Goal setting, blogging, and experience

Day's End

It is 10:30 pm on a Monday night and I am doing my best to follow through with a goal I set last week.  I determined to post to this blog or The Other One every weekday for one week. I almost made it through, but Friday’s post got bumped to Saturday.  I guess that counts as I posted five times during the week.  Having made it through one week I chose to tackle a second.

Goal setting is not always about the end result, many times the progress towards the goal is as valuable as reaching it.  For instance, when I published my first book, Gold Pans and Iron Skillets, I went through an editing process that I thought would never end!  Eventually it did and I finally had a book in my hands.  The skills I learned through the process, however, still serve me well.  This is not to say that I am always typo free, but I do know some things to watch for during the early stages of a document that make proofing and editing go more smoothly.  I still write fragmented sentences and sometimes I choose to hang onto them because I like the way they read, but I don’t use them as much as I once did.

Training for a half marathon, or any race distance for that matter, is a great teacher and it improves physical fitness in ways that simply going for a regular run around the neighborhood or farm fields cannot.  It has also provided me much material for my next book.

Sometimes we fall short of our goal.  It is then that we should take a hard look at the process or journey toward that goal.  Even when the target isn’t quite attained the experience and knowledge gained while working toward it is often of great value. 

Week 2.  Day 1.  Check.

Happy Reading!