On new goals and old plans
turns out September is pretty good for both
I’ve been thinking a lot about works-in-progress and what it means to hit a goal and be productive and to always have a plan in mind for the future.
“I’ll be back around 3pm, maybe later, but I’ll text you when we’re done,” says my spouse Janyce. She’s standing in the kitchen bending over me to kiss me goodbye. I’m sitting at the table in my pajamas looking out the window at the garden— the grasses have proliferated over the summer and each have now produced long fuzzy fronds, seemingly lit from within by the rays of the sun.
It’s Sunday morning and Janyce is on her way to a day-long hike with the Appalachian Mountain Club. I google the name of the hike as I watch her pull out of the driveway.
“This elevated rock formation rewards hikers with a scenic view looking east toward Boston, and Mount Wachusett to the northwest. At over 400 feet above sea level, Tippling Rock is the highest point within the Nobscot conservation lands lying within Sudbury.”
We both joined the AMC a couple weeks back and we’ve done a few easy hikes since, but I wasn’t sure I was ready just yet for this 7-mile uphill hike. I’m not. But now I’m feeling a little left out and pouty about spending a beautiful day alone at home.
After she drives away, I take my phone with me and walk out to the front yard in my bare feet. I love a September garden, plenty of color left on the tangled Wild Geraniums and the gangly Russian Sage, moss green seed pods are poking up from the Butterfly Weed that was ablaze in orange all summer, and yellow jackets are now swarming around the hummingbird feeder, sticky with the last of the sugar water. I still have a mulch pile in the center of the driveway turnaround, my wheelbarrow overturned and leaning on top of it, a pitchfork and garden edger resting beside it. I’ve been “working” on the garden all summer, promising Janyce that I will eventually use up the remaining pile of mulch sometime before winter. But my idea of the garden is less about me getting any real work done and being finished and more about putzing around, pulling a few weeds out, adding a pot of cherry red zinnias against a backdrop of russet-colored corn plants. My garden is a perpetual work-in-progress. An artistic expression. A creative diversion. I tell myself this and take a few photos.
I’ve been thinking a lot about works-in-progress and what it means to hit a goal and be productive and to always have a plan in mind for the future. Janyce bought me a new journal and I spent some time with a good pen filling some of it in yesterday, I got myself a new app tracker for my fitness goals that I’ve been trying out, and we’ve been breaking in our new hiking boots on our longer weekend treks with our dog. All worthy goals and plans.
A friend of mine sent me a text over the weekend “I love my life!”she said. She’s hitting a goal at this very moment: being on a solo trip, seeing old friends, doing whatever she pleases for a five-day stretch in a favorite city. I’ve watched her now over the course of a year or two give herself some goals and hit every one. I’m going to walk in the woods every day rain or shine, I’m getting a new job, I’m joining a softball league this summer, I’m getting new siding for the house. I’m in awe of her productivity, of her resolve, of her “flow.” And I’ve experienced that flow at times in my life. But I’ve also been in a fallow stage of my life before, too. Both have their place and their own beauty and meaning, I think. I laugh to myself imagining her response if she heard me say all this to her right now. “My Guay! Don’t you know that you have been my inspiration all along?”
This is the same friend that sent me a video of Jodie Foster talking about what it’s like for women in their 50s and how freeing it was for her when she turned 60. In the video Jodie says, “the 50s were really hard for me. I can’t compete with my younger self and if I try to, I just keep failing.” I sat with Janyce on our back patio one afternoon over the summer, sipping a cocktail and listening to the cicadas humming in the trees and I tried to explain this video as we were chatting.
“Here I am at 58 and I’m starting to realize that I’m probably not going to achieve some of the lofty goals I have made for myself,” I said. “I always thought I was going to do something special, be someone special, and I think I might actually be okay just being average. Just living out my own average life. Like maybe that’s not so bad.”
Janyce put her drink down on the table and turned to look straight at me.
“Kris, I can’t believe that you actually think you are average?” she said. “Don’t you know what you mean to other people? What you mean to me? I think you are amazing.”
It’s now getting late and Janyce must be there by now, I think. I look at my phone and sure enough she has sent me a text. “Here! a veeeerrrryy serious woman parked next to me 🙄,” she said.
“Ha ha, what does that even mean?” I say. But I don’t get a response back.
I look at the clock. Time to get outside and pull a few weeds, putz around in my beautiful, blown, and gone-to-seed garden. Goals and plans be damned.
You always say things I feel. ❤️