Almost...

"There is always a gap between intention and action." ~ Paulo Coelho

In the two or three months before Christmas, every time I went to a particular grocery store, they would ask me if I was collecting stamps for some sort of promotional program.  I always would say "Yes".  Because "Why not?"

One day last week, I noticed the woman in front of me apparently retrieving her stamps for a rather ugly serving dish, too small to do much serving.  It looked rather useless actually.

But when I got up to the register, I asked when I needed to retrieve my stamps.  "Tomorrow is the last day."

So what did I do?  I spent who knows how much time (maybe an hour?) looking for stamps obscurely stashed away in my kitchen (though I thought I had stashed them all in the same obscure place), carefully placing them one by one by one by one in little squares on a sheet I also managed to somehow find.  For 50 stamps (equating to $1000 in groceries, I think), I'd get some sort of a pan, after all, "a $14.99 value".

I didn't bother to count the stamps before I put them on the sheet.  But I saw my destination...42, 43, 44.........45...........................46...................................................

No more stamps.

I probably spent 15 minutes at least looking for 4 more stamps in my kitchen.

The sheet said I could pay $7.99 for the $14.99 pan with what I had.  Why?

And that's the question, isn't it?  Why?

I never did find the other stamps.  I would have liked to take a picture of the sheet I so carefully filled out, give it a useful purpose, but it's long gone with the recycling.

Sometimes the goals we set are not really that important.  Sometimes they are.  And sometimes it's the intent that matters most of all.

I fell asleep last night before I could write the "sheet of stickers" post already in my head, my laptop literally in my lap as I dozed off (and I forgot when I awakened and then went back to sleep for real).  I had thought I might blog every day, but my body overruled me.  When the dog awakened me just now, as she does early in the morning, I required myself to write, my "resolution" shattered.  Why?  It's really the intent that matters.  Time to get more needed rest...still, I'm kind of stubborn about such things (which is why I "almost" filled that silly sheet)...I may write twice today... ;-)  I won't require myself to post a picture now...it went out in the recycling.