Share your life goals

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

When I saw The Last Lecture awhile ago, I was jealous of Randy Pausch and how clearly defined his goals always were. I never had clearly defined goals or ambitions growing up. I had no idea what I wanted to do. Instead of wallowing in envy, though, I decided to start making it clearer to myself what exactly I want to do and how I’m going to get there. Even though the financial crisis has hit me pretty hard, I’m probably happier than I’ve ever been. With these goals (and the plans to achieve them), my future looks brighter than it’s ever been.

I think it’s good to talk about these things and share them.

Mine:

Get a masters degree or PhD I want to be a college professor, as my career, and I need one of these to get there. I only wanted a masters but a few of my professors have been aggressively pushing me towards going straight for a PhD

Be an instructor or counselor at a fitness camp in the northeast Yeah, it sounds weird, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Eventually I’d like to be in a position to take summers off of work, and this is what I’d do with at least a couple of my summers. This is actually downgraded from the goal “own a fitness camp in the northeast,” but I honestly think after a lot of reflection that this will be better.

Hike the Appalachian Trail This came really really close to happening in 2007, but fell apart due to 2 unforeseeable and unlikely circumstances happening at once. Now I don’t know how or when it will ever happen, but I’m not giving up on it.

Make a feature documentary I love documentary film and have a really strong desire to make my own.

Act in a major studio picture Ok, this one sounds tough, but I just have a weird feeling I’m going to pull it off one day.

Get my kids through college Might turn out to be more satisfying than anything else on this list. I want this one perhaps the most.

Climb Mt. Kilimanjaro This mountain has called to me for a long time; don’t know why.

And some I’ve already acheived (please list yours, too):
Get married We had our 4th anniversary last month

Have children We had our first in March

Act in a feature film Done x2

Own a home Done 3 years ago

Get a college degree Will be done in a matter of a couple weeks

Give up cigarettes Done 3 years ago next month

Complete a triathlon Done x2 (sprint distance. Might go longer for my next one)
One note: I realize we have a very funny membership here. I know you’ll be tempted to post things like “two chicks at the same time.” I would really appreciate it if you would restrain yourself. I’m genuinely interested in this subject and if a couple people turn it into a joke then no one else is going to want to take it seriously.

2

Mines pretty simple. At this point in my life… I just want to get a job and work in Cardiff Wales. Don’t ask why… I just do.

Then I’ll die happy.

3

My big picture goals, in no particular order:

Quiet Home. Own as a primary or secondary residence a single-family home in a rural or remote area that is completely or nearly self-sufficient.

Legacy. I want to permanently right some significant injustice, or be part of a small group of people who does so by spearheading a political campaign or constitutional challenge.

Mastery. I want to truly master something not job-related. I’ve always been a bit of a dabbler, but I want to find some hobby to last a lifetime and stick to it. Thinking about the piano.

Care for My Family. I want to be wealthy enough to pay for the care for my parents and care for my family without having to sacrifice one for the other.

Write a book. Fiction or creative non-fiction. Published (and not self-published).

Some already achieved:

**Met a lovely life partner

Lived in a non-western country

Got into one of my top choices for school

Established lifelong bonds with a few close friends**

4

That’s a good one. I am Jack-of-all-trades, master of none to the extreme. I have an absolutely ridiculous amount of hobbies and interests that I’m decent at, or have a good knowledge of, but I’m not great at anything, and don’t have complete, masterful knowledge of any one subject. I’d like to master something I can continue to a fairly old age, like drawing or archery or guitar.

The only hobby I’ve had for my entire life, and never been out of, is comic books. You can’t really “master” those, though, and who would give a shit if you did? :smiley:

5

Some goals for the near future that I’ve been pursuing:

-Become the best squash player at my school

-Become fluent in Japanese (reading, writing, and speaking)

-Get into a top grad school after college

-Get really good at guitar

-Get reasonably proficient in a few computer languages

-Get good at RTS in time for Starcraft II

-Procrastinate less

Long term things, more generic I suppose:

-Helpful, stimulating, well-paying job

-Nice wife

-Live in a nice city

-Have fun

6

  • reach a chess rating of ELO 2200 (made it at 18 :slight_smile: )

  • never have to do housework (I have a cleaner who also does my washing :smiley: )

  • retire early (made it at 55 :cool:)

7

Steal glee’s secrets of success

8

Only one I got left is “painless death”, all the rest having shattered and blown away like so much alkalai dust on the hell-scape I reside.

9

Realistic goals?

  1. Finish my class before the end of September, graduate with high honors and get a job before the winter hiring slump.

  2. um…
    My life so far has been a complete disappointment. I don’t have high expectations any more.

I’m ok being alone. I’m ok not having lots of money. I’m ok living with my sister and her family.

I just want to finish this damn class without any more life-altering interruptions.

10

Chew food on BOTH sides of my mouth

Live in a flat that doesn’t have to be bug bombed twice a month

Drive a car again

And have sex once more before I die

11

Make a career out of some element/discipline in filmmaking. Similarly, become a bankable screenwriter.

It’s more of a short-term goal (I’d hate to think of it as a life goal), but I really aim to rid myself of all high-interest/credit card debt.

I always wanted to own some spectacular just-this-side-of-ostentatious home, but now we live in the most wonderful of apartment complexes and our place is less than 1,000 sq. ft. I couldn’t be more content with it. Go figure.

12

My life’s single aim: To crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentation of their women.

Progress to date: limited, it’s just so hard to find the motivation to enter the freelance barbarian marketplace, especially with the price of double-handed berserker axes as high as they are these days.

13

Goals:
[ul][li]Marry a wonderful woman.[/li][li]Have kids.[/li][li]Live in a house in a mountain-y area near the rocky coast north of San Francisco.[/li][li]Write a novel (that someone else publishes).[/li][li]Have a nice dog.[/ul][/li]Goals in work:
[ul][li]Visit the places where history was made.[/ul][/li]Goals already achieved:
[ul][li]Be a scientist and be able to say, “Back off, man, I’m a scientist.”[/li]- My job title was briefly “Senior Scientist,” but then my company changed the titles. However, I still have some old business cards …
[li]Invent something amazing.[/li]- Did so at work, but not quite amazing, and mostly because I happened to be the person working on a related subject when it needed to be invented. Maybe 200 people in the world give a crap.
Skydiving, motorcycling, sex in dangerous places, GTFO of Illinois, college diploma.[/ul]

14

What did you invent?

15

A software framework for scheduling (radar) antenna resources adaptively and fairly optimally, with “optimally” being measured by the number of targets that could be tracked simultaneously with an electronically scanned array. Whoever was working on multiple target tracking at the time ESAs were on the cusp of affordability would likely have developed it. However, my design was an extensible framework within which we could schedule just about all other radar activities fairly optimally as well. It’s not a General Products #1 Hull or a telephone, but it was successful and ended up solving more problems than we’d initially been tasked with, and it’s still in use more than 15 years later. (Note that I said, “not quite amazing”.)

16

To be achieved:

Retired at 55.

Live on a small farm, with goats, donkeys and some chickens, grow my own vegetables and have solar power. Preferably by the ocean or a waterfalls.

Travel to Greece, the English Dales, and perhaps Russia.

Achieved:

Saved money towards a farm and retirement.

Booking travel to France for a wedding next year and hoping to hop to Crete when there.

17

Become so famous due to my proficiency as a scientist that my kids will never have to explain how to pronounce their last name, sparing them the nonstop irritation that has colored my entire life.

Live and work in the UK for at least a significant chunk of years.

18

My goals:

  • figure out what I want to be when I grow up. I’m pushing 30, so I need to get on this. I don’t know where my place in life is, as far as the working world.

  • own my own home. I want to buy a little fixer-upper with Mr. Horseshoe and bring out its full potential. Then sell it for a bunch of money. Lather, rinse, repeat. (so… I guess that’s technically 2 related goals)

  • live out my older days with the Shoe on a little ranch, maybe out in the Hill Country (of Tx) and as **Canadiangirl **mentioned, it should come with vegetable beds, chickens and a goat. I am willing to take the donkey under consideration.

  • painless death (not a joke - this is a good one; though I’m not sure if it’s something that is “achieved” so much as … slept through)
    Achieved so far:

  • found a wonderful and totally compatible life partner ::smiles gratefully at the Other Shoe::

  • obtained a kitten (one of these days I’ll post from home and put up the obligatory pics) though technically, she obtained us :slight_smile:

  • got out from under my parents’ thumbs in a major way

(this is nice - I’ve never typed them all out in a list before)

19

I’ve become pretty focused on my career lately, and so my goals are twofold: career, and personal development.

Career: I want to make space missions happen. I want to have an interesting, valuable, advanced role in bringing space missions to success. Be that in development, management, design, or implementation, be it as an engineer, a manager, as crew, as operator, I want to be part of making valuable missions become a success. For me, ‘valuable’ can be science, Earth observation, human spaceflight, or other applications

I’ve had some success already; the Geoflow experiment, in whose development I had a small role, has just returned from an experiment run aboard the ISS, and FASES, which I worked on more extensively, is scheduled for next year, with others to follow. I figure the path forward is career development: gaining qualifications, knowledge, and experience, and keeping an eye out for chances at each of these, as well as getting to know the industry so as to know where I can get myself that will allow me to work on the kind of projects I want.

I really find space projects exciting and interesting, and I really believe in space as a platform for managing resources, caring for our home planet, enhancing safety, expanding knowledge, and building the future of civilization. And so I’m excited and eager to work on these kinds of projects, and it’s my goal to build myself a career in which I can.

To this end, the current specific goal is to complete my master’s degree (halfway through that now). The next step will either be a PhD, or finding a job that meets my idealistic imaginings above.
Personal development

Right now I’m not too interested in what I want to have as in what I want to be. I want to be accomplished, competent, knowledgeable, skilled, wise, and respectable. Like the career, these things take a lot of work, a lot of learning, and long-term dedication to develop. So I’m always looking for new competencies to acquire, new skills to learn, and new and exciting things to know. A new feature of this, recently, is increased focus on my social and physical programs; I now put more central value on my friendships and social relationships, and in my physical fitness as an investment in a healthy middle and old age.

Specific current goals:

  • Keep in contact with the people who are important to me, even when the busyness of life and the obscuration of distance make that easy to neglect
  • Maintain my proficiency in French and Dutch, recover some lost capacity in German and prepare to expand to a new language
  • Specifically make time for a program of studies in fields not directly related to my career, including reading all those books I haven’t gotten to yet.
  • Invest in the health of my heart, lungs, and joints in particular, while maintaining a healthy weight and overall good physical health.
  • Expand my cooking skills, learn to waltz, and work further at resolving my long-standing difficulties in appreciating and valuing the arts.
    Already accomplished
  • Earned my pilot’s licence (5-year program), and later glider instructor’s rating (3-week course)
  • Completed the Royal Canadian Air Cadets program (a sort of omnibus package of related goals; 7-yr program overlapping with the above)
  • Completed university, without debt or significant external financing (5-yr program)
  • Moved to another country, learned to live and work and conduct business in the local language and culture. (17-month program)
20

Be a good husband, father and citizen.

See my three sons grown, with happy families of their own.

Become a judge. U.S. district court would suit me just fine, but I’m trying to be realistic.

Write a book. Either history or a mystery, I’m thinking.

Travel more: to Great Britain, Japan, Russia, Australia and New Zealand, especially.

Die peacefully at a ripe old age, surrounded by loving family members.