September 2010


As I write the words, “September 2010,” I can’t get over how the year has flown by.  I feel as if I’m still back in April and looking forward to the upcoming summer.  Many months ago when 2010 was still so new and brimming with promise—back in December or early January—I made a detailed list of all of the goals I wanted to fulfill this year.  Back then, when the new year was just a glimmer in my eye, accomplishing my entire list seemed not only possible, but probable.  I’d executed a plan, after all, so all there was for me to do was follow it, right?  Wrong.

For the first few months of 2010, I read through my goal list regularly, tweaking and adjusting as necessary, to ensure I stayed on track.  Before long, life butted in and I fell behind so I began simply moving forward everything that was undone.  It wasn’t long after that I became so overwhelmed by even looking at the goal list that I couldn’t pick it up without cursing the thing.  My goals had gone from being a something that lit me up, to something it felt like someone else was forcing me to do.  They went from being a challenging and enlivening prospect to yet another way to beat up on myself for dreaming too big, getting easily discouraged and giving up.

I’d had it.  By July I’d decided enough was enough.  “My life is fine the way it is,” I said to myself, deciding it was best to simply leave well enough alone and stop looking at my goal list and becoming upset by the massive amount that was in the “to do” column.

We recently moved offices—which, incidentally was one of the “biggies” on my 2010 goal list—and in the process of unpacking I found my goal list last night.  I started to just throw the old thing away, but thought better of it.  I sat down, closed my eyes, breathed deeply and prepared to read it.  I assured myself I didn’t have to do any of the items I’d listed if I didn’t want to; I could just read it objectively, as if someone else had written the document.  I brushed the Sunday paper off the ottoman so I could rest my legs while I read.  Something caught my eye as I moved the newspaper; there was a big “back to school” sale at a large office-supply store chain.   I thought about the prospect of “back to school” for a moment; how in some ways my thinking is still configured to see September as the beginning of the year because it was always the beginning of the school year.

I closed my eyes again and smiled; maybe I could use all of that collective “back to school” energy to my advantage and symbolically start 2010 anew with the beginning of September.  I read my goal list, checked off the line reading, “move offices,” and chuckled to myself.  I circled a few of the most important items on the list, and decided to re-dedicate myself to accomplishing them in 2010.  After all, it’s a new year.

Wishing you all of the blessings and renewed promise of this “new” year,

Joel J. Loquvam

Attorney At Law