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Ooh! Lovely realization

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I was just thinking about how I set goals for myself this year that I actually accomplished. That's quite satisfying. I think I'll share them with you. Who says mentally ill people (or people with mental illnesses) have to live abbreviated lives?

This year, I wanted to:

Grow my hair for Locks of Love
Get a poem published
Run a 5K
Do something new professionally
Win one journalism award that wasn't for my column
Surpass 250 YouTube subscribers
Take up photography
Take animal photographs professionally
Go to Spain

The things I didn't accomplish? I didn't win a Webby Award. I didn't get a dog (but I got a hamster). I didn't win shit for my column (not because the awards are stupid, but because the column wasn't good enough). I didn't lose 20 pounds, or even 10 pounds. I didn't get any better at returning phone calls. I didn't fix my links on this blog. I didn't ... Well, we all know the list of things we didn't do is the long one.

P.S. I know it's April, and thus a weird time to say all this. But one strange cognitive deficit from the ECT is that I can't keep track of time the way other people can. It's hard to explain, but it being "April" or "November" doesn't mean anything to me. It's a sort of temporal autism, if that makes any sense. So now is as good a time as any.

[Photo by me, of abandoned monks' quarters at Montserrat, in Spain.]

Comments

Wait a second? Did I miss something or isn't it still April?

I really like your poem a lot. I wish about half of it was a song that I had written. It's a great image, but, more importantly, it's a great story, which is lost in a lot of poetry.

I liked that "Wedding March" poem - it was very nice. Every time I try to write a poem I forget about that "imagery" thing, and end up just telling a story instead.

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About

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Liz Spikol is senior contributing editor of Philadelphia Weekly. She writes the award-winning column The Trouble With Spikol, which began as a chronicle of her struggle with mental illness, and has since expanded into humorous musings on everything from graphic novels to how to use a mop. She also writes the paper's book review column, Lit Gloss. This blog -- named one of the Top 10 Bipolar Blogs of 2007 by PsychCentral -- is about mental illness policy, news, personal journeys and more.