Mini Mini Retreat

Friday was the day I planned for my mini retreat. I did not get 4 hours in, only 2 and they were far less productive than I'd hoped. I thought, in 4 hours, I will have everything figured out! Then, I only gave it two hours. The interesting thing was, it was a LOT more complicated than I had anticipated. At first, I was thinking that I was going to figure out what I was going to do with my many blogs. Then, after a conversation with B, it seemed worthwhile to think about my career. When I sat down, I was overwhelmed to say the least. What I realized was that both answers to these questions were related to my personal goals. What kind of life do I want to live? Where do I want to spend my time?

Many years ago I dated someone whose extended family created yearly goals. At that time (can I blame it on my youth?) I found the idea laughable. A few years later, I found myself creating my own goals. In the past few years, I stopped creating goals as I was just trying to survive. The exercise on Friday brought it all back. I can't just look at one area of my life separately because they are all connected. For example, spending time on blogging may positively affect my need for writing and creativity but may negatively affect my time with family and friends. (I am not saying it does I am just trying to show how it is all connected).

On Friday, I found myself going back to the basics of recreating personal goals. In the past I have chosen to create a goal or goals in areas such as career, creativity, health, finance and relationships. What did I accomplish on Friday? I worked only on the finance goal as this topic is something that I have been thinking about quite a bit. Creating the rest of the goals will take some serious time and I think that spending 2-3 hours each session seems both doable. My plan is to set aside 2 -3 hours every other week until I have created all the goals. (Also, this means once I am done creating the goals I will have a continuing appointment with myself to work on the goals).

One thing I have to do with the finance goals is prioritize them and set actionable next steps. What is the point of having a goal if you are not going to work toward it? Right? I will keep you posted.