Drifting, passions, and coincidence

I have spent a lot of the past year reading and thinking about life and happiness and goals and passions.  Trying to understand what I want and need, hoping that I’ll find, somewhere, a drive to DO something, anything, whether I can achieve it or not, just so I know what I want to achieve and do.  I was reading this post http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2009/07/quiz-are-you-drifting.html in the Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/ that dealt with "drifting" – the tendency to just "go with the flow," but in a bad way; taking the easy way or simply not making decisions to go anywhere, following through with something that was decided a long time ago or by or for someone else and never thinking about whether it’s what you want to do or not.

Since I was procrastinating anyway, I decided to put Rubin’s book on my wishlist for Amazon then, and by odd coincidence discovered a sweepstakes they have going.  You enter by adding something to your wishlist, and there is a different prize and drawing every week for ten weeks.  There are things like jewelry and shopping trips, giant televisions, and a trip to Disney.  The one for this week- for which you have to enter by midnight tonight- is a photography tour of Yellowstone.  It’s the only one on the list that I have any interest in winning at all.  I looked at all of the other prizes, but none of them sparked any response in me.

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November 15, 2009

Good luck in figuring out what it is you want…that’s the hardest part sometimes. Once you have a goal, then you can make a plan and go for it, and it makes you feel alive to have something to strive for.

November 16, 2009

It took me a couple decades and a lot of false starts before I finally figured out what I want to do. Working on doing that is just as hard. I hope you have better luck than I’ve had. RYN: OD has been really wonky for me lately. I think I fixed it, and you should be able to see everything now, including the chapter with the novel I’m working on. Also, I didn’t do most “bad” things when I was a kid either, and I had plenty of chance to! For those characters– they’re living in a very skewed place. A place where drinking all winter is pretty much the norm. It’s a paradise with a very, very dark side. Hugs, John