Dreams, Goals and Desires - Part One

Last January I wrote a post on my dreams, goals and desires for the year. It's sort of like writing a new years resolution, but different in that you put the list away and not look at it for another year.

To quote the calendar where I got the idea for the exercise:

Dreams are the voice of the soul. Lofty things that seem impossible or impractical, but resonate within you. Goals are the voice of the brain. Finite, simple and every day. And desires are the yearnings of an emotional or spiritual nature; they are not necessarily of this world, but are the deepest desires of the heart."

So, let's see what I wrote last year and how it matches up.

Dreams

To become an established writer.
To me, the definition of "established" means that I can make a comfortable living writing my own stuff, without taking on any additional contract work to help stay afloat longer than funding alone might allow.


** Progress made: Well, I did take on some contract work here and there throughout the year, but considerably less than I have in the past. We can't complain. We feel that we've been paid very fairly by the production for "writing our own stuff" and for Jim's work directing. We estimate that if we stick to our budget, we should be able to stay afloat until the end of December 2011. Of course, we've still accounted for a small amount of contract work in our financial forecast, but the sum is pretty negligible. 


So all that being said, I think I've pretty great progress towards meeting that dream!

To get our movie made.
Yes, this might seem less of a dream and more of a goal, considering that we are about to enter pre-production. Although, I consider goals to be things I can control, and if you've ever bothered to watch the behind the scenes features for any movie, you'll know that there are always endless external challenges that can postpone the making of a movie for years.


**Progress made: Now that the film has been shot, we're starting to hear a few intense stories of things that went on behind the scenes in pre-production. Apparently there were a couple times where things almost completely fell apart with various funding sources; however, our producers' ability to strategize on their toes managed to pull everything together. We were told a long time ago that it's always a miracle that any film gets made, since this kind of stuff happens all the time. In fact, one of our crew members said that 8 out of the 12 films she worked on this year fell apart in pre-production because they were not able to get all their financing together. 


Fortunately our producers kept us in the dark during all this chaos, so we could just focus to the task at hand. It is their job to worry about distribution, pre-sales and funding. From our end all we see is that magically, everything managed to come together just in the nick of time. 


To sign Albert Finney as our lead.
Okay, so I'd be satisfied if we got any of our top 5 choices for Donovan. But because we wrote this script with Mr. Finney in mind, obviously it'd be a dream come true to get him on board.


**Progress made: Well, we might've written the script for Albert Finney, but the movie was made for Danny Glover. Hands down he beats all actors we ever had in our original top five. In fact some people thought that we wrote it for him. I'd say this dream was met in a bigger and better way. 


Goals


To paint 4 paintings.
Doubling my goal from last year.


**Progress made: Okay, let's see...


One: Reiki

Two: Magnolia Blossom

Three: Fintry

Four: My collection of garden markers. I actually painted about twice as many of these, but didn't take pictures. Together, I think they should count as one painting. 

Five: Every Family Tree Has A Couple Of Nuts

Six: For The Girls

Seven: Suzie's Power - which is only half started. No photo to show until it's done!  


If my math skills serve me correct, I believe 6.5 beats 4. Goal met. 

To get something published.  
I've been published before, but for personal reasons, I asked for the article to go uncredited. This time, I want to see something I've written in print, with my name attached.  I don't care where.


**Progress made: Getting the screenplay made into a movie doesn't count as getting something published, because this goal was intended for something in print. So I guess I didn't end up meeting this one.

To take better care of my health by...

1. Drinking more water.

2. Exercise more often. Go for a walk or work out with my free weights at least three times a week. 

3. Do a complete cleanse twice a year.

4. Speak with a holistic nutritionist about maintaining a proper vegetarian diet.


**Progress made: 


1. Nope. I still average 2 - 4 glasses a day. Terrible. 


2. At least 3 times a week... every week all year? No. Definitely not. This was certainly not a big exercise year for me. Fortunately, I have somehow managed to maintain my weight... (even though pressing hard with a pencil all afternoon can make my atrophied muscles sore. ;) 


3. I only did one cleanse. Oh well, it's something.


4. Nope. I never made an appointment, and I still eat fish on occasion. However, over this past year, I've probably tripled the amount of organic foods I buy. I have also been making a much bigger effort to shop local - even though that doesn't directly affect my health, it at least benefits my conscience. (Then again, you might say the same applies to my goal to eliminate fish.)  Anyway, again, it's something.  

Travel to...
1. Somewhere tropical


2. Back to Ontario


**Progress made: 


1. No. :( Does relocating to the lower mainland count as tropical? There is a temperate rainforest here. 


2. Yes! :) And what a great visit!  

Volunteer.

I use to have my name on a local volunteer's list, so that whenever there was an organization or event in town looking for volunteers, they'd call me up. While I might not do that again, (I don't like unexpected phone calls and I always have a hard time saying no), I do think that I want to look into doing some volunteer work somewhere. Either environment-related or maybe working with seniors. Ideally, I've love to do crafts or painting with seniors... but I don't know if you need qualifications for something like that? I'll look into it...


**Progress made: Ha ha! Looking at this one makes me giggle for some reason. No, instead of doing crafts and painting with seniors, I invested some time volunteering with the Free Marc Emery campaign until I got too busy. I also did a little volunteer work with Why Prohibition online.

 Another event I volunteered for was the Kelowna Fire Museum's art auction by painting a fire helmet. 

Even though neither volunteer activity are anything like I originally imagined doing, I feel they still count as meeting my goal. 


Desires
To be more in tune with my higher self.
Same as last year, but this year, I'm gonna try harder. I want to devote more time towards meditating and I want to get a day timer, because it really does help by forcing me to reflect every single day.


**Progress made: I found an awesome day timer that really did the job. However, when things started getting hairy with the movie and holidays, I began seriously slipping. I did not record anything throughout the months of November and December. Boo. But up until then it was a daily thing. 


I also participated in a 30 day meditation challenge last spring. There was another one in the fall, but I couldn't pull it off. I think I participated the first day or two, and then we moved to Maple Ridge, and I just wasn't making time for meditation anymore. 


Also, midway through the year, while meditating I developed a new mantra. Before I use to always tell myself to believe, believe, believe that everything would come together the way I hope for it to. Instead, I realized that rather than believing, I should just allow life to unfold as it's meant to. I find that whenever you look back at the twists and turns of life, you can often see how all your experiences and even some bad situations have benefited something else in the long run. So that's become my new mantra in life: "Allow". 


Anyhow, it's hard to evaluate progress here, since striving to be in tune with one's higher self is more of a life-long journey. Maybe it's not meant to be evaluated - it's just meant to be desired.  


Alright now, as for my dreams, goals and desires for this year... well, I still have to give some thought to those. I will come back to this later.