The Dreams I Left Behind In 2024
I’ve established the 12 goals I will focus on in the New Year. If you look at my list from a year ago, five have been replaced with new dreams as I achieved them, five have been carried over, and two have been left behind. I want to explain my reasoning in case you have trouble deciding which dreams to pursue and which to let go of.
The two dreams that I left behind are to have a greenhouse and get a literary agent. Those dreams still live on in my list of 100 dreams; they just didn’t reach my focus for this year. It is unlikely that I will check off a dream a month in 2025, but that is the idea when I make these plans. These two dreams don’t fit into that plan.
My dream of having a greenhouse involves building this expansion onto our house or having a nice greenhouse in our backyard. Our backyard is huge and the perfect space for it. I have big ideas for what I would do, and as much as I want to do those things, I don’t think this is the year or place I will do them. We have officially spent one year in Georgia, and my husband is only guaranteed to be here for three. We hope to extend our time here, but that is not in our control.
I can’t build the greenhouse today. This is a financial goal, and there’s a reason it didn’t come to fruition in 2024. Maybe we’ll be able to afford it six months from now, but that gives us only 1.5 years to enjoy it. Having a greenhouse doesn’t necessarily deter a buyer, but it may not incentivize one, either. And as much as I love the aesthetics, design, and planning of getting a greenhouse, my husband is the one with the green thumb. He deploys in the fall and won’t be back until the spring of next year, leaving us maybe half a year to enjoy the greenhouse once he’s home.
For those reasons, I decided not to bring that dream into 2025. It’s absolutely something I want down the road, and it will be an essential part of designing our forever home, but I don’t think it is something we’ll bring to life in Georgia.
My dream of getting a literary agent is instrumental to my big dream of publishing a book. I am leaning more toward the traditional publishing route, which usually requires a literary agent, but I haven’t totally ruled out self-publishing. I decided to leave this dream out when establishing my focus for this year because I am not ready for it.
There is a lot of value in setting goals that will require us to be stretched to achieve them. Having a deadline can often force us to reach new levels. That being said, a goal that is too far from our skill set and a deadline that is too fast approaching is more likely to burn us out than anything more.
I wasn’t ready to pitch literary agents last year and haven’t done any work to make me more ready today. I could still try, but if I haven’t done the substance work behind a query, it will likely fail. And even if it is successful, I would be underwater quickly. I’m not ready, but I have goals for this year that will help me build my skill set so that maybe I will be ready next year.
This year, I left these dreams off of my focused list because now isn’t the right time to achieve them. There are other reasons to leave goals behind, though. We can outgrow things or lose interest. We shouldn’t dismiss a dream because it feels too big or like too much work. That dream is pointing to where we need to go. But we also don’t have to force our focus on a dream that we aren’t ready for. 2025 should be a year of growth and achievement. The goals we choose to focus on should put us in a position to do as much of that as possible.