Hooray, the year can officially start now because I've finished all my goal lists. I suppose it's one way to get through the long slog of January - just cut the month in half by arbitrarily deciding that the first couple of weeks don't count!

I thought you'd all be bored with these posts about goals by now but to my surprise, I've been getting comments asking me more about it and wanting to see my mind map. I am getting to the end of this subject though, there will be this post and one more on the 101 Things and then I'm going to stop thinking and writing about it for a while.

MIND MAP

My mind map of the things I want from 2008 was one of the main starting points for deciding on my goals for the year. As requested by Wendy and Amanda, here is a scan of the original. I considered censoring one of the goals (go on, guess which one!) but decided not to bother.

Sorry, I had to do it as a thumbnail so that I could make it big enough to be readable. Click on it if you're interested

As you can see, most of these are rather fuzzy and certainly don't count as goals yet because they're so vague - exactly how many games of Scrabble do I need to play before it counts?

You know what's really freaking me out though - a couple of the things on this mind map have already started coming true WITHOUT ME DOING ANYTHING ABOUT THEM! And after all those years of internally sneering at affirmations too. Yes, very funny, Universe, I guess that's me told. I'm seeing it more as, 'I've already put in the work and now it's starting to come to fruition' rather than 'ask for anything you want and you'll get it' but still, I'm kind of wishing that I'd put 'earn shitloads of money and become fabulously famous' on there now.

JOURNALLING

I also did several pages of writing and art journalling about the idea of goals and completed an exercise to discover my theme word for the year, an idea that I nabbed from the Creative Mom Podcast. It's a good idea that originally came from Ali Edwards.

If you're struggling to gain clarity on the goal making process, I've found this a very helpful exercise to do. Make a big list of words that might apply to your year (if you get stuck with this part, try browsing through a thesaurus or dictionary) and then just let your gut guide you to the right one. Don't go with what you think you should want from the year but let your intuition speak. It can take a little time to hit on the right word but both years that I've done this, I've found that I know it when it appears. My word for last year was 'nourish', while this year's word is 'balance'.

GOALS

After much thought I realised that since I was also doing the 101 Things challenge, I didn't need an extensive goal list for 2008. Indeed, I toyed with the idea of not having any goals at all but decided that I wanted a few to keep me focused on those desires. I did halve the list though - my massage therapist will be impressed, she's always telling me to cut down my ridiculously unrealistic daily lists.

Again, I listened to my intuition and kept the idea of making my list entirely positive utmost in my mind: whenever I felt a little internal sigh or reservation about a goal, I struck it off the list.

MY FINAL LIST OF GOALS FOR 2008

1) Finish 8 knitted items by the end of June
This is for the Lime & Violet Finish-a-thon where a bunch of us knitter types have made a public commitment to completing some of the unfinished projects that are lurking on our needles. I think there's going be a Flickr group for this project soon but as far as I know, it's not up yet.

2) Declutter 3 rooms
Decluttering was a big theme towards the end of last year and this still feels like a very positive thing to me.

3) Take part in 101 things in 1001 Days
Yep, this is place that I'm hiding the less positive things! However, I did discover through journalling that 'doing things' and 'ticking things off lists' is hugely positive for me. I actually get a lot of joy from the sense that things are happening and progress is being made. I'll post the completed list shortly, it is finished but I want to write a bit more about the process of writing it and I didn't want this to be a dauntingly long post.

4) Visit my friend, Red in Amsterdam
Pretty simple and the single most important one on the list - if I only achieve one of the goals, I want it to be this one.

5) Keep a daily log
I've been doing this since the start of the year. It's not as pressured as it sounds, I'm just making notes in my little paper diary of when I get certain things done, like journalling, walking, exercising, knitting and er, some of the other desires on the mind map. Sheesh, get your minds out of the gutter, people - I meant the Scrabble, of course!

So, the quest for a final list of goals is continuing apace. I've given myself until the end of the week to finalise it because for some bizarre reason, next week feels like the proper start of January to me. Don't even ask, I have no idea why, I just know that I'm still mentally in an 'in-between' sort of space.

One thing I've definitely decided to do is 101 Things in 1001 Days. This online project involves making a commitment to complete 101 preset tasks in 1001 days, which is about 2.75 years. If you want to take part, there's a list of criteria and suggestions here.

When I read about this on Eliza's Back Yard blog, it totally freaked me out. I wasn't sure why because I undoubtedly already have more than 101 things on my various to-do lists. After some thought, I realised that it was the time-scale that bothered me.

Now, I have no problem with the concept of doing something for a year, as The Diary Project amply shows, but the idea of publicly admitting that it might take me the best part of three years to complete things seriously bothered me. I'm not exactly your Go-To Girl when it comes to delayed gratification: when I have an idea, I want to do it right now. Actually, I generally want to do it yesterday but even I accept that this breaks the laws of physics because I don't have one of these...

Yet conversely, I'm also The Queen of Procrastination and many of the things on my to-do lists have been lurking there for so long that they've become seriously embarrassing to me. This happens partly because I take on too much or commit to things out of a sense of obligation rather than a real desire to do them but also because my energy levels simply can't keep up with the relentless slew of ideas that pepper my poor defenceless brain. My family have come to live in fear of the words, "hey, you know what would be a really great idea..."

But the fact that I was a bit afraid of the 101 Things meme made me think that it was probably an excellent idea to try it. Then it occurred to me that it could also act as a handy dandy place to hide all my 'shoulds', so that they weren't on my official goal list. Hmm, perhaps I haven't completely integrated that whole 'only having positive goals' thing yet!

Anyway, for both these reasons, I decided to go for it and enthusiastically started yet another database. However, after several days, I still only have about 75 things and I've utterly run out of inspiration. I could probably plump up the list with more things from my to-do lists but a lot of those are quick, small, one-off or rather boring tasks and I'm not sure they deserve to be on this big list. Plus, I'm still trying to stay mostly positive and only commit to things that I feel are worth doing or that are bothering me enough that I need them out of my life.

So I'm wondering if it's acceptable to start with just 75 things and add the other 26 at some point in the next 2.75 years. Sigh, I suspect this means that I'm still having trouble with the time-scale thing - after all, how can I possibly know what I'll want next year, let alone in nearly three? As you can see, I've never been one for Soviet style Five Year Plans but perhaps learning to think more long term is part of the reason for doing this.