Mother's Day #2 - Goal setting

Since we have redone the office area, I am reorganizing files and papers.  It's one of my favourite things to do.  The fact that it is in the middle of the afternoon and I am surrounded by paper, a camera and the floor is piled high with bbq tools (found them in storage while I was putting papers away) and the vacuum and left over paint has not stopped me from becoming distracted and writing this post.

One of the things I found was the binder-less (son needed the binder for school) stack of papers in which I have recorded various bill payments and kept a list of things we need for taxes.  Then I ran across another piece of history.  Our goals and objectives.  Every once in a while, my husband and I sit down and have a discussion about where we are and where we want to be.  Every good mother wants to make sure that she is hitting some sort of target.  And every good dad will good-naturedly sit down with the mom and talk it out and write it out and put it in a binder somewhere to find several years later.

Here were some of our goals for 1997 - it must have been summer because of the goal about education: [side note - children's ages were 7, 5 and 2) (another side note - they were divided into Financial, Family and 2 Years from now) [one more side note - this is a sampling - didn't want to bore you with the details]
  • Own our own place
  • Look for ways to increase income and implement 
  • Create a positive family routine
  • Carve out at least 10 minutes a day for educational purposes
  • To start an allowance system for responsibilities
  • To have a home with acreage - with capacity for small hobby farm
  • Set aside money for future purchases. 
How'd we do?  Well we do own our own place  - one with capacity for small hobby farm - even though it took us 12 more years to get there.  We never did start an allowance system - more often than not, we had to decide between feeding the kids or giving them spending money.  Food won. As far as positive family routine - this far away from 1997 I can no longer be held responsible for remembering.  Let's just say, parenting is like white water-rafting - sometimes you just hold on and get them through the rapids.

Fast forward a few years to another discussion.  The headings were "Relationship" "Summer" "Finances" and "Moving on Out" so I am guessing we wrote it just before we moved from the farm - which would be about 2009.  What a change 12 years made. 
Under Relationship one comment: "It's fine"; 
Under Summer: "Coming soon"; 
Under Finances "Don't have any".  

And that folks is the end of my coffee break.  Now, I just have to decide what to do with this piece of history.



Comments

clwl said…
I call a meeting.
And chair it.
And am the secretary, writing LARGE NOTES on the newsprint paper BB pinned to the foam board.
And there is an asssortment of coloured Sharpies at hand, and some highlighters too.
The most important pen colour if BLACK. Make things look official
And there is a bored audience of one, sitting across the room from me in his comfortable Loom chair, wondering just how long this torture will take....


And you roll up the large pieces,a and, yes, years later, it makes interesting reading.

Sometimes, I KNOW it was me who wrote it down. And yet "What in the world was I talking about ???????????????"

Perspective....

xoxo
clwl

Popular posts from this blog

Wouldn't have missed it for the world

Freedom