{"id":2298,"date":"2020-11-19T14:57:54","date_gmt":"2020-11-19T19:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=2298"},"modified":"2020-11-19T14:57:54","modified_gmt":"2020-11-19T19:57:54","slug":"the-means-to-an-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=2298","title":{"rendered":"The Means to an End"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Means to an End<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It is said that one of the 7 habits of highly effective people is to \u201cBegin with the End in Mind.\u201d\u00a0 That is a great sentiment if you are looking at work and wish to accomplish a certain goal. Each year in my teaching career, I would write a pre-opening day journal entry. It was entitled Goals, Expectations, and Anxieties. I wrote about what my objectives were for the year, what I hoped to accomplish, and what worried me about things I might have to address while trying to meet my expectations and goals.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Each year I filled up my journals with all the thoughts I had about teaching and my class, and each year as the year concluded I would re-read my journal for that year and see how well I accomplished what I set out to do. I also added some suggestions of things I might want to work on over the summer, prior to next year\u2019s pre-opening day journal entry.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m retired and am no longer writing personal journals looking toward the end of anything specific I plan to do. However, I continue to write.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I do consider myself an effective writer. I think the things I write about are well written; at least I enjoy them. The difference for me from my school journal writing in these pieces of my writing is that I must start at the beginning in order to be more effective. In most cases, as I start to write, I have no idea where the end will be. For me, that makes me a more efficient writer. I take the spark that I have for the beginning and just write. Sometimes it\u2019s memories, sometimes it\u2019s fiction, there are times when it comes out poetically, and times when I editorialize. There are times when I start writing that I think I know where I want to go, and then go in a completely different direction. And each time I try, it works.<\/span><\/p>\n

As many have said, my pieces seem to always have a beginning, a middle, and an end.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I still have a number of pieces that have yet to be completed, that I may have started in a group and though I finished that part for the group, the need for the overarching story continues. One of my end goals for those pieces is to complete them. Which I may or may not do. In those cases, the more I add to them, the closer I get to figuring out where I\u2019m going. And yet, until I\u2019m close to the end, I still don\u2019t have the ends clearly defined.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So yes, to be highly effective in most cases it is important to have your end in mind. However, there are exceptions. And as I\u2019m finishing this writing piece, I guess here is where I was trying to get to – At least until I begin the next one.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Means to an End It is said that one of the 7 habits of highly effective people is to \u201cBegin with the End in Mind.\u201d\u00a0 That is a great sentiment if you are looking at work and wish to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7],"tags":[67,66,177],"class_list":["post-2298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-stories","category-story-writing","tag-harvey-heilbrun","tag-writing","tag-writing-prompt"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2300,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2298\/revisions\/2300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}