40 Days of Giving Up: Day 22 - Goals

Earlier tonight a friend asked over dinner what my goals were.  I couldn't give voice to any particular goals.  Most of my life I have opted to be comfortable, secure and safe.  I stayed at a job with the County for 30 years and got a nice retirement for my "sacrifice".  I say sacrifice because certainly I could have earned more money in the private sector or by pursuing my creative/artist nature.  Or not.  That I will never know.  But now, like most of my life, I have never really had specific goals.

Should I be concerned?

Actually, I have had some goals, some very important goals, and at those I have been mostly successful.  I always wanted to be a good person.  I wanted to have good friends, a "family" of my own choosing as it were.  I wanted to have a nice home, a decent car, the ability to explore my interests in the arts like reading, writing, photography, pets, the theatre, and travel.  I would venture an opinion that I have been moderately successful in most of these areas.  I need to work on the areas of reading, theatre and travel, but I'm getting to those.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I hear the message that it is important to have goals: clear, measurable goals.  It does feel better to accomplish something each day and, over the course of the year, the decade, the lifetime, something to be proud of.  For the most part, I am proud of my life and who I became...who I am today.  Somethings about myself and my life I might want to change, but then, who doesn't?  Overall, I have met many of my goals.

The goals that remain give me reasons to get up in the morning.  Even if it just, as my friend said, setting up to clean out the refrigerator and doing a good job, like I did today.  Little things add up and can mean a lot.  That is how self esteem is built.  I do have fairly healthy self-esteem these days.  That's nice.

I set a goal to write a blog for each day during the Lenten season.  And I have succeeded.  Not necessarily as I thought I would do it, but then goals when realized often don't look like what we envisioned.  Often they are better.  

I have never looked at life like it was a competition.  Perhaps that is why I never aspired to much more than I achieved so far.  Yet part of me still dreams of being a published writer, a fine art photographer and a husband someday.  The clock is ticking, but I am not worried.  My goal is to be the best me I can be.  The rest will manifest as it should.  Amen.

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