I’ve been cleaning out my room – really gutting some stuff out, from the bottom of closets or wherever I might not look all the time.
And it’s sort of silly/interesting – some of the stuff that I’ve found.
For one thing, I found this huge certificate (looked to be almost two feet tall) from the Mayor’s Office, thanking me for volunteer work.
It was for an event to help veterans get into the civilian workforce. I signed up to help and showed up. But alas, they booked more volunteers than they needed, said there was nothing I could help with, and sent me home.
I was there for all of 5 minutes. I guess it’s nice of them to send it to me since I did show up. But why did I still have that? I don’t have a fabulous story to go with it. So I finally recycled it.
I also still have SAT books sitting on my bookshelf – as if I’m really gonna apply full-out to an undergraduate program. Am I legitimately gonna do that? Pretty sure not. Most of those books say 2012 on the side. How crazy is it that these books have been sitting around for 3 years?
I also found two recommendation letters in the bottom of a file drawer for the DGA trainee program. I was planning to apply in 2011. I forget what exactly happened. (I think it had something to do with an extra day of work coming up and me not making it to the post office in time – that’s what I get for waiting ’til the last minute!) Anyway, I missed the deadline.
I think I saved the letters in case I wanted to use them in 2012. But I never applied to the program after all. (What a waste, by the way. I think that’s the only time I’ve ever asked anyone to write a recommendation letter that went unused. And I feel badly about that.)
Seeing all this stuff kind of just gets me thinking. And it’s weird because I feel like some of what I’m about to say I’ve already said in this very blog!
But it just makes me think – what do I legitimately want to do? And what am I legitimately going to do? Where am I going to put my focus? What is the wisest way to spread my time to the various things I enjoy/aspire toward?
It’s easy to hold onto ideas. It’s harder to take concrete action. (It’s also easy to make excuses.)
Generally, I am someone who takes action and makes concrete goals. But as we can see by half-studied SAT books in my room, I don’t always finish everything that I think about doing. (But I do work hard to finish everything I explicitly say I will.)
So, I need to make some more concrete declarations and goals. Those I’ll almost certainly keep.
So yeah. What do I really want? What’s really worth my time? These are the questions flying around in my head in the moment.