Reassessing goals and timelines

We all know there are many pithy sayings out there about knowing yourself, investigating your self, being true to yourself, knowing your strengths and weaknesses, etc., and making plausible goals. Since I'm an introspective person anyway, and since I needed some sort of topic for my blog, I figured I'd include here a reassessment of some of my own goals. And fanbase, I highly suggest that you do the same. Where would the world be without egotists such as ourselves? ;)

So, first off, remember when I said I'd be changing the colors of my blog? The few of you you've read this blog since its inception know that it looks just the same as always, alas. Now, I'd still like to change the colors of my blog. I even had borrowed a book from my local library, the title of which I'd tell if you if it hadn't been so long since I've seen it that I've forgotten it*, which would have told me how to do this easily, but I returned it because I finally had to admit that I wasn't going to finish reading it.

However, I'd still like to change the colors of my blog. I have plans to do this in the future. So, my realistic assessment is this: In about two weeks, when I've quit my job as a peon at an educational publisher and am focused on things like packing for my impending move to Chicago for grad school, when I have more spare time, I will fiddle with the HTML code and make my blog prettier.

Even more realistic assessment: In the time after I've quit my job and before I move to Chicago, I will become so frustrated with packing, apartment and/or roommate hunting, part-time job hunting, and so stressed about reentering the world of schoolin' and the prospect of working at Dairy Queen or some other menial job that nonetheless has the flexible hours I'll require, that the last thing I will want to do is frustrate myself further with figuring out how to make my blog pretty. Thus the only time I will log on the computer will be to play Pop & Drop and check email to see if someone, somehow, has heard of my woe and has decided to alleviate it by giving me $40,000 to pay for grad school (which wouldn't take care of everything, but sure would make me feel better).

Next--and this is one that none of you have heard about on my blog--I must think about my plan in which I write a novel so amazingly good that I singlehandedly become responsible for causing the public to read again. People everywhere rediscover the joy of the printed word and spend their every waking moments discussing my work, or The Great Work, as they will come to call it, eyes gleaming with pride and happiness. World leaders will be so grateful to me that they will agree to hand over the rules of their countries/territories/what have you, confident that all will be well in the hands of my benevolent dictatorship. Benevolent dictatorship in place, I will have Orlando Bloom, Colin Firth, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Jack Johnson (the list may change and expand, however, as this is quite far out in the future) become my personal cadre of cabana boys who wave palm fronds at me while I sip iced tea and tap away on my laptop as I create what will become The Next Great Work.

Realistic reassessment: Palm fronds imply that I'd be at some sort of beach-y resort, as does the cabana boy thing. Beaches imply tropical, and tropical implies heat. I don't do well with the heat. I'll have to think of some non-beachy place to write The Next Great Work, and Orly, Colin, Johnny, and Jack will have to form a cadre of something besides cabana boys. And the palm fronds are probably a bit much, too. I can't imagine that they would create enough of a breeze. My cadre of whatever can instead aim handheld, battery-operated fans at my head.

All right, I think that's quite enough self-assessment for now. It's so good to have a plan in place, isn't it?



*This is true. I cannot for the life of me remember the title of that stupid book, of which I read only three chapters. One of the later chapters supposedly would have taught me how to increase traffic to my blog, which I, based upon the pitfully low number on my stat counter, could definitely have used. Then again--why aren't you readers spreading word of my blog to all and sundry? For shame, fanbase! For shame.