Nice is different than good.

Days in a row without Bejewelled: 3

Yes, that opening it's a little Bridget Jones' Diary, but it's appropriate and I'm looking forward to seeing the number grow.  And this blog is helping - when I feel the pull to those pretty colored jewels, I think about what I will need to write here, what I will need to own and I close the facebook page.

This week has been tough.  I find that when I set big specific goals a week or two later I end up doing the emotional equivilent of hiding under the covers.   I have trouble facing what I've set out to do as the goal looms large and uncomfortable.  I've never been one to easily surrender to the process.  Or even like the process, for that matter.  According to my parents, I crawled for less than a week before I started working.  I'm working to change over 40 years of habit!

But change is an interesting thing.

After posting the link to my first entry on Facebook, a high school friend of mine commented that she remembered our French teacher giving us an assignment of journalling our time over the course of a week to see how much time we wasted.  She remembered us comparing notes and wrote it was "nice to see nothing has changed".

My first thought on reading that was "I'm not so sure what's nice about it."  It wasn't a happy thought at all to think that I hadn't grown or changed since high school.

So I had to ask myself - has anything changed?

In some ways, I suppose it hasn't.  I have lots of enthusiasm for projects at the beginning, and I'm great if/when it comes up to an actual deadline... but the middle?  That remains a challenge - sticking with something passed the easily motivtated beginning and then finding myself in that awful frantic rush-to-the-finish mode. (This never seemed to be a problem for my high school friend).

Then again - things other things have changed.  I am older, wiser and more familiar with the consequences of choices. My goals more are in tuned with both the long and short term.  I have more support in my life then I did when I was younger. I am also more aware of making choices - both good and bad - and not simply being pulled along with the moment.  And I have two amazing sons who, without knowing it, provide great motivation for living the life I say I want. 

Because I don't want them to be working this hard to change a life time habits in their future.