A goal without a plan is just a dream
I scrawled this message about goals on my classroom whiteboard in the spring of 2012 during our campus Career Day event, hoping to instill in our pregnant and parenting students (notoriously bad planners) the importance of planning toward their futures. I’m happy to realize that so many of them did achieve their goals after graduation. Somehow, I suspect my scrawled note had nothing to do with their success, but I can dream, can’t I?
After a little googling, I discovered there’s a similar quote (maybe the original?) that says A goal without a plan is just a wish. Personally, I like my version better. They both allude to the same truth: few accomplishments are realized without planning. A wish doesn’t carry the same weight as a dream, though. I wish my cat wouldn’t sleep with his thirteen pounds of dead weight up against my kidneys at night. I dream of seeing my grandchildren settle into adult lives that make them happy.
I had a dream through the late 1990s and early 2000s to publish a memoir about my mother’s schizophrenia and her consequent institutionalization, but I’m not sure I’d fully processed the effects of being motherless yet. It was important to tell my own story honestly, while also commenting on the state of mental health services in the US from the 1950s to present. Spoiler alert: they’re still pretty dismal. Long-term residential care is essentially obsolete now, in favor of a “community health” concept. Unfortunately, communities don’t do a very good job of supporting mental health either. There’s always something more important to spend tax dollars on, like making fortresses out of school buildings or sending law enforcement staff to clean all the “crazy” people off the streets so they don’t make taxpayers uncomfortable. But I digress…
My plan in 2019 was to first write the book, then publish it, then go on tour. (Not really. Publication seemed such a longshot that I never thought beyond it.) I put in the work required to finish the book, then to revise and edit the book. By summer of 2021, I started to submit it. I researched agents and publishers. I sent off query letters. I got rejections. I sent more submissions. I researched self-publishing. Then I entered a contest and won! Yay! Publication followed.
Before my memoir was published, I built an author website on WordPress, which was adequate but ho-hum. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with WordPress ever since I blogged there between 2012 and 2016, when I stopped teaching high school. It was fine as a blogging platform but not very intuitive. My goal at the time was simply to establish a web presence. A couple of months ago, my daughter offered to help me update the website, and I jumped at the chance to improve it. She’s working on a new career in UX Design, helping clients redesign websites or apps so they’re more user friendly, and she needs to beef up her portfolio.
My daughter went to work researching other authors’ websites and presented me with several logo, font, and color theme options. She also asked, “What are your goals, Mom?” My goals were self-evident, weren’t they? To promote my writing. But she kept asking the question (Cheeky, isn’t she?) And she didn’t seem satisfied with my answers. “No, really, Mom. What do you hope to accomplish with your website?”
Eventually, I was able to answer that my goal was connecting with people. What I hope my writing does is open conversations about topics I care about: mental health, being motherless, teaching, changing careers in later life, teen pregnancy, and so on. Connecting with others who share my concerns is deeply rewarding. Telling your story in an empty room is not very satisfying, after all. It may make a sound, as a tree falling in the forest might, but it has little impact if no one can hear it.
Once I articulated my goal, my daughter and I agreed on the need to have multiple methods for people to comment on my posts, where I can comment on their comments—have a conversation of sorts. It turns out that accomplishing this goal is critical to the dream of sharing my stories, and planning is required to get there.
Do you have a dream? What’s your plan to achieve it?
Janice Airhart 