I turned thirty recently. It doesn't seem real, mainly because I still feel like I just graduated high school and just got married and just had kids. None of it adds up to thirty. Old people aren't joking when they say time goes by faster as you get older. But I'm not here to talk about my impending doom and possible mid-life crisis, I'm here to talk about the reality of setting goals and the reality that goes along with not accomplishing those goals.
Five years ago I made a certain goal for myself: get an agent by the time I was thirty. Unfortunately that hasn't happened...yet. I'm not losing hope, but I am frustrated and disappointed by how slow it seems to be going.
It's scary to realize that the goals I set for myself five years ago aren't happening. They are a little closer than before, but still out of grasp. So, what now? It's time to reassess. I took a step back this weekend to reflect on what's happened to keep me from accomplishing this goal and what I can do to make it happen. What l learned is that part of it is my own doing. I've been revising two books for the last several months and that's taken away my focus from finishing any new manuscripts. I've started a couple that I really love, but have yet to complete a first draft. So, yeah, part of it is time management, part of it is prioritizing the wrong projects.
The other part it TIMING. Maybe it's just not my turn yet. That's hard one to swallow because I have no control over it. I do have control over how to react to all the things happening, or in this case not happening, in my life. I'm choosing not to freak out and keep going. That's what distinguishes the winners from the losers.
So now to my new goal: write write and write some more. Don't put a time frame on anything, it will happen when it's meant to happen. But it definitely won't if I stop writing.
Hope you all have set goals for yourself and are trying to accomplish them. But remember, it's okay to fail, because it gets you one step closer to success.
