What Even ARE My Goals?
I've a great contempt for naval gazing blogs. When I come to a blog, I've come with an expectation of a guided exploration through something that interests me, not pages of bombastic self interested babble. And yet.
I've come to this page as an author this time, not an audience. And that's giving me a new appreciation for just how hard it must be to be the people I rely on to keep me entertained. What are they after, how do they deliver? What am I doing here? Well. I'm seeking answers, not questions. I want to measure the fact that I'm alive. I want something I can look at or think on and conclude that I'm not wasting the time, resources, and opportunities that I've been entrusted with. To that end, I ought to generate some artifacts:
- Daily notebook entries
- Weekly fiber arts
- Monthly blog posts
- Quarterly field trips
It's obviously not a comprehensive set of goals, but they meet the SMART characteristics (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) and I don't mind sharing them with the public. Too many goals seem foisted upon me and aren't actually something I have any particular interest in. People with loud opinions about what will help me get what I want, with no real understanding of what that might be.
In goal selection, I'm reminded of the Nicomachean eudaimonia; The differentiation of things that are good in their own right and things that are good because of what they lead to. Usually, the difference is presented as binary- A thing is either instrumental or intrinsic. But I've found that at least for my notebook entries, there's an emotional response that I don't get from other things. Seeing proof that I've been alive & awake at the wheel for weeks or months is more valuable to me than any of the things I'm recording. On a spectrum from instrumental to intrinsic, it sits at a surprisingly lofty perch. It's worth more than the sum of its parts- The food, paper, ink, even the time it takes to create them is not more valuable than the proof itself. Maybe that has to do with being a Boltzmann Brain 🤔.
It's bizarre to me, but I suppose any intrinsic good would be. It is always surprising to feel better from something's influence without some clear trajectory of how it will help me later. Even a good song is good because it puts me in a good mood and the good-mood version of me handles things better than the default.
The crafts have started to take on a similar value. They are more than an opportunity to relax, more than a demonstration to others. Seeing them just makes me feel good, makes me confident I did relax, demonstrates to me I am someone who can and does relax. In a peculiar and unembarrassed way, I feel stupid for not having appreciated something like this before. Where others saw sunsets and beautiful flowers, I saw only wasted time. But now I see myself watching them and them watching something that brings them peace, and only one them is wasting time.
