  A couple of weeks ago, my sister asked “wasn’t I supposed to get an e-mail from you?” I felt an immediate flare of resentment, knowing exactly what she was talking about. “You send the damn e-mail,” I wanted to say. “Why do I have to do everything?” I swallowed the resentment and told her I’d been busy, but it still annoyed me. You see, I have historically sucked big time at accomplishing my goals. I keep trying the same old crap – get fed up with the way things are, make dramatic promises to myself, go out and pour money into “fixing” things, jump into the project with great enthusiasm, and then… just kind of stop. I’ve been thinking for a long time now that the only way to break out of that behavior pattern is to hold myself accountable to someone, but when I’ve tried in the past I’ve either chickened out at the last minute or teamed up with someone who doesn’t hold up their end of the agreement.
For instance, I might ask a friend to call me every week to ask if I’ve been doing my workouts. He’ll call for a couple of weeks, and then miss a week… and then another week… and then eventually he never calls at all. Sure, I could remind him, but by then my own enthusiasm has drained away so I don’t mention it. This came up the other day when my dad mentioned seeing a televised interview with urlLink Barbara Sher , author of several goal-setting books. I know Barbara Sher’s books. Hell, I’ve read most of them at least twice.
I’m a big fan of self-help books, but usually end up following their advice by making dramatic promises to myself, jumping into the project with great enthusiasm… you get the picture. I was in an unusually open mood that evening, and shared my frustrations with my parents. My mother and sister have their own similar issues, and in a burst of enthusiasm we all decided to purchase copies of “ urlLink Wishcraft ,” form our own success group and finally reach our goals. Hooray! So, we read the book. Or, we meant to.
We kept talking about getting together, never quite did. I got a feeling of familiar resignation – another goal set, another goal slipping away, unmet. Damn it, I wasn’t going to let it happen this time. I told my sister that I was going to outline the basic steps and send an e-mail to her and my mother. We were going to do this. Only, I never quite got around to it.
Hence, her comment about the e-mail and my flair of resentment. Her comment kept nagging at me. Finally I sat down and typed up the steps and the e-mail, but never sent it. Why wasn’t I sending the message? Yesterday I realized that part of me really doesn’t want to reach my goals. I mean, I really DO want to reach them, but I want to reach them magically.
I want to wake up tomorrow with an excellent physique and minus thirty pounds of fat. I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and do dumbbell squats until my muscles burn. Part of me just wants to daydream about being fit and then go sit on the couch, eat pizza and read “ urlLink The Traveling Vampire Show .” (It’s not a very good book, but I read it anyway. It was easier than going for a run. ) The Warrior made one of his rare comments. “If you really want to do this” he said, “then you need to take the initiative.
Your sister and your mother may or may not reach their own goals, but you know they’ll be true to the commitments they’ll make to you.” So, today I sent the e-mail. The Monkey screamed a lot, told me that they’d just drive me crazy, that this would never work, that we’d never find the time, that I’d be sorry. I hit the “send” button anyway. I told them that we need to meet before August 28 to set our goals and that we need to commit to meeting for at least twelve weeks. This isn’t going to be easy. It’s hard to discuss my dreams with people who in some ways know me better than anyone, and who in other ways don’t know me at all.
You see, they’re both very Christian and have a tough time with the fact that I’m gay. Heck, it hasn’t been easy for me being gay either. I spent ten years trying hard urlLink not to be gay before deciding there were a lot of important issues in my life that didn’t involve homosexuality and were being ignored. I also began to wonder why god was so concerned with my sexuality to the exclusion of everything else, and started taking a long, hard look at my fundamental religious beliefs. The end result has been that my life has changed a lot – but not in ways I feel comfortable discussing with my family, and not in ways they’re comfortable hearing about. Perhaps this will be a way to heal that gap.
Maybe it’ll just be another failed attempt to find accountability and partnership as I try to find my dreams. Regardless, I took the first step. 
