Uncertainty

I was recently talking to a friend, who decided to take charge of her life. Exactly as I've experienced, she also came to a point that she just couldn't take being that unhappy any more and decided to do something about it.

And so she is, and I'm incredibly proud of her.

But I digress...

The real point I was getting at was that she mentioned that she has to sift through everything in her life. And in particular, her future plans. She wasn't certain if what she was planning to do is what she's supposed to do. And then, she said that she wasn't even sure how to go on...

Short answer: We don't. Not immediately.

When we come to the realization that we're unhappy with our lives, we need to find what makes us happy all over again. We can't do that by regretting and resenting things in our past, or getting stuck rushing towards the future. We need to learn to live and find ourselves in the present first.

Makes sense, right?

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Doesn't make it easy. Because in the beginning stages, this implies not having ANY plans. AT ALL. PERIOD. Nor do we have anything with which to measure success. At least, that's what I found from my experience.

The reason for this is that we need to give the reins to our life back to God. And we can't do that if we're still in that space where we're the only ones calling the shots. We need to clean the slates of our lives before we can let God write on them.

And unless He's the one doing the writing, we'll never be truly happy. Because He knows better than we do, what we need in our lives and futures.

When we spoke about this, my friend pointed out that the uncertainty of being without any plans is terrifying.

It is. Very terrifying. It took me a lot of will power to keep myself from starting on any of the plans that my mind created just to form a framework that I was used to. But I had to do it, because I knew if I acted on those impulses, that I'd be just as badly off as before. So I forced myself to wait until I grew comfortable with not knowing where I was headed.

And then (It took me about a year of doing what I had to, but not planning for my future.)... God started talking about my future. About His plans and my passions. We spoke to each other and I asked about my dreams and His will.

Before I knew it, I had a glimpse of the plan and could start doing things that brought me in line with what God wanted. But He did not give me the solution easily. I had to trust Him in the most uncertain period of my life.

And He rewarded me with blessings and happiness beyond what I had imagined.

Have you ever realized that you need to change the course of your life? Did the uncertainty of not knowing where to go next scare you?

Goal Review

I was thinking that I'm a bit over-due on recapping my goals for 2012. I should have done it in March already, but oh well.

These are my goals, with my comments noted in red...

Writing: 

I want to finish Doorways before 30 June. 
Not likely, since I have to depend on Crit Partners for edits. I'm approximately halfway now. 

I will query Doorways on 1 July.
Can't decide if this will happen. 

I want to finish the WiP2 rewrite by 30 September. 
Will start in July. 

I want to finish the Don't Look Back draft by 31 December. 
Not sure when I will start this, but no later than October. 

I want to finish at least one draft of the musical libretto by 31 December.
Working on this every week, but since I had no idea of the work involved, I think this one won't make it. 

I might want to look at Guardian again. 
If I have time, I will. 

Reading: 

I want to read more (crit partners' manuscripts don't count).
I'm trying to read at least one book a week. But I am definitely reading more.

I want to read Shakespeare, Austen and Martin. 
So far, I've read two Jane Austen books. Still gathering courage for the rest of them.

Life: 

Auditions, auditions, auditions. 
One audition so far. 

I want to master at least intermediate cooking.
Let me put it this way... I'll be able to feed myself on more than bread or takeaways.
I want to spend more time designing.
Haven't even looked at my designs yet. Feeling terrible about it, but I just need to finish Doorways first.

I want to brush up on my French and Mandarin (at least one of the two) and take another language. 
Lacking time and money. I'll look at this again in the second half of the year. 

I want to take classes in a musical instrument. Either piano or guitar. 
Went to my first guitar lesson last week. 

I also want to get out more next year. Cabin fever never did suit me. 
Still working on this, but I think I am getting better at getting out of the house. 

Since I achieved four goals in 2011, I want to achieve six in 2012. 
Looks like I'm on course for six. But I definitely want to try for more. 

Have you recently taken a look at your goals for this year? How are you getting along?

A to Z Challenge Reflections

Hmmm.... This is going to be tricky. Because I have to write two of these... which means I have to separate my experiences...

Which is sort of hard, since April went by in such a blur... So... rather, I'm going to do an overview on this blog and the stats on the other.

Okay... so...

I met a lot of lovely new people and discovered a lot of lovely blogs. I'm not planning to stop, though, I will work my way through each of the comments and visit the commenters. Can't wait! ^_^

As for writing the posts, I really enjoyed the fact that I only had a few struggles with topics and that, except for the times that I was out of the house for longer than expected, every post went up on time. I was only late twice, and both were on Saturdays, so they went up before the weekend was done.

Furthermore, the Challenge helped me with two things: 1) It helped me realize that I'll have to start planning ahead in order to maintain my current posting schedules and work. 2) It helped me to see what was missing from TCoML, as mentioned on yesterday's post.

Otherwise, there wasn't much to say. My Challenge was remarkably stress-free....

How did your challenge go?

Got Input?

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As I mentioned on Friday, I'm working at finding the purpose of TCoML again and already have this week's posts planned out.

This is sort of the first one I'm pre-writing, since I started it this morning. Unfortunately I had to leave and got back too late, so.... I'll be finishing the post after the time I wanted to schedule it for. What can I say? It's an imperfect science.

Anyway, this is sort of an invitation for you to get involved.

While I was doing the A to Z Challenge, I realized that TCoML always was about more than just me writing about my daily frustrations or whatever. It had meaning, since it was about me, taking charge of my life.

So yes, while writing about my life does cover a lot of ground, there was another aspect to it.

I intended for TCoML to show how I'm working on taking charge. It was about showing what it's about and what's involved. To share the lessons I have learnt and am learning every day.

I want to do a post about an aspect of that every week. So... I want to hear from you:

Is there anything about taking charge of one's life that you'd like for me to write about? Or... even better... do you have experiences that you want to share? If you do, we could arrange that you do a guest post...

And she's back.

Hello lovely people. Sorry for my absence on Wednesday. Took a day off to recover from the Challenge.

Anyway, during the challenge, I got to thinking. Somewhere in the few months since I started this blog, I sort of lost direction with writing it.

I found a large part of it while doing the challenge, but it's not all there yet.

So... I'm going to take some action. I'm going to pre-plan some of my topics like I did for the Challenge. I'm not yet at the point of Monday is this day, but I think that having some meaningful topics stored away for later will really help me and this blog.

And that's what I will be doing this weekend. Deciding what I want to write about next week.

What will you be doing?