Goals

This post is in response to the Write-Away Contest I read about on Scribbit.

In January, for some traditional reason I don't know the origin of people like to make new year's resolutions. They make a list of goals for themselves for the new year.

I don't really like to make goals. I don't participate in this January madness with an unrealistic list that will bring discouragement and self-loathing later on in the year. When I do make a goal I like to make it vague enough that if I don't quite make it there is still room to pat myself on the back. I want to lose some weight and am trying to diet but I refuse to put a number on the goal. I would like to raise confident, intelligent, Christian, sensitive, selfless (well you get the picture) children. But the reality is I would settle for surviving parenthood and all its numerous pitfalls and raising my children to become happy adults.

When I was in college I was very focused on the goal of graduating and getting a job. I did these successfully. Soon after that I got married (a goal also) and my husband and I settled into young married life. We made a goal of buying a house and we bought a house. We decided to start our family and we had children.

But since the children have come along I have floundered around in the goal department. I tend to just keep doing what I've been doing. I have all these vague goals for the future - save for kid's college, pay off the house, save for retirement. But I tend not to think of them too much.

What happens, I think, in the middle adult years, is we just focus on raising our families and working our jobs, and the mindset gets stuck on survive. This is the title of my blog and it comes from the lyrics to the song, "Deep Water" by Jewel:

"And you wake up to realize Your standard of living somehow got stuck on survive."

I don't think it is a negative thing, really. It doesn't mean I am not motivated or inspired or that I have difficulty following through. It just means I go on about my life.

And so I don't really like to make goals. I would like to just keep on living and loving and being.(Or is that a goal?)