I'm Finally Going to do It!

My life has been filled with things I've started and never finished, sometimes those things have only been started in my mind! Well, I have something I'm finally going to do. Before I get brave enough to put my goal, once again, in writing, I'm going to explain myself for the other uneventualities. (Is that a word? I think it is so I'm going to leave it!)

I'm sure there are many more unmet goals in my life than what I'm going to mention here, probably things that were once so important to me I could think of nothing else for days. Well, at least hours anyway. Thoughts that consumed my mind and caused me sleepless nights, endless lists, plans on how to get to the proverbial "finish line", grand expectations of exactly what finishing this dream would mean for me or to me-only to be later replaced with excuses (dare I say reasons?) why it would never come to pass. Well, "not this time"!

Last week I told myself I would finish a proposal at work. But, see, that's different. I don't exactly have all the fact and figures I MUST HAVE in order to finish it. I did start it at least. And, after all, I'm going to be leaving that job next week anyway so I can't see that it's crucial that I finish ever single proposal that could possibly be needed. I'm finally going to be what I started to be so very long ago-a homemaker! As soon as I found out I was pregnant with my first child, I knew I wanted to stay home. I promptly quit my secretarial job and began my life as June Cleaver. As you guessed it, since here it is 17 years later and I'm about to leave another job, that didn't last long. I would say the "homemaker" goal wasn't met all those years ago because of another failed attempt of going the distance-my marriage-but the truth is that I started working before my (first) husband and I separated. I'm not 100% sure why that was, but it was only part time. Probably an effort to contribute to the bacon my husband was busting his hind end to bring home. Alas, the homemaker goal is not the thing I started out telling you I'm finally going to do...but I guess I can add that to list.

Earlier this year I wrote a FaceBook note, and "published" it, that I was going to 1) write a book and 2) run a marathon in the year I turned 40. That would be 2009. Even though it is only December 14th and the book is about 1/2 way complete, the true marathon runners checked that off their list this past weekend at the Rocket City Marathon. While it's true there is most likely another marathon somewhere in the world between now and the last note of Old Lang Sign, but there isn't another official marathon in the US this year--I just checked. Who am I kidding? There's no way in the world I would run, jog, walk, or even crawl 26 miles at this point in my life!! Besides the possibility of having a kidney stone, there's the not-so-minor-factor of not being in any shape at all right now! To all my FaceBook friends, I didn't give up, I just opted out for the moment on a technicality....the "year I turn 40" has been revised to be literal, and therefore can be more clearly stated "in my 40th year". The marathon might be pushed just a little forward so that I don't have to travel anywhere and can "run" it right here at home. Well, how about that? There are two more things I didn't start writing about, but I'll add them both to the list of things I'm finally going to cross off my list! In fact, that dreadful book I've started so furiously, will most likely be done before New Year's. Mind you, that is not a goal, that is not a promise, that is not even me saying I might think about finishing that project. It's purely speculation (as if I had nothing to do with the outcome!!).

In the last two decades, I have started, and quit, selling Pampered Chef, Creative Memories and Longaberger Baskets. I started a quilt. (I got as far as buying some scraps of material and cutting what seems like hundreds of squares. I even sewed several together. I do think those squares are in a box somewhere...maybe I will finish that now that I'm going to be at home?) Diets, exercise plans (I've joined and quit going to at least three different gyms), on-line chess games, skin care regimens, housecleaning routines, hobbies (golf, beading, sewing, tap dance), heck, there have been potentially millions of sentences started and never finished!! In the last two decades I've held at least nine jobs that I've left behind for one reason or another, one of which I never even showed up for my first day. (It was a telemarketing job-I just couldn't do it even if it meant starvation, which it turns out it didn't!) I've probably taken back hundreds of articles of clothing, or other things, that I decided I didn't want after they got out of the light of the store where they were so irresistible I just had to have them. I even "returned" the time-share in Florida that was such a good bargain at the time I was willing to put it on my credit card. You know, come to think of it, I do wish I'd kept it. Well, on second (or would this be third) thought, I'd have lost it in my second divorce anyway, so I'll just have to convince my darling husband (whom I adore-and will not leave or forsake until death takes one of us away) to go back and get another one. Well, how about that, another thing I can surely say I'll complete-this marriage. I have to be careful here or this blog about completion will be abandoned so I can rabbit trail into how much I adore my betrothed!!

I can't tell you the half-finished projects or goals, or half-started in most cases, I have left in the wake of my first twenty years. Daddy, God rest your soul, I really did mean to finish raking those leaves!! (He should have known better than to advance the money-he'd lived with me long enough to know the risk he was taking on!). Law school became something I just didn't want to do. I never had planned on retiring from the Army Guard. Thank goodness I did get out when I did, or I'd have already been deployed at least once. I have better things to spend my money on than the Jaguar convertible I said I would be driving to my 20 year high school reunion. Heck, I was 17, what did I know then about the value of money? How about all the times I've said "we should get together" to friends, even family, only to realize later just how long it's been since I've seen that person? Not to mention the number of started and never finished, or finished and never mailed, letters. Worse still, the number of times I've thought to myself "I should call _____" (fill in the blank-if you're reading this and you know me personally, your name goes there I can assure you, without doubt!!).

Ideas and goals. I think they keep us going. They keep us fresh and alive and (for some of us) moving forward. People that have one goal and are ever pressing forward to that single "carrot" aren't "normal". Now I'm not saying I'm normal with all of may many "great ideas" that never come to pass. Ideas that I would have bet "five hundred dollars" would be the thing I was really going to do this time--sometimes I would have even bet my right arm! I think I just might be on the other end of the bell curve from my tunnel-visioned counter part. I don't think I'm on the extreme end, after all in my last two jobs, I've given well over a months' notice! Deciding a goal isn't right, or pants don't quite fit the way you had hoped they would, or figuring out once you get started in a hobby that it isn't as much fun as you expected it to be....those are all part of growing as a person. Look at Julie Child-she thought she'd enjoy making hats??!! Thank God she decided to move on to better things. I think the key is not putting trust in the possibility that the next thing is what will finally complete us or be the thing that will finally make us happy. Being complete and joy-filled are what make doing the thing fun. Being fulfilled in my life means I don't have to have that pair of pants or that car or finish that quilt, but strangely, being fulfilled somehow frees me up so that I can sort through all those things and come closer to what is truly important to me-what I truly do enjoy-what really does make me smile! Like, staying home to take care of my home and my family (even if my son lives 7 hours away)....or finishing that book so I can have practice under my belt for the memoir that I AM going to write....or, writing this blog that no one but my husband will likely ever read!!

And THAT my dear, sweet, reader.....THAT is the thing I'm finally going to do....I'm going to FINALLY hit "publish". I'm not going to re-read. I'm not even going to call it "proof-reading" for fear that the "publish post" button will once again allude my ever-straying finger as it has the other times I've started (but never finished) a post. This time I woke up in the middle of the night and decided THIS would be the time I would certainly just do it...and alas........................