Setting goals

I have a lot of labels. I am, after all, old enough to have been and done several things already. The problem is, I am also a Gemini, and while I don't proscribe to searching the stars for my fate, the mercurial influence in my life has not escaped my attention.
It isn't that I have a lack of attention span. I have had the ability since childhood to sit for hours at a time working on the latest project with no interference or distraction from the outside world, at least in my mind.
My mother once said, while working night turn, she could come home in the morning, put my older brother on the bus to school, and leave me at her feet on the sofa while she napped. And when she woke up two hours later, I would still be sitting there coloring intently in whatever book she put in my hand. Perhaps I was envisioning it was my book, with my name on the cover, with a story I had created from nothing. I don't remember those days.
I have seen my name in print lots of times. Once I could go into a bookstore, pull a particular book from the shelf, turn to page 181, and there I was. I haven't seen the book on the shelves in quite a long time, but for a few fleeting months, it was there. I could travel to other places and other bookstores and see it as well. I was national. I imagined other people taking the book from the shelf and leafing through it and seeing my name, wondering as they read how such an excellent soul ended up on such fleeting pages. It was a fantasy of mine. I don't think about it any more.
I see my name in print on a nearly daily basis because of my work, although I sometimes wonder if it counts in the grand scheme. My work can even be googled. But is it really my work? I don't mean authentically, because it is authentic. But is it really what is all inside my brain? I think there's more. The problem is getting it to come forward, through all of my synapses, traveling the nerves, tendons and muscles that eventually leave my fingertips and end up on a screen and onto pages. Where are those words?
I read of a writer who, when facing a deadline, went to a small woodland cabin with a computer, but no Internet access, no television and no mode of transportation to escape until someone came to fetch her. What must it be like to be alone with nothing but thoughts and a place to put them? How does one write without telephones ringing, co-workers babbling and editors moving about for whatever obscure reasons throughout the building?
I have many topics. Just today in fact, I am assigned to write about gardening, food and a bit of history. But this is not what is in my head. I know I really wasn't meant to be a topical writer. There is something more in there. I just have to find it.
So this is my goal. Before I welcome another New Year, the first draft will be on paper. I haven't yet done the math to get there. It will involve 363 days, more than 50,000 words and a bit of long division. It will involve scheduling, interruptions and annoyances. What it won't involve is a lonely cabin in the woods. We can't have everything.