What’s right with this picture?
At the risk of sounding like an awful slacker, I’ve never really had any long-term, lifetime achievement goals. While I may snicker to myself at the American Idol contestants who wax cheesy about how they’ve always wanted to be onstage, singing their hearts out for an audience of millions, I can’t help but harbor some admiration for the fact that they’ve got passion.
Even if they don’t have talent. Heh.
My goals have always been rather amorphous. The top goal has always been to live independently – meaning beholden neither to my family nor to society. A corollary to that goal was to live comfortably – able to provide for myself beyond the mere necessities. Finally, I wanted to learn – anything and everything – about the world around me, by reading and traveling and meeting people.
Not particularly specific, right? And conspicuously absent are basic concrete goals like spouse, children, home ownership, corporate titles, military ranks, or ages by which these goals would be accomplished.
Granted, I’ve had other “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if I…” sorts of ideas, but I never considered them to be goals and set forth specifically to achieve them, to the exclusion of all other possibilities. As long as I adhered to those three general desires concerning living and learning, I was open to the different paths I might take to get there.
So it’s interesting to me now to take a look around and see what I’ve done that I really never would have expected of myself. The lovely Catherine, who has tagged me for the Five Random Things meme, completed the meme herself with a twist: Five Things She Never Pictured Being In Her Future. It’s an ideal way to remind myself that the flexibility surrounding my goals has been a positive, not a negative – and certainly not an indication that I’m a slacker. Plus it’s a lot more thought-provoking than trotting out more of my personal idiosyncrasies (like the whole “celery makes my tongue numb” discussion).
1. Being married. Especially to a really cool guy. Sure, I always thought it would be nice to get married, and I occasionally felt the peer pressure as my friends coupled up and started sporting diamonds on their engagement fingers, but deep down I wasn’t sure I’d ever find anyone who was up to par AND who would be willing to put up with me. I’m extremely fortunate, and I try valiantly to keep that in mind, even though I don’t always succeed.
2. Having kids. Especially THREE of them. Hell, I wouldn’t haven’t pictured three kids in my future a YEAR ago, but here we are. I was never particularly good with kids, and no matter how many times people told me that “your own kids are different”, I didn’t believe them. Yes, my own kids are different – obviously I take a much more personal interest in them than any other children I’ve known – but it’s not as if I suddenly developed an all-consuming love for all children. Just my own.
3. Living in Colorado. When we visited Colorado Springs in 1983 – more than 20 years before I came out here house-hunting – I thought it was beautiful here. But as I moved up and down the east coast from Virginia to Delaware, from New York to New Jersey, I grew less inclined to go west. Leaving my east coast comfort zone was a big leap.
4. Being a professional project manager. I was never particularly organized or interested in planning the steps necessary to undertake and complete any sort of project, no matter how simple or how complex. When I had an idea, I preferred to jump in with both feet and wing it. My middle school gifted program teacher continually marked me down in this area, but never gave me any strategies for changing my approach. I don’t know how or when my mindset changed, but I certainly did swing 180 degrees where it comes to planning.
(Hey, Mrs. Staudemaier? PTTTHHHTT to you.)
5. Being self-employed. As a writer and editor. Online. My career path has been surreal from the very start, heading in directions that I would have never foreseen. But my Pentagon tour and my record company stint aren’t nearly as surprising to me as the fact that I now write stuff that other people voluntarily read. That’s just crazy – at least according to those people who leveled not-so-constructive criticism on my writing over the years. I know my writing has a great deal of room for improvement, but I’m glad that I didn’t let the early criticism dissuade me from continuing to write.
(Hey, Mrs. Staudemaier? PTTTHHHTT to you AGAIN.)
I hope that I can keep these unexpected twists and turns in mind as my children grow and display their own talents and goals. I hope to encourage them to pursue their goals, not my idea of what those goals should be – with the exception of living independently, of course. I mean, I’m going to insist that they aspire to move further away from home than living in our basement.
But my own twists and turns have taught me that there’s no single path to happiness and self-sufficiency. The best way to get there is to know yourself well enough to embrace opportunities as they arise. Just because you – or your parents or spouse or whomever – never pictured it doesn’t mean it’s not the right move for you. I want my children to have the confidence in themselves to make those moves, and someday reflect on their own achievements that they never pictured.
January 5th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
I knew you wouldn’t let me down. And what great answers! You listed one that I totally forgot about… who would have thought I’d be in Colorado!
January 5th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Love your answers. It’s a huge goal of mine to raise confident children who aren’t afraid to try new things, fly from the nest and reach for whatever they can think of.
Happy new year my friend.
January 5th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
My kids are the other exception to #2. Right? RIGHT?
In all seriousness … that is an excellent goal for childrearing.
January 5th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Great post!
January 6th, 2008 at 5:58 am
Ohh MGM, we have more in common than I ever thought – and all those things you never pictured? *big sigh* me too. Especially #2 (and for #3, my Colorado is Toronto – that one still surprizes me).
January 12th, 2008 at 5:42 am
I love your last paragraph. So so true.