A writer's Dream

Day 2 of my writing challenge. Prompt - Set some goals.

Lucky are those who were taught how to set goals in their younger years.

I was not.  I really don’t understand much about how to set goals.

But we were taught how to dream, I remember during our elementary days we were asked to write an essay about “ What do you want to be when you grow up?  I wanted to be a doctor, a surgeon in particular.

I didn’t know dreaming to become somebody someday is synonymous to goal setting. 

We were also always asked to write our New Year’s Resolutions during the first week of school days after the holidays. And we will just do it without really understanding (at least for me) that what has been written should be achieved. NYR’s are in my opinion can be likened to goals too.

As far as I can remember nobody really explained how to do it the way it should be done.

The only memories I had regarding the subject of goal setting was when I was in college. I studied nursing and one of the lectures was about how to set goals with regards to the care of our clients.

We were taught that it has to be SMART which is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time bound.  A smart goal is critical to achieve whatever is it we want to achieve in our life. 

To know more about detailed goal setting, you may want to read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, Brian Tracy’s Books on Goals, and any books you may know about goal setting or you may want to read this blog published by David Vogelsang.

My classmates and I were able to apply smart goals to the client’s care. We were able to set it properly for each of our assigned clients and achieved  the goals but our main concern only was all for the betterment of our client’s health status.

What we knew back then was to get good grades, pass every quiz and examinations given to us, graduate, review and pass the board exam and the big “goal” was to be a registered nurse.

These were planted in our minds and we worked on it diligently and constantly and we graduated and became registered nurses.

But honestly, I wasn’t aware that we were already setting goals by dreaming about becoming a nurse someday and how to achieve that was to aim to do the best you can as a student.

I realized now that what I did mostly was dreaming, it was probably the case for my classmates too.

Has it been taught to me about how to set goals properly in my early years after school, I would have probably accomplished more than I achieved after half a decade of my life. 

I will not say now I know better but I am constantly learning and developing the skills on how to set goals, making a plan, working on it, sticking to it and actually reaching the goal.

The good news is as mentioned above,

 “You are never be too old to set another goal or dream a new dream” 

This is great, don't you think? 

And that's one of the reasons why I joined the writing challenge.

To apply the SMART philosophy to my goal, I came up with the following :

S - The writing challenge will take place in 31 days

M - It has to be at least 500 words per topic/story.

A – writing 500 words a day is achievable

R – it’s important to me to improve my writing skills for better use in the immediate future

T – it has to be finished in 31 days

I joined in January 5 and have written about 25 topics already in which I published Day 1 of the writing challenge in January 15, 2014. We were actually never told  to publish what we have written, it will be our choice, our decision. 

What we were told was just to write, write, and write some more, everyday, and never worry about the grammar, spelling and editing which can be done anytime. 

We were given prompts or topics to write about to make it easier for us to derive the inspiration from there. But it’s not compulsory, we can choose any topic to write if we want to.

Now I have been busy with proofreading and editing which takes a longer time really than writing. Once proofreading is started a new idea will pop up, adding then editing and so on until revising the original topic is sometimes inevitable.  

Am I committed?

I am a writer and my commitment is to be better at it.  I am determined to finish the challenge although I am a bit way behind already.  Should I make some excuses?  Well, I am just human that’s all I can say :)

Seriously though, I will stick to it until it’s done because I want to achieve great results out of discipline and persistence.  

It may take a few days more to publish what I have written but I will never give up until I reach the end of the challenge.

Borrowing a quote from an anonymous writer this has been said:

“ I may not be there yet, but I am closer than I was yesterday”  

How about you? Have you set your goals yet? What are your goals? Please tell me in the comment below.