Impatience is my middle name. I want things finished yesterday. I make goals, devise plans, and get to work, only to feel like I am trudging through a never-ending quagmire. The best advice on goal setting is to dream big, so I set audacious goals and wonder when I don’t achieve them at light speed. I was reminded that progress is relative to the size of the endeavor.

Consider the twin spacecraft Voyager I and II. We launched Voyager 1 September 5, 1977, 16 days after Voyager 2. NASA fired them into space to take advantage of a planetary alignment that happens once every 176 years.  It allowed Voyagers to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. They designed the spaceships with a five-year lifespan but now, almost 42 years later, both probes are over 11 billion miles from the sun. Four decades sounds like a long time, but when you realize they are traveling at 38,027 mph, your perspective changes. (*NASA)

Maybe my perception is that I’m not making progress, but every day, each step moves me forward. If the Voyagers had quit after five years, they would have stopped at 11% of their current distance. I have reached nowhere near that percentage of completion, so I will follow my present trajectory and see how far it takes me.

Are you stepping towards your goals?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer