Medium Term Goals

So, my new year's resolution was to relax more, to let things go, to forgive myself for my mistakes, and to roll with the punches.

2.5 months in, I can say that it is quite a struggle for me to reach for this goal, but that it is a good one because it makes me grow by forcing me to re-evaluate my behavior when I otherwise might not.

I'm quite uptight, it turns out.

Shocking.

And, in a typical display of my uptight nature, I recently asked E what his 5 year goal was. Quickly, he responded, to single-handedly control an impressively large army of robots.

I hope he was joking.

But then, when he turned the question to me, I realized, he could at least answer the question, joking or not. I could not.

It has been a long time since I didn't have a 5-year plan. First there was the high school, get into a college where I could afford to study what I wanted while doing the sports I wanted to do plan. Then it was the find a way to pay for school, finish school, and play sports plan. Then it was get a good job, get a better job, and finally get into law school plan. Followed by the get through law school, and get a good job as a lawyer plan.

And now... all of a sudden, I find that my long term goals remain intact, and my short-term goals are relatively easy to define (if hard to attain), but my mid-term goals elude me. There are a million paths to my long-term career, balance, and financial goals and I'm not wedded to any of them.

For the first time in a long time, I'm not at odds with the current path I'm on. I'm not looking for a way off of it. I wouldn't object to an opportunity to leave it, if it was better or made sense. But I'm not actively seeking to find a better option.

This is such a unique experience for me that I found it paralyzing.

And then I realized I could just set my mid-term goals in other areas of my life and work on those while keeping on the somewhat comfortable professional/financial path I've found until it becomes uncomfortable.

So, while E's mid-term goals may seem fantasmical, mine are simple: in the next 5 years, I'd like to become fluent in Spanish and to live in a house with right angles, a nice cooking range, and very few cracks.

There, now I've got short, mid-range, and long-term goals. I feel better.