Goals. Drive. Motivation.
Circa August 2003 |
Goals.
Drive.
Motivation.
Things that are floating around in my head right now. I keep my hotmail email account open for one reason and one reason only… that is to keep my facebook account up and running. All the notifications go there and don’t take up room in my gmail account, probably why people who know my gmail email have a hard time finding me. Once every few months I go into my hotmail account to 1) keep it active and 2) clean all the crap out of it. It fills up fairly fast!
Yesterday while I was in cleaning out that email I clicked on one of the side folders that was titled “my stuff.” For some reason, most of the emails I have saved over the years to my hotmail account have been deleted (it’s been active since 1999) but in the “my stuff” folder there were 30 emails that date back to 2002ish and the most recent was 2006.
a Photo I’ve been promising you for a while. Circa Summer 1999 |
I started reading through the titles and author (for lack of better word) of the email and found one from a friend of mine. She was a few years behind me in school so while I was in college, she was still in high school. She sent me her goals list and told me to save the email and every so often send it to her to remind her of her goals and to keep her on track.
I could see where I forwarded it once, but I didn’t pay attention to the date I sent it. But yesterday, I forwarded the email to her again, if for no other reason than a good laugh. These were her short and long term goals circa 2004.
Circa May 2001 |
I’m not going to lie, I was wishing I could find goals I had made for myself dated back to 2001 era, around the time I graduated from high school and was headed to college. I really thought it would have been fun to look back on those goals, just to see what I’ve accomplished and see how my goals have changed.
That’s when I remembered a few months back I found a journal from my junior year in high school. I found it in my room at my parents’ house and brought it to our house to read to my husband, especially after one entry I made.
9/8/99
When the day comes, will you be ready? Where will you go and what will happen? Will it be peaceful and nice or will it be gloomy and a place to avoid? It is the way we all are, we want to know. You will wonder, what’s happening? What’s next? Am I really ready for this? Is it actually for me? So many thoughts will run through your mind. It’s scary to even think about. Breathing deeply, now your heart is racing wildly. You wish you could control it but you can’t. You start to shake and get hot. Wait you’re cold. You can’t even tell what you are. You are so nervous you can’t handle it. You are ready to freak out. It is bothering you. It is really hard to decide what choice to make or if it will be the right one. Walking slowly you keep taking long deep breaths to try and calm yourself but it isn’t helping at all. You just keep getting closer and more nervous. Now comes a decision in your life that could change you forever. Shy or standoffish? Big or little? Now soon or never? What is your choice? You only have 20 steps left. You can take the hard road which is better in the long run, or take the easy way out and go down. All you have worked for is gone if you choose down. Now is the biggest decision ever. You’ve come this far but can turn back now; but you’ve come this far. You keep coming. There you are at the grandest staircase you’ve ever seen!! 10 steps left and you are there. Through the huge double doors is the most exciting feeling you have ever had. Four steps, three steps, two steps, one step. Now you are there at the double doors. They seem to be 100 feet tall. You grab the knobs and pull them open. You walk in just to hear the bell ring. Awe, man you realize you’re already late for your first day of school. You walk in and go to class.
I also snickered at my spelling and grammar. Whoa was it bad!
I guess technically this journal wasn’t my hopes and dreams, especially because it was for a school English class so I couldn’t write my true hopes and desires, but one thing is for sure, it shows where I was in life. It shows my character, it shows how I saw the world, it shows my feelings toward many situations, including the man I married :).
Circa August 2003 |
I’ll keep looking for my list of goals, because surely they have to be somewhere. I guess from this, I should sit down and write out where I see myself in the next year, five years and 10 years in the future so that when Tbug is graduating high school I can show her where I thought I would be…
I'm feeling some motivation lately too. I think there is some change in the air, and I'm excited about it! Love these throwbacks. I want that little Ranger. It's a beauty.
Haha I had no clue where you were going with that little story! I thought it was going to be about death at first, then giving birth, then I don't know! haha. I love going back and reading stuff that I wrote in high school. I am so glad my mom kept so much of my stuff. I have to make sure to do the same for my kids.
Hmmm, you have me wanting to go in search of old writings, letters, and such. It would involve hubby having to pull down boxes from our garage so we'll see. He'll have to do it in a couple months because I saved stuff for baby girl. 🙂
I wish I kept better track of my goals… but then, they'd probably end up like my 101 List! (untouched in quite a while, and due to run out in June…whoops!) My big goals are pretty much the same as always, and set in stone – find my husband, have babies, write a novel… it's always good to refresh and remind myself of them, though! 🙂
I love this post! It's so great you kept that stuff. I need to go through some of mine and see what I've got! So cool.
That was a great story! I could see the younger you in my minds eye writing it – all nervy and worried.
Goals. Yeah I sure wish I'd have written mine down way back when. I'm going to start now And encourage my kids to do the same. They can keep their list in their “gold” boxes for safe keeping.
Sweet pictures too 🙂