Dumbass goals.
So, back when I was a kid, I thought the year 2000 was going to be monumental. It would also be the year I turned 24.
I figured by that time, I would be ‘on the shelf’ (this method of thinking could have come from devouring historical romances since the ripe old age of 12, when every heroine in anything published in the 1980s was somewhere between the ages of 15 and 20). 24 was far too old for any guy to want to date beyond that, and it seemed like a good cutoff date for matrimony. (I was a weird kid. And a dumbass.)
If I did not get married by the age of 24, I decided, I’d be doomed to spinsterhood forever. Just me, old age, and a couple dozen cats. Naturally, the year 2000 came and went and I was not married. Alas. Life was surely over.
Then I met a guy in the next year, and when I was 27, we married. I was 3 years late on my ridiculous goal. So much for that.
Sometime in 2002, I started writing. And I told myself, age 30 is the perfect goal for publishing. If I don’t have a published novel by the time I am 30, I’m going to give up. I think everyone that is writing has set themselves a dumbass goal, right? The ‘If I don’t hit it by this date, it’s never going to happen and I’m going to give up’ date, right?
You can see where this is going. At age 29, I got my first agent and had written (by then) something around 9 manuscripts. No sale, no book in hand. My 30th birthday passed. I have to admit that I was a little crushed. Who wouldn’t be? There was no contract in sight, my book was languishing on someone’s desk in NY, and life was bleak. I’d missed my own personal goal, and that hurt.
But then, not 5 months later, I got the call. And 3 years (and one month) later, my book is going to hit the shelves.
It’s been on my mind today, these arbitrary goals. Because I made them, just by picking dates out of my head. 24 seems like a marriageable age. 30 seems like a reasonable age for a published author.
But these are dumbass goals. And if I’d simply been patient, I’d have seen that both would happen in their due process. Important things cannot be rushed, especially when they’re not in your control.
So that’s the moral of the story. Don’t set yourself dumbass goals. Or if you do, wait 3 years. Cool stuff never happens on schedule.
