To begin with, I didn't accomplish all my goals. I gave myself extra time this first week so I could build the goals into my schedule (and start a Sunday to Sunday schedule), but yet I still failed. And it felt like failure for a brief moment.
But, I took a quick personal check and found that while I did indeed fail in the goals I laid out for myself, failure is not always a bad thing. And there are many things that can be accomplished while failing. I will add that I have several excuses for why I failed, but excuses are simply excuses and not something that I want to use as a reason for not accomplishing everything.
So what did I accomplish? Well, I managed to write a page for 7 out of the 10 days. The last three days or so I didn't write anything in my book. However, my seventh day was a backtrack from the first six. I put together an outline for my book, something that should have been done first, but needed a few days of just gushing words to get to where I needed to be. That has been marinating.
I talked to someone interesting. I spoke to a husband and wife in my office about their time spent in San Francisco. It was great to speak with them about a place I had recently visited. I counted this because I knew talking to new people would be difficult. And I spoke to them on the first day of my goals. But, I'm proud to say that today, after dragging my feet for a bit, I talked to three very interesting people at Detroit Beer Company this afternoon. My longest conversation, with Caitlin, was about her personal drive toward becoming a psychologist. She has had several back surgeries and run-ins with narcotic addictions and thus wants to dedicate her life toward helping get others off narcotic addictions. It was a compassionate tale and one that had real purpose and meaning behind it. She was excited to share it.
I've blogged fairly consistently this week. And in addition to it all, I've been ill and still coordinated one of our largest events on campus, the Spring Open House, to a rousing success. I'm pleased, to say the least.
What I failed at, was practicing guitar for five hours during the week and making a movie, that is until today. I'm not super thrilled with the movie and realize that trying to make a movie every week is going to be incredibly challenging, but nevertheless, I am happy to report that the movie I post here is the movie I accomplished for the week. No academy awards are coming my way, but I had a fun time thinking about shots for the film.
The other long-term goals are also on the back-burner. What I can say is that I knew my goals were ambitious. And what I take from all of this is that it isn't really important if I complete the goals or not. Really, what I am working towards is creating a habit of talking to new people, doing something creative, and really thinking about the time I have in a day. There is far more than each one of us thinks there is. And if we have objectives we want to complete, the TV, internet, and other distractions become less and less of a priority and more and more of a mindless pleasure.
I can be proud of the process I've had for the first week and will continue to try to reach my goals. However, for the first time in my life, I am not disappointed in myself for not completing something. I feel that if I would have tried to accomplish everything I had on my list, I only would have made each thing a chore instead of something pleasurable, which is what this whole experiment is really about anyway.
Enjoy my short film:
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