…travel more…make better boyfriend choices…write shorter blog posts….Oh, sorry, you’ve stepped into the ramblings of my 2010 non-goal, goal entries here. I say non-goal goals, because even though I’m EXTREMELY goal oriented, I’d rather give more each year than take something away, which seems like achieving less.
Hmmm…where was I? Oh, yes, write shorter blog posts. I’m going to try and blog more, but with less, but it’s most certainly not a goal I’m trying to reach, let’s just call it Neve’s process improvement plan.
Due to Mercury’s retrograde status right now, I’m re-visiting some classic novels that I read in the past. Along with a couple other novels, I picked up a copy of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Moon at Sixpence, which is fiction, but curiously tells the story of a Charles Strickland, a stock broker who leaves his family penniless so he can run off to Paris to become a painter. Sounds vaguely familiar, doesn’t? Here’s a snippet of when our narrator is having a conversation with Gauguin (oops, I meant to say Charles Strickland) about the pleasures of human nature…a yeah, sex. I think it’s a simply gorgeous and breathy passage, like butter for my eyes:
“…Let me tell you. I imagine that for months the matter never comes into your head, and you’re able to persuade yourself that you’ve finished with it for good and all. You rejoice in your freedom, and you feel that at last you can call your soul your own. You seem to walk with your head among the stars. And then, all of a sudden you can’t stand it anymore, and you notice that all the time your feet have been walking in the mud. And you want to roll yourself in it. And you find some woman, course and low and vulgar, some beastly creature in whom all the horror of sex is blatant, and you fall upon her like a wild animal. You drink till you’re blind with rage….”
Heavy sigh,
Neve Black
Well, whatever those non-goal goals may end up being, I wish you the best with them, Neve!
That was a very evocative excerpt indeed. Thanks for sharing it.
Thank you, Craig. Isn’t Maugham, grand? :-))
Goal number one sounds pretty good to me. Goal number two ain’t so bad either. Heh. And what’s with these men? Never mind… I don’t want to know!
Cheering you on to your non-goal goals!
Should we set up some non-goalposts? (I visualize non-goalposts as amorphous poles that gracefully re-situate themselves as appropriate.)
Hey D,
Impossible? You and I both have similiar non-goal goals! I can’t imagine that happening. :-0
Men and women. Women and men. Can’t we all just get along? hahahah.
Jeremy,
I should have added one of my non-goal goals is to read your new novel. I love the non-goal goal posts. Clever as always, Jeremy.
Aw, thanks, Neve! I told my book and it got all excited. : )
Love the excerpt, Neve! “Call your soul your own…” If only…
I’ve got some non-goal goals myself. And like you, most of them involve lessening, limiting and restricting. Here’s to our mutual success in making less be more in 2010.
Really, Jeremy? What did your book do when it got all excited?
Haven,
Thanks, buddy. Yeah, I think we all put way too much pressure on ourselves as it is, I’d rather just make this year about treating myself better by making better, smarter choices…chin-chin to our successes in 2010.