There's something about going away and returning home again which makes you think.

My family and I had a lovely week away sailing a "big" boat with friends. Not a super-yacht, nor yet one of the "tall ships", but a 41ft yacht with enough room for the six of us, but small enough for the two competent sailors to manage, with help from crew provided by my family (who are all dinghy sailors), and from me as designated "galley slave".

I'd meant to do some reflecting on holiday, but there is no holiday on board. There is always a rope which needs "sweating", or a fender tying on with a clove hitch (where do I find one of those, please?), or one is asked to "take the helm" (that big steering wheel thing) and "head north east at 30 degrees, keeping that oncoming cruiser to port!" (I would like to point out that nobody offered me any port.) If nothing technical is required then cups of tea are demanded. No – there was no time to think while we were away.

But you always come home again.

"I hope you are glad to be home," wrote a friend – and I looked at that text for a long time before replying; and then my reply was equivocal.

It was lovely to see the cats again, and the guinea-pigs. I am sitting at my PC to write this blog with a quiet sense of comfort and satisfaction, but for the rest of it...

Coming home after being away makes you see your home with fresh eyes. You see your life with fresh eyes. And you see the things you don't like; the things you have just lived with because you're used to them. There seem to be more things you don't like than things you do – and you feel overwhelmed.

When you are living with depression, that overwhelm is all-embracing. Even now, being mercifully free from depression at present, it threatens to paralyse me.

But the discomfort of living with all the things I don't like has prompted me to do something.

To think. To decide how and what to change.

Which is where the goals come in.

You know I don't like goals; I always feel they carry an automatic sentence of failure, and – like many of us – I am scared of failing.

But I realise now that, if I don't set some goals, then nothing will change and that failure is then automatic.

As well as goals, I need plans. Because a goal without a plan is just a dream.

So, this week's goal is to do some thinking and set some goals. Five sounds like a manageable number.

Next week's goal is to make some plans.

In three weeks' time I will start some baby steps towards achieving those goals.

I'll let you know how I get on.

But, if you have some goals too, we could walk together and help each other along.

I'd like that. Wouldn't you?

Mary

A Moodscope member