Complications, you say?

From burke and spenn

Way back in January, I wrote a post about having goals rather than resolutions, I Resolve To Have Goals. If you haven't read it, go do that now. I'll wait...Back? Okay, good.

Most of the SMART goals I listed seemed very reasonable. At the time, they were very reasonable. But, I fouled the whole thing up.
I forgot one crucial part of life: Monkey Wrenches.

Said wrenches, which can be almost anything, get tossed into the gears of your Goals Achieving Machine and everything grinds to halt. Your plans suddenly become derailed and you have to figure out how to extract the wrench.

Okay, you have to find the problem, fix the issue, and avoid damaging anything else in the process. Easy, right?

Well, what if the problem isn't something that can be solved? What if the problem is something permanent that will affect every aspect of your life? That one is harder to handle. Let's be honest: it's a bit of a mind f*&k.

If you pride yourself on achieving the goals you set for yourself the way you said you would, a problem like this will just wreck your day. If you aren't careful, it'll wreck your life.

I haven't been keeping up with the SMART goals I gave myself in January. Some of my falling behind has been because I've let other concerns get in the way. Some has been because of a pretty big Monkey Wrench that went screaming into the gears back in March.

When the Wrench first presented itself, I had to deal with some pretty heavy emotions. You know, that whole grief process.

• Denial and Isolation

  

  From ComicVine.com

• Anger
• Bargaining
• Depression, and
• Acceptance

Don't worry: no one died. Nor is anyone in imminent danger of dying. There are many types of stressors that elicit the same set of reactions. A set that is not necessarily linear despite being presented as a progression. I have bounced around among all of them, and have probably been very difficult to deal with, for many months.

My task now is to deal with the Monkey Wrench and work out a way around it. Pretending that my personal Monkey Wrench isn't a big deal hasn't worked very well. I had some moderate successes, but I was not able to sustain them.

I have some ideas about how to proceed from here.

• Analyze my problem/situation.
• Learn as much as I can about it.
• Go to friends and family for support.
• Determine ways to work around the issue rather than getting depressed that it will not just go away. Or, as Scrooge McDuck always said, "Work smarter, not harder"

Does anyone have any suggestions on dealing with my (intentionally) unspecified problem? You can contact me on Twitter at @Anypocalypse or via email at hjr@anypocalypse.com.

Follow me on Twitter: @Anypocalypse

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