedness, foundational, health and body issues
Air - Spirit matters
Fire - The energy issues, mostly related to money and work
Water - The surrounding stuff - relationship, connection, and personal expansion

Needless to say, with a breakdown like this, and a mind and personality like mine (I’m a 7 in the Eneagram) the list was pretty damn long. One person I sent it to said that a friend of theirs looked at it and said she thought it looked like five year plan, not a six week plan!

I’m not sure that she’s right… But I’m not sure she’s wrong either.

One of my major struggles (and this was pointed out to me as well) is that I tend to take on a pile of stuff: I work on too many committees, I take on too many projects, I mess with too many emails, I subscribe to too many magazines and I read too many books at one time. If I am on-time for an appointment, I will likely say to myself, “Hey… you’ve got ten minutes, go run this errand on the way!” You know where this is going. I run the errand, get stuck in traffic, and boom, I’m twenty minutes late. One night, twenty-three years ago, when I was working on a recording project with several friends, one of those friends (whose phone calls of late I haven’t had the chance to return by the way…) made the comment, “You have the worst sense of time of anyone I’ve ever met.” This was said on the way across the Oakland Bay Bridge from San Francisco to a recording date in Berkeley and we were half an hour – going on an hour – late. I thought we should be right on time.

This morning I’m going to take another look at that list and consider the possibility that I need to whittle it down. I’m not saying that I’m GOING to whittle it down necessarily, but I’m going to consider it. Perhaps it's better to bite off less and succeed at the program. On the other hand, perhaps the very expansiveness of the goal provides a measure of its own energy.

Once I’ve decided, I’ll post both lists so you can decide for yourself whether or not I made the right decision.

Obviously, the ultimate confirmation (or lack thereof) won't be seen for another thirty-seven days.