It’s Good to Have Goals

I have decided that I have a new goal. Ok, it’s an old dream that I put away because of life’s little twists, but now I’ve decided it’s not a dream. A goal. That makes it more real and more obtainable. And I can plan for it. Right?

My goal is to get a passport (those things don’t expire for years, right?), save up some money, and go with my sister to The British Isles. I would love to see Wales and Southwest Ireland and she wants to see, well, Irish men. Our kids are getting older and our career paths are finally getting mapped out (we sucked at being grownups for a while) and now we can do this.

We were talking about it last night and about how our mother had all these wonderful dreams of places she wanted to see and things she wanted to do before she died. She really wanted to become a novelist and travel throughout the Outback. Unfortunately, my mother was never able to accomplish any of that (for reasons not suitable for this particular blog) and so she’s slightly unfulfilled. My sister and I decided we didn’t want to end up like that. What’s life if it isn’t for living, right? We don’t want to have a lot of “coulda-shoulda-wouldas” in our lives when it’s time to go. We want fun, happy memories and millions of photos to keep our families company when we go.

We want adventures.

Of course, we’ll be a lot older when our goals are realized and probably won’t have the type of fun a 22 year-old would have, but that’s ok. As long as it happens we’ll be all good.

I told my sister that’s why I want to have a career that doesn’t tie me down to one place. I want to be able to work from wherever I’m at. I want to take my kids to see the Eiffel Tower and blog about it while I’m there. How fun would that be? That would mean, of course, that I would need money to get from here to there and a stable means of getting that money into my pockets. That’s what school’s for. To give me that degree that will tell people that I’m smart enough to rack up school loan debt and somehow pass the courses. Ha! At any rate, my sister is studying to be a nurse, but she told me it would be really cool if she could work for a cruise line. How funny! I can’t even imagine her working full-time on cruises trying to keep the passengers from dying of seasickness. It’s her goal, though and I respect that.

I feel like I’m too old to be having “dreams” and unreachable goals now. Now it’s time to be more sensible. Taking a trip to the British Isles is a sensible goal, don’t ya think?