First Step Toward New Goals

poet I met here in Horseyland called me one day in January. She wanted to let me know about a workshop that was starting up and encourage me to join in order to meet some like-minded folks.

I did. The workshop is a kind of Weight Watchers for artists—only instead of losing weight, we’re working on achieving our goals (or dreams, as the brochure copy described it).

Didn’t matter to me. I couldn’t tell one from the other at that point and figured that by going to the meetings, I might actually GET a goal or two to work toward.

(I hesitate to write about this on Lull because, as if it weren’t bad enough to commit to my goals in front of a bunch of writers at a roundtable in the Bluegrass, I’m now committing to my goals on a global level. Mind you, I’m taking this V E R Y S L O W L Y. Be patient.)

One of the baby steps toward my larger goals was to submit a bit of writing to a Web site. I chose the Animal Rescue Site (you know, the one you click through to from the purple paw at right to donate food to animal shelters). I wrote a tiny animal rescue tale—the story of how I adopted my first cat in fewer than 300 words—and posted it. You can see it on the site by selecting the tab “Animal Rescue Stories” and scrolling down to “The Lie I Took Home With Me.”

Though there was space for it, I omitted my cat’s theme song. We used to sing it to her—to the tune of Flipper’s theme song—to calm her (you have to read her story to understand this):

They call her Precious, Precious
Whiter than snowflakes
Sweeter than honey
Looks like a bunny

They call her Precious, Precious
Afraid of bubbles
Knows all your troubles
She’s the empathy cat.

At any rate, this tiny step feels big to me. And though it hasn’t built much momentum, it has nudged me to take control and continue the cause. For as Robert A. Heinlein wrote:

“In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.”