
Feel free to zoom in if you think any of my particular writing goals might inspire you. That's the whole point of this post - sharing inspiration.
We're all in this together whether or not we choose to write; we're all headed somewhere we want to go. Right?
And some of us are looking for ways to urge ourselves on, to get past our resistance. Right? Right.
I have a couple of "Goals WIKIs".
I share one with VC and one with SR and we are each making great strides from what I can see. I'm hooked on this new process and have accomplished more in the past month than I have in the past year -- maybe longer.
So, it's just an idea, it's just one way to get where we're going, but I thought you might like to know about it.
You can set up your own WIKI for free at http://pbworks.com.
I'm headed back there myself right now because letting you in on my latest goal-setting process was on my list of goals this week and I'm ready to check it off.

I had my last chat with Norman on Thursday morning before I headed to work. I wanted to catch him early enough in his day and I was lucky to find him up and in good form.
For the past couple of weeks, he'd had fewer stories to tell and had been sounding more tired. Thursday morning, he was having some trouble holding the phone because his arthritic hands were sore and some trouble hearing me because he couldn't keep the earpiece over his ear, but he was as sweet, affectionate and playful as ever and made up for the shortage of stories with a medley of love songs.
I don't think I've ever been serenaded in the morning before and, even if I had been, Norman's melodious voice and memory of lyrics would have been no less impressive and appreciated. I especially loved how he inserted my name into the lyrics in all the right places.
If you've been to my blog before, you may know that I've written of Norman a couple of times and some of this will be a repeat of what I've written before. Some stories need to be retold.
Norman taught me that each time he told me a story from his past he was telling it for the first time and if I listened to it as if I was hearing it for the first time, I might hear it deeper or catch a nuance I missed from previous tellings, maybe something he was more comfortable telling, something that his telling had reminded him about. Maybe this is also true of the stories I tell, of the stories we all tell.
Norman's wit was sharp and his maritime accent was thick as his short-term memory seemed to fade. He spoke of loves and losses, shared the recordings of old conversations he had stored in his mind and took care to use the right words to express what he meant, correcting himself when a word didn't quite fit.
He didn't shy away from expressing feelings. Sadness, regret, disappointment, gratitude, anger, love. He spoke of aging and illness and arthritis and pain. He didn't speak of dying and though I invited his thoughts on death, I didn't press him.
And he played with words in a way that I loved and left us both laughing.
He remembered times I'd forgotten. When I couldn't remember having seen his niece Hannah since she was little, he reminded me that she was a bit older than that the year we took some photos in the field with his sheep and sure enough when I took a look in my albums, a whole summer of memories flooded back in.


And there were times that were beyond my remembering. Norman told me I was about 2 years old when he first met me. He and one of his brothers took a trip from their farm on the north shore of New Brunswick to Niagara Falls and stopped in at our home in Toronto. Norman remembered my father getting me ready for bed.
I must have seen Norman a few times between then and 1976 when the pictures above were taken. My family took at least a couple of trips to New Brunswick where my father still owned property, but I would have been a child then and maybe my father's friends didn't stand out to me. And Norman had six brothers who were also my father's friends.
In 1976, I think I caught Norman's eye (and left a twinkle in it, his niece would say). Lucky me! He was an old fellow from my point of view, a friend of my father and mother's, 52 years old and I was about half his age, but I was very fond of him in an unromantic way.
My father's old homestead was still standing in Jacquet River, New Brunswick back then, though it had been vandalized. Some good friends of my father's had collected up all the old treasures and stored them for safe-keeping and in June of 1976 my Mom, her boyfriend and I drove down with the intention of bringing back the antiques. We ended up staying with Norman's sister and her family for about a month while waiting for a part for my car.
I suppose that would have been the month that Norman and I got to know one another a bit. His nieces and I would visit with him on his farm and he must have come to visit us at his sister's. I liked his sense of humour, his wit, his Gaelic accent.
I was richer for the friendship I was beginning with Norman (and, "unbeknownst" to me then, my future friendship with his niece, Hannah). I'm guessing we all corresponded for a while. Norman and I continued our letters and phone chats while I moved back to the Yukon and up until 1980 when I met a man I married. Or it may have petered out a bit the previous year when my sister and Mom discouraged Norman from visiting while I was down to Ontario on business. Or, more to the honest point, when they encouraged me to discourage him.
In any case, it was another ten years until we caught up with each other in a campground beside my father's old property when I drove across the country in 1990 in a more reliable Toyota Forerunner. The visit was shorter this time and my correspondence with Norman didn't last for more than a few months. He had a real lady friend by then.
It was Hannah who looked me up on Facebook and reconnected us all again a few months ago. I had remembered that she married and moved to Halifax, but wouldn't have remembered her last name so wouldn't have thought to look her up. And that would have been my loss given how much I have enjoyed her and the reconnection with her Uncle Norman.
Hannah and I have been keeping up with each other via email and Facebook and for the past couple of days we've been writing about Norman.
He was a treasure. Probably a bit like my father would have been as an old man if he'd become one. He was my old friend Norman and that would be enough, but he was also a gift from my father. Or a gift of my father from Norman or from me to me.
A gift, no matter how I wrap or unwrap him, a gift I hold in the present moment with joy as a loving memory.
Hannah has written a beautiful tribute to him to read at his funeral tomorrow.
This is mine.
Norman tells me I was about 2 years old when he first met me. He and one of his brothers took a trip from their farm on the north shore of New Brunswick to Niagara Falls and stopped in at our home in Toronto. Norman remembers my father getting me ready for bed.In 1976, I think I caught Norman's eye. He was an old fellow from my point of view, a friend of my father and mother's, 52 years old and I was about half his age, but I was fond of him in a more limited way than he was of me, I think.
I had come home to Lachute, Quebec that summer after living a few years in the Yukon and suffering through a year of University in Edmonton, Alberta. I was all enthused about getting a degree, about majoring in psychology (hoping to understand my own troubled self, no doubt) but I didn't reach that destination. It wasn't that the courses were so hard, but I had a cracked tail bone that didn't get properly diagnosed and treated until about a year later. The pain was more than I could handle most of the time and I missed making it to a lot of classes.
By May I was ready to head home to my Mom, but my Mom was as bad off as I was. Three years a widow, she had hooked up with a man we used to call a friend of the family, Harold. Apparently, he'd made some commitment to my father to take care of my mother, but it didn't work out too well. He hooked up with my Mom, but he was in love with my sister and everyone ended up a mess. Depressed, resentful, guilty, ashamed, we were as dysfunctional a family as they come and I was headed home a drop-out to take care of my depressed and co-dependent Mom, thinking that I wasn't anything like her at all.
My father's old homestead was still standing in Jacquet River, New Brunswick back then, though it had been vandalized and some good friends of my father's had collected up all the old treasures and stored them for safe-keeping. In June of 1976 my Mom, Harold and I drove to the Maritimes in my little Corona intending to rent a truck that Harold would drive back with the antiques.
We made it to our destination, but my car died in the driveway of our friends' place which was thankfully right across the road from the Toyota dealership. The trouble with the car was covered by warranty, but we would be staying with our friends for a month awaiting the parts for repair.
That would have been the month that Norman and I got to know one another a bit. His nieces and I would visit with him on his farm and I suppose he must have come to visit us at his sister's where we were staying. I liked his sense of humour, his wit, his "sailor's accent". I wasn't otherwise attracted to him, but I suspected he was a bit sweet on me.
The rest of the trip with my Mom and Harold was a fiasco and we came home without the antiques, but I was richer for the friendship I was beginning with Norman (and, "unbeknownst" to me then, my future friendship with his niece, Hannah). 
I'm guessing we all corresponded for a while. Norman and I continued our letters and phone chats while I moved back to the Yukon and up until 1980 when I met the man I married. Or it may have petered out a bit the previous year when my sister and Mom discouraged him from visiting while I was down to Ontario on business.
In any case, it was another ten years until we caught up with each other in a campground beside my father's old property when I drove across the country in 1990 in a more reliable Toyota Forerunner. The visit was shorter this time and my correspondence with Norman didn't last for more than a few months. He had a real lady friend by then.
It was Hannah who looked me up on Facebook and reconnected us all again a few months ago. I had remembered that she married and moved to Halifax, but wouldn't have remembered her last name so wouldn't have thought to look her up. And that would have been my loss given how much I am enjoying her now and the reconnection with her Uncle Norman.
I had such a good chat on the phone with Norman this morning and Hannah and I have been keeping up with each other via email and Facebook.
But, why am I writing about this tonight? Especially when I've written about some of this before? I'm asking myself.
And the answer I get back is that some things just need to be revisited and written about again and again. Good friendships are worth the investment to me.
But I've also walked away from friendships when I haven't seen the value of an investment, when I've begun not to like a person I once called a friend, when I haven't been able to detect a mutuality of interest, when my level of interest in a person has waned to the point where I have no energy left to invest, where more attention has been required of me than I have to give, where I've been the recipient of malicious nastiness and neglect or when I've been targeted with hurtful behaviour not even connected to conscious thought. I've overlooked or forgiven and acted out of compassion, too, but I've still left a few people hurting in the wake of my departure.
My good friendships and I depend upon me making good investments.