So, as all good things come to pass, my holiday reaches its conclusion. As I prepare for a return to the mundane tomorrow, I can reflect on the highlights of the past week. These have mostly been getting stuck into writing tasks that I wanted to complete, or at least progress a little further. And then there was the reading. This was a little disappointing since I found myself sucked into perusing the myriad of excellent blogs out there, waiting on tenterhooks for new posts to appear in the reader. Obviously this was also reading, but did not aid in the completion of the books that I had planned to get finished.
But I still have a few hours left to savour I suppose. How will I elect to spend these?
I need a big push today to try to finish off that scheduled reading. I am a bit of an obsessive planner about these things and if I don’t tick off all of the boxes, I end up getting stressed by it. I end up feeling guilty that I haven’t completed everything I planned to, putting myself under undue pressure. I should perhaps set myself less taxing objectives!
I also passed an enjoyable evening listening to Audrey Niffenegger speak. My short post on that can be seen here. Last night was spent taking part in a quiz in order to help raise money for my nieces’ nursery. It was entertaining, although sadly our team came in a miserable fourth. There was no round on literature or books that I would have hoped for. The science round was good for us, as I work in that field, but sport and celebrity dating rounds were poor.
And so from tomorrow I shall be mostly back to the usual schedule of work, study and reading. Maybe then I will be able to work on some more interesting posts. For everyone’s benefit, I certainly hope so!
Julian Froment's Blog 
I can relate to the obsessive planning and stress! I try to remind myself that as long as I’m doing my best, that’s all I can do.
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Yes, I think it is important to remember that. Unfortunately it is inconsequential things that often end up causing the problem, just because they are on the list. Maybe I should have an important list and a not so important one (that I can allow to slip).
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Always a bummer when a vacation ends, but it sounds like you had fun.
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I did. Back to work now, but then if we didn’t work holidays wouldn’t be such fun.
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Good point. The rarity makes them special.
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I get a bit stressed too when things don’t go according to plan. Good luck getting through the reading. I see we have a few authors we like in common.
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Thanks. I see you are a big fan of James Patterson. I have only just started getting back into reading thrillers and mysteries again, but he is fun to read. I also want to look at Connelly, Rankin, Baldacci and any others. You have any recommendations?
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Hope your vacation was lovely, other than the lack of progress you feel over reading. My thoughts have ever been with you, sending you warmth and good wishes. What an apocalyptic post title:)
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I had a great time thanks. It was nice to have more time for reading blogs, writing and so on, but now back to real world I suppose. I can feel the warmth from you and it makes my days better. I hope you enjoyed the title 🙂
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Julian,
Great post on goals (whether you meant it to be or not).
It’s good that you set big goals for your self even if you didn’t meet them. Would you rather, like most people, have no goals and yet hit them every time?
No, it’s great you set out goals and met them half way because that is progress.
We can’t always reach our goals every time, that’s shouldn’t be our purpose. It’s that we’re reaching out and learning now. Next time, we can set bigger goals and by the time we’re through life, we’ve reached a point we didn’t think possible because of these incremental changes that are so important but take a little bit every day to do.
Thank you for writing, even on Holiday, and as always, you’re writing is very interesting.
Timothy (BTR)
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I agree having goals is good. You need to stretch yourself to achieve great things. However, we do need to remember to keep things realistic. Setting unrealistic goals that are unachievable just results in motivation. So I think the point I am making is that I need to be sure to set stretching, but realistic goals.
I am glad you enjoyed the post. Goal setting something I do a lot of.
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