Writer’s Block from June 11, 2010:

How often do you think about, and plan for, the future? Do you think it ever interferes with your ability to live in the moment?

I think about and plan for the future all the time. It does sometimes interfere with my ability to live in the moment, but there are times that’s exactly what I have in mind. On the other hand, there are other times that this tendency has actually contributed to my ability to live in the moment. So I can’t call it a bad habit.

I’ve been the goal-oriented type for as long as I can remember. It’s a matter of personal happiness. I’m not comfortable unless I am working toward something. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a major goal, but I do like larger goals as opposed to smaller ones. For example, my current 101 in 1001 project certainly isn’t a small goal even if some of the individual items are!

The thing about goals, and the thing that was hard for me to learn, is that it’s okay not to hit them. I’ve abandoned a lot of goals. While working toward them, I’d learned something about myself, or gone through some unexpected experience, that meant the goal no longer applied. Or, in other words, while I was moving in one direction, my life went quite another.

While it isn’t universally true, in most cases that has actually proven to be a good thing. I doubt I’d have gotten where I am without those experiences.

Some of the experiences have been the type where if I had been living in the moment I might very well have imploded. It was only because I had a plan to “get through this” that I actually made it through. Some of them, though, may have been exacerbated by my refusal to live in the moment.

That’s not to say I’ve never hit a goal. I have. Between the times I’ve benefited from not hitting a goal and the times I’ve actually hit one, I have come to believe that being goal-oriented is a good thing for me. I plan to continue.