B-HAGs

I went to a small high school (graduating class less than a hundred). A most excellent advantage of this situation was the opportunity to be involved in just about everything. I was in theatre, show choir, band, speech and debate, track, volleyball, did stats for boys basketball, chess club, business professionals of America (BPA)...and some more I can't remember at the moment. It did absolutely nothing to help me in focusing my interests and everything to do with making me a "jack of all trades and a master of none."

I was able to compete at the state level in BPA a few years and one of the years one of the keynote speakers talked about B-HAGs or Big Hairy Audacious Goals. I'm sure I took notes (and I probably still have them filed away) but what I took away was this idea to be unrealistic in your dreaming: dream big, be audacious, let them be complicated and maybe a bit crazy (or that's what I thought "hairy" meant). And call them B-HAGs so that if you don't get them done you don't feel bad. But if you do, rock on! And I'm sure there was an element of "shoot for the moon and even if you miss you'll land among the stars" kind of idea.

Some of mine where:
Sing on Broadway
Be in an opera
Write a musical
Write novels
Write music/be a singer-songwriter
live in another country for an extended period of time
learn lots of languages
work in an orphanage in Romania or Guatamala
build houses for Habitat for Humanity
get a PhD...in something
etc, etc, etc.

I have a sister who is a freshman in college right now and she's at that lovely, ripe age that is made for B-HAGging. The world is completely open to you, a blank slate to write on whatever and however you want (neat even cursive or all caps in flashing lights). I have such fond memories of that time. And no real regrets other than a few things I didn't do because of money or fear (art classes, music minor, a grammar class, and a certain study abroad). In some ways, I think that what we dream of at that time, whether we do it or not, really shows who we are and even influences who we become.

Sometime towards the end of my freshman year, however, I did have an impulse to be practical and created a five year plan with things like:
graduate from college
travel to another country
be temple worthy
done "significant service" (like Romania or something)

The plan grew and changed here and there and so did the B-HAGs. And then I hit my five year mark at the same time I met my husband and somehow B-HAGs just weren't a priority anymore.

Now we're almost exactly five years from that Sunday in March when I first met Eric and he exposed his odd and endearing sense of humor in the form of a compliment veiled as an insult and I'm finding that I have need of B-HAGs. Or something like them. And I just read this post (love the title!! " Mommies Dream Too", linked from another good post by a good friend. And I'm reading The Happiness Project. And we are 10 weeks away from finishing law school and a great unknown after that. And my health has been good enough for long enough for me to think on less immediate things. And even though it feels all New Yearsy, we are doing this anyway. I don't know how many posts there will be, or how much blogging fodder I've actually got here, but that's what we are doing over here at these Lines across my Face for the next little while.

And here's why. Or at least the short version. I mentioned I've been reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin (a book that chronicles the author's attempt to take a year and make a project of becoming happier in the life she already has) and it's given me the urge to be reflective. I know that a hugely important factor to my happiness and general sanity is to spend some regular time being reflective via journal, blog, prayer, conversation with someone I'm close to, etc. Gretchen nudged me with this question which I wrote down in a notebook and stared at for five minutes:

What makes me feel good? What activities do I find fun, satisfying, energizing?

Journaling failed me so I asked Eric. Without much of a pause (and he's a pauser) he said
"Projects. You don't always find them fun at the time and they often exhaust you, but you are always very satisfied after."

Go husband go! That was a pretty spot-on insight into my soul!

So I'm embracing that. And I'm growing it. It's so easy in this time of my life to neglect the things that really make me happy, and keep my sense of self alive and well and burning and vibrant. And if I believe that I am the heart of the home (and I do) than I want that heart to be burning and vibrant, too. It's so easy to know all this and so easy to lose track of actually doing it that I've decided to turn to my strengths and natural inclination for projects to make sure that happiness gets done as well as the laundry, the dishes, the dinner.

Before this post gets too much longer and it gets too much later, I'll leave with what I'm in the process of working out: I'm making myself pick a personal happiness project that is directly related to the other things that make me energized, satisfied, and that I have fun with (like creating, writing, learning) and make sure I get it done (completing things also makes me happy). And I always have to have one going, whether they are a week long or a month long, or whatever, there must always be one on the to do list along with everything else.

Back to B-HAGs.

I'd like to pay tribute to my B-HAGging days but also evolve the idea for my time of life. So I'm going to call these mini-projects B-HARs. Stay tuned to find out what THAT means!