Every Sunday I expect at least two or three emails in my inbox that are not promotional emails with the latest sale or discount code for one of the sites I’ve allowed to have my email address. The first is the weekly “love letter” from the Yoga with Adriene site and it includes words of encouragement and yogi wisdom along with links to the week’s line-up of yoga practices. I read it and save it every week. The second one, that I also save for future reference, is Ann Handley’s Total Annarchy newsletter. There’s always a good writing tip or a funny story, often combined into one motivational post, plus helpful links that are useful for work as well as my personal life.

This week’s Total Annarchy edition arrived first and its main topic was knowing when to let go of goals, or at least adjust them and pivot, and included portions of this quote from Thoreau:

The night of the year is approaching. What have we done with our talent? All nature prompts and reproves us. How early in the year it begins to be late! It matters not by how little we have fallen behind; it seems irretrievably late. The year is full of warnings of its shortness, as is life.

Henry David Thoreau, August 1853

Ann Handley sees this as a reminder to fix what’s not working or to let it go. Many of us, myself included, set goals for ourselves in January in the form of resolutions, and by the end of summer these resolutions have been long ago tossed aside.

Is it a coincidence then that not long after reading Handley’s email I received Adriene’s love letter in which she shared that the theme for September’s playlist is, wait for it ….. Reset?

Funny how things like that seem to keep happening.

I wrote last week about the milestone I just celebrated: a year of living a new life. I guess you could refer to it as a birthday of sorts. I’ve also written about being advised to “live in the moment.” I’ve taken that to heart and have been doing that as much as I can. I’m trying not to anticipate too much but appreciate each day as it comes.

But it is time to look forward and anticipate; there’s going to be a wedding in the family! My daughter is engaged and the planning has begun! Fortunately, we have over a year before the big event and the happy couple has already made a couple major decisions so now we can take our time with some of the other things that need to be done. And I say “we” because I am prepared to assist as much, or as little, as they want. I am happy that I am here so that I can be part of the process.

Of course, thinking about weddings brings up memories of my own marriages and I am glad that I can honestly say that I still believe in the institution of marriage. Two divorces have not left me completely scarred and soured. I wish them much love and happiness. I agree with Ann and Adrienne that now is a perfect opportunity to hit that reset button, to evaluate what goals I set for myself and identify which I want to keep and which ones require a pivot. I don’t think I need to abandon any of my goals though, except maybe they need a slight adjustment. I’ve spent a lot of time being introspective and maybe I need to look outward a lot more. Journaling has helped me a lot but I think I will shift that time and energy into a writing practice. Yes, of course, I know journaling is writing, but it’s also very repetitive and self-absorbed. I found a new source for writing prompts the other day but I haven’t used any of the prompts yet because I wasn’t immediately inspired by any of them. That was just an excuse to not do the work though. This morning as I lay in bed I was thinking about the last set of prompts and ideas were floating around in my head and I wished I had a notebook handy to write them down before they vanished, swallowed up with the first cup of coffee and the day’s activities.

And so I’m taking this afternoon to write something that is not about me, why is why this Sunday Post is going out a little earlier in the day than usual. I have no expectations that anything I write will be any good and I don’t know if I will share it with you here, but maybe that would make me more accountable if I promise to do that? We’ll see. But for now, I’m going to give this a shot and see what happens. And then I am going to go to my boyfriend’s place where he is making us dinner. I was telling him about the pasta scene in the movie Chef and he was inspired to find and make that recipe. This will be his second attempt; he wasn’t satisfied the first time he made it (it did have a little too much heat for me) so he’s trying it again. Doing a reset of his own, more or less.

I haven’t decided whether I prefer to think of life as being too short, or that life is long, but either outlook could benefit from hitting the reset button a few times.