Small Steps, Big Mountain, Lots of Cookies

In an effort to better myself, make the most of this time (and distract myself from eating cookies), I started using a goals journal my friend recently published: Small Steps Big Mountain. It is kicking my ass. There is a page, early on, that encourages readers to list 12 big, scary, but potentially achievable goals. The following paragraphs have the sole purpose of inspiring readers to “really reach” and “spend all the time needed” to come up with their 12 goals.

I came up with 400 goals in 30 seconds.

My time was spent narrowing down to 12. And then, the next page insisted I pare down to just four. I hit a wall. I put the book down.

Three days later I picked the goals journal back up again, determined to make it work. I chose four goals. I wrote them out as instructed: I will do “X” thing, “Y” number of times, by “LMNO” date. (For the record, I would just like to insert here, that when I was very little, I thought L-M-N-O was just one letter because, when you sing the ABC’s, every letter gets its own beat and note except LMNO, those letters you speed through on the same note. While we’re at it I should add that I also thought Y-and-Z was the letter yanze. Just saying. Not really sure who to raise this issue with, but pre-school teachers should take this into consideration and enunciate more.) Anyway. I had my four goals. They were clear and (barely) achievable, and maybe, just maybe, I could make them happen. And for every achievement, the book recommended I should list my reward. Well, cookies, of course.

The second phase of this journal is to write out what you are going to do each day, assign points to each task, and then award yourself points as you cross items off your list. I love games. Or, I love to WIN games, so I was all in. However, at this juncture I noticed, that while I had pruned down to four goals, somehow, each of my goals had goals of its own.

For example: Prior to this journal I had accidentally written nine ridiculous blog posts randomly over a five-month timeframe. My “goal,” now that I was making it official, was to now write 50 blog posts in the next few months. And as if this wasn’t enough, this same goal had its own goal of launching an Instagram account @SarcasmWillSaveYou, creating content, and posting there daily as well. And if the 50 blog posts were good enough, I should publish them as a book in December. So, my one goal of writing more than I am likely to write had its own goals of becoming Instagram-famous, and also publishing a book. WTF.

Keep in mind this is just one of my four goals. I have three others, equally time-consuming, and all with goals of their own. And none of them acknowledge the fact that I recently launched my own company and have to, you know, get clients, do work, pay bills, clean the house, and occasionally sleep.

One of my good friends is younger than I am, but definitely the person I want to be when I grow up. She is brilliant and funny and fun. She has a wonderful job and husband and a beautiful house and an elegant cat. She runs a marketing strategy department, and in the midst of being a fabulous new mom, and the madness of COVID, she recently received a promotion. She is incredible. Yesterday we were talking about work and at the end I mentioned my blog. For some reason she commented “You get so much done, it’s unreal,” at which point I reminded her that my children are cats and eat out of cans.

But it got me thinking. How can this person that I see as so successful think that I am an overachiever, while I feel like I never get enough done?

I guess, in her scorecard, this blog post is a completed goal-a win. While, in mine, it is woefully incomplete because it is missing 49 other posts, an Instagram account with 100K followers, and a book.

But my friend is impressed. So, does that mean I get to eat a cookie?