The goal is the action, not the result

I figured I ought to take the stress level from 28 job applications and do something useful with it. So I submitted a piece of poetry to a magazine. And then I realized, with something like horror, that it had been almost 10 years since I had submitted a short piece of writing. 10.

I used to manage at least once a year from middle school through my junior year of college. I thought nothing of sending a short story to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction when I was 15, or sending a poem to the blinkin' New Yorker when I was 12. I didn't expect to have them taken, it just didn't bother me to send them in. And around when I hit 20, I just stopped. (I'm not counting the novel here, I guess. Novels are in a different category than poetry or short fiction.)

So since my goal in life this year is to focus on my actions, not the results (which are, after all, often controlled by others) I guess that this is a good action. Still trying to wrap my head around that 10 year gap, though.