Keeping promises

This week flew by. The holiday is a blur of inactivity. The rain usurped my motivation.

I have lists of things "to do." I was supposed to clean....supposed to do laundry.....supposed to work out...... supposed to do some home repairs.

Instead I sat on my couch and read and thought about cycles and breaking promises.

Every five years, I take notice and realize that "Gee, I've been here before." Instead of growing and moving in a linear direction (which I optimistically perceive to be a ladder where I climb from down here to up there), I find that I'm actually moving in a circle.

Imagine if you will, a clock. I start off at 6:00, moving in a counterclockwise direction. Things start off well enough.... I make some decisions, radically change some aspects of my life that just aren't working for me, and progress quite smoothly. Opportunities present themselves and I'll pause to smile and laugh and hope that this time I've got it right.

And for about a year and half I'm on top of the world.... literally - I reach that 12:00 spot. And then *something*....

I'll reach that peak and go on cruise control. It'll take about a year before I realize - oops, I hit cruise control at the moment of my descent, only accelerating my decline. Instead of moving on up the food chain, I find myself back where I started.

I'll sit at a desk, scribble in a journal/type in a blog, and wonder "Hey - I was movin' on up, how did I get here AGAIN?" and why do I keep breaking the promises I make to myself.

I had an epiphany over the weekend - the promises stay the same. Each time. Read an entry I wrote back in 1988, you can be sure to find something similar in 1993, then again in 1998, and now in 2003 I find myself making the same promises or *goals*.

Scary thought that this is the first time I consciously noticed my quirky five-year schedule..... and I managed to sit still long enough to see the common denominator. Now all I have to do is fix this... fix me.

Easier said than done.