This shouldn't be titled "Incomplete." It should be titled "Regret." With every line, I can feel the pain. The searching. The self-doubt. The procrastination. The fear. The assumed missed opportunities. The sadness... no... The sorrow.

But then I read the "other side" of these sentences, almost as if there was a second author. There's a person... no... a soul... writing in the white space between the lines. That soul is grabbing you by the shoulders and shaking vigorously: "STOP IT." "That you are acknowledging regrets means you see the better direction. You see what you can change. Maybe you don't know how to approach the change... but you see it."

That's what I read, as if what's between the lines is in bold type. My unsolicited advice? Write down - formally - everything you want. Write down everything you want to change. Write down all the mistakes you need to fix. Make the list as large as you can. Get it all down. Turn that jar over and bang on the bottom, making sure every last thought comes out.

Then work with family, friends, and professionals to organize them into groups of achievements and formalize plans to start accomplishing them. Again, write it all down. Make it formal. As you take actions on the plan, write down the date you took the action. As you reach a milestone or achievement, write down the date of the achievement. And then cross it off the list. Use a dark marker. Make it a bold statement when you draw a line through it. "This is done. I'm one step closer."

My sister used this technique. She had all sorts of lists. She used to love crossing stuff off. I would sometimes ask her why she didn't occasionally throw pages away when they were all complete or consolidate the list when most of it was done. (The notebook she carried them in was bulky, and she carried it everywhere, even while walking with a cane. I thought it would help lighten her load.)

Absolutely not, she'd tell me. She liked having all those crumpled, worn-out pages. It showed progress. Those marked-up pieces of paper were constant reminders of how far she'd come. They reminded her that, no matter how many items were still on those lists, as long as she kept at it, her record of taking action was historically good. They reminded her that she had taken action against even the hardest tasks on that list.

She followed the adage of how to eat an elephant. One small bite at a time.