Goal Setting

New Years, Summer, next week, a new day! These are all opportunities people grab on to and occasionally decide to use as a jumpstart for new life. A new year coming? Time to make your new years resolutions! What are you going to do over the summer? How about, starting Monday, you actually get some work done. Make a to-do list! Come on, you can do it!
For some reason I've always found to-do lists oddly comforting. I feel that if I write a to-do list the night before I have more reason to get up in the morning and get going. But something about this has irked me for a while. When I write "do load of laundry" on my list for the next day, why can't I just do it right then? What's stopping me from putting clothes in the wash before I head off to bed? Or writing a letter to a friend, sending an important email, or...the ever dreaded...working on SAT prep. Why don't I just do it now? If it's five o'clock in the afternoon and I've finished my work for the day, why can't I go on to the work I set aside for tomorrow? The point is, I can but I don't.
I think this idea applies to new years resolutions and summer goals and "oh, I'll be productive next week!" I don't know about you, but things like that have always been more of an excuse for me to put things off now, than to get things done in the future. New years resolutions are notoriously broken, I almost never accomplish every goal on a "major goals" list I create [see: working on apologetics, debate, SAT, and my novel at the same time...not really happenin'].
Goals are not always an excuse to procrastinate. Good goal-setters will begin working on their goals as soon as they create them. But, me, I'm not a good goal setter. I set goals, but I always seem to either be reaching far too high with them, or I just feel so accomplished upon setting my goals that I don't work on achieving them.


I want to do things. But I don't want to just want to do things. I want to actually do them! That Nike slogan always annoyed me, "Just do it!" Who are they to tell me what to do? I need my metaphorically miraculous sneakers, something to get me going. But what am I missing? The motivation? No, I feel so motivated I could burst with it. The courage? Maybe, yes. Yesterday I was almost too scared to order a sandwich...until the guy at the sandwich shop asked if I was ready to order. The song "Courage is..." is so inspiring [but has, as yet, motivated no change in my behavior]:

"Courage is when you're afraid,
But you keep on moving anyway
Courage is when you're in pain,
But you keep on living anyway

We all have excuses why
Living in fear something in us dies
Like a bird with broken wings
It's not how high he flies,
But the song he sings

Courage is when you're afraid,
But you keep on moving anyway

Courage is when you're in pain,
But you keep on living anyway"

I need courage. Courage to begin. I can't just set goals, I have to carry them out. God, please just help me do what you want me to do, and to get it done as soon as possible.

Thanks for...reading? I was going to say listening, but that wouldn't make sense :P