Good evening @evecab and @futurethinker. Achieved goals, huh? Not too, too many of those, but one immediately comes to mind!

I'd just moved to the US, chucked everything -10 year job with the United Nations, family, friends, home, you name it - and someone close to me asked me: So what are your goals, what do you hope to achieve living in the States?

Terrified and exhilarated by the great continental leap I'd taken, there was so much I was unsure of (like what I was doing with my life or if I could make it here) but it did not take me long to answer. "I want to publish 3 books."

That was partly the excuse I gave my boss at the United Nations in Cairo, Egypt when I quit (it's not you, it's me) and now that I was, here, I needed to try and see it through.

I'd been pregnant with 3 manuscripts when I arrived stateside (books of aphorisms, essays, and poems in different stages of development). I felt it was my duty to deliver them, in order to justify my mad move and Existence, really.

And, I did publish those 3 books, around 7 years later. How did it make me feel? Strangely bewildered and empty. Now, what, I thought? Having published 3 more books since in the last 5 years, I've come to realize that life satisfaction cannot come from publishing and that the Real Work is off the page...