Since Elvis was diagnosed with the asthma (and who the hell would anticipate a cat getting asthma? I mean, seriously, now), I've been having trouble with my sleep patterns again. Something about the occasional fit of wheezing that breaks out at anything from 1 am to 3 (peak sleeping time for me, I confess) in the vicinity of my right ear, I suppose. The meds are doing him good--why, he's down to minor wheezing and not the sort that sounds as if he's trying to bring up his lungs, but I have to get myself back on track, get my life back on a semblance of a schedule, in order to get myself back on track with my goals. I've also discovered that, just because I can drink soda again, doesn't mean I should. I've developed a caffeine twitch (left eyelid, it's annoying, particularly with my contacts in) and heartburn that just won't quit. So I'm currently punishing myself with water. Blech. But it seems to be helping with the heartburn, so I'm not going to complain too loudly.
This morning I was feeling guilty because I've lost my focus (I won't tell you how long it's been since last I sat and wrote; that alone is enough to make me want to whip myself with knotted cords), when I realized, that's just how life goes. It's a constant process of setting a goal, finding your focus and then resetting your course when you drift. Life isn't...isn't like the mechanical rabbits at the dog track, your feet locked into a mechanized track that is so very linear in that you can't deviate from it but simply go around and around and around from point A to point B in some endless frenzy of productivity. It's much more like sailing, you drift, the breeze drops, you tack against the currents and wind, sometimes you see something to the side of your course that's interesting so you jog on over to have a look-see, but eventually, if you keep to the general course, you'll get where you're going in good time. There's no real lines to keep yourself between (at least not on the open sea; if you have experienced something different in any ocean in the world, please take a picture), so it's what you make of it and how you choose to get where you're going.
It's sort of the 80/20 rule (it's what you do 80% of the time that makes the most difference, the other 20 is just deviation that makes life interesting.) I never would have thought this would give me such troubles, seeing as I'm about as concrete in thought as your average bowl of jello, and the ocean-going goal attainment style sounds much more pleasant to me than a dog track, but I put it down to how I learned to set goals and attain them. I am not concrete of thought, but my sister is fairly linear and direct, and she is the one who taught me goal setting skills. Apparently, her style is not appropriate for me. Alas, she seems far better at meeting her goals than I ever have been.... Anyway, so I'm trying to overlay concrete goal setting skills onto jello-type thinking, which is a recipe for disaster. Not only does the jello resent being forced into attempting to imitate concrete, it's not very good at it, leading to all sorts of badly mushed and mangled attemps at goal attainment. No wonder I'm so negative when it comes to goal attainment, I've been going about the whole thing all wrong! It's not my anyone's fault, really, most of humanity is all about concrete style goal setting/attainment. I wonder if there's a book at the library about how to set goals when you're more jello than ReadyCrete....
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