The staff retreat went reasonably well. It certainly wasn’t as tedious as I was worried it might be — at least, not until the afternoon session. We spent that time aborsbing not-terribly-helpful advice for handling criticism and uncomfortably sharing stories of our own worst experiences in being criticized. There was plenty of free food, though, and the morning session helped make up for it, at least a little. It was all really common sense, basic motivational-speaker stuff, but common sense is usually pretty good advice and, presented well, it can make all the difference. We learned about setting specific goals and trying new things, and although we all joked about it as we went upstairs for lunch, I think we were eager to try new things. We suddenly had new goals we wanted to follow through on.
We each wrote down five. Here, then, are mine:
- travel
- write a novel
- earn more money
- clean my apartment
- learn to play a musical instrument
These are not necessarily my top priorities — a new and better writing/editing job would, for instance, immediately trump the prospect of more money (which is ultimately only important to me because I’m terrible at keeping track of it and often spend too much) — but they’re a good place to start. The apartment definitely needs to be cleaned, and I definitely need to write more. I wonder about learning to play a musical instrument, though. I haven’t had great luck with it in the past, and even a cheap acoustic guitar, for instance, isn’t going to be a negligible investment of time or money.
But again, these are good places to start, good ideas with which to work. They key is to set specific and realistic goals and then follow through on them.
