I like setting goals. Big goals like getting a new accreditation (in the past, getting my optician's license; coming up in the future, becoming a licensed contact lens fitter, or getting a certificate in medical transcription), medium goals like my monthly challenges, and little goals like writing a short to-do list for the day and actually getting it done. Setting goals is a thing I love to do because it motivates me and gets me excited.
Except when it doesn't.
Past Gwendle has set some pretty stupid goals. Ones that are hard, or that interfere with the other things that I want to be doing right now. Past Gwendle picks terrible monthly challenges, like having to get at least 10,000 steps every day for the month of February; did she not realize that there would be days in February when it would be pouring rain? But Past Gwendle didn't have to go on those walks . . .
. . . I did.
Past Gwendle was also the one who decided that I had to publish a blog every Friday. She was the one who invented "BloADaWriMo". But she doesn't have to think of something to write every day this month while still getting a blog ready to publish at the end of the week, I do. It's not fair.
Now, you may think that since Past Gwendle is so unreasonable in the goals that she sets it would make sense for me to just ignore her and do my own thing. And I agree with you.
But Future Gwendle doesn't.
You see, Future Gwnedle won't blame Past Gwendle for setting unrealistic, inconvenient, or difficult goals; she'll blame Me for failing to meet those goals. So even when it was pouring rain, I still had to go for walks, or Future Gwendle would get mad at Me in the morning.
For the record, Future Gwendle never got to say those things about this particular goal because I did walk a minimum of 10,000 steps every day in February 2016. But trust me, she would have said them. She's said worse when I didn't accomplish other goals.
So here's poor Me, trapped between the rock of Past Gwendle's optimistic overachiever plans, and the hard place of Future Gwendle's condescension and disappointment. And as a result, I have to, like, you know, do stuff.
PS — I actually felt really good about myself on the days when I got my 10,000 steps in spite of the rain. I was proud of myself for not giving up. But I had some choice words for Past Gwendle while I was walking around in the dark, getting wet. And I was glad when it was March 1st.