Hopes and Dreams

I snapped this pic over the weekend because wishes greatly exacerbate my sentimentality. There's just something about wishes. They're personal, oftentimes they're private, and they represent what we hope for most in our lives. In the professional world, "Hope is not a strategy" has been beaten into my head, and probably for good reason. Hope gets nothing done, it doesn't bring results. But wishes are a different animal, and many times the things we wish/hope for are things we don't have the ability to bring about in any way; things on which we cannot necessarily affect change. And in these instances, hope is perhaps the only strategy we've got.

When in NYC a couple of months ago, I went to the Times Square museum. From the replica of the New Year's Eve ball to the relics and costumes from various Broadway shows, it's a colorful place. But the most striking thing in there (honestly it looks like the beginnings of a parade float) is the Hopes and Dreams wall. It's little squares of confetti paper stuck to the wall, each bearing a handwritten wish from someone who's come through. The best part about these confetti squares is they are what gets shot into the air on New Year's Eve when the clock strikes twelve. All that confetti you see sailing through the air on TV? It's people's wishes, and something about that made me clutch a hand to my heart and steady myself just to absorb the impact to my sentimentality scale.

Of course I wrote down a wish, something I will never get, something not even hope can bring me, but I'm one of those dewey-eyed dopes who believes it's important--even if you know you'll never get what you want--for the universe to know how you'd like things to go if it were up to you. Silly, I know. Pointless, I know. But still. When my wish sails through the sky at the moment the new year begins, I hope it settles near the feet of someone who reads it and hopes that I got my wish.

The Impossibility of Time Management

I went to time management workshop a few years ago as part of a weekend conference, and I remember it changing my life. Because of how horribly depressed it made me. After asking the audience to list the roles and responsibilities that require chunks of time (in other words, what we do with ourselves all day), it became painfully obvious that only a small fraction of the listed items could actually be accomplished. Not that I didn't already know there was not enough time in the day, but now, through a rather clever illustration on the board and a speaker who seemed an authority on the topic, getting done the things that you want to had been proven officially hopeless. The speaker did go on to suggest some techniques for getting more done, and I remember these changing my life too, but still, I'll never forget the sense of hopelessness that overcame me in that workshop.

As a person with a full-time job, I find it particularly hard to find time for the things I want and need to do that don't involve work. Because for at least 10 hours of every day, I am committed to my job and can do nothing else. Not that that's stopping me from writing this. From my desk. At my office. But anyway, with the time that's left in the evenings, I can pick only a handful of things to accomplish. And I've been thinking about this in conjunction with my New Year's resolutions. Because like everyone else, there are certain things I'm resolving to spend more time doing. Like reading and writing. Aside from the fact that one of my other resolutions (to do more to serve and help others) would seem to conflict with these resolutions to increase the time I spend doing things for myself (reading and writing), there's the bigger issue that increasing time doing ANY of these things means finding more time period. It means cutting time away from other activities, only I'm not sure there's anything to be cut.

I know, I know, it's the story of our lives. It's just been on my mind this month. And the excitement over goals and projects and new beginnings is once again being overshadowed by the slight depression of realizing I simply can't accomplish everything. Or anything even remotely close to a small fraction of everything. I'd attend another workshop, but who has the time??
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