An Exercise in Thought.

I am a junk magnet. I'll throw that one into the mix and let it swirl about for a bit.

I am unsure if I have ever set goals. I was thinking this morning about my life and how I came to be where I am. When one makes a plan, one sets the objective and gathers the necessary resource to secure that objective. No problem.

In my life however, I don't seem to remember doing that.

I have said "Oh. I like that!" and "That looks an interesting job. I'd like to do that!", and funnily enough, on at least three occasions, I have ended up doing jobs I had previously desired.
But I never set goals. I must have been lucky. I have always (so far) been lucky in life, not love, but certainly life.

So, where does this ramble take us? A model scenario might help.

Student entering high school thinks "I want to be a Doctor of Medicine".
Student does research and determines the required qualifications & training.
Student maps out timeline for attaining such.
Student studies hard and gains required knowlege over many years.
Student graduates and gains employment as a Doctor of Medicine in joint practice or sets up own practice.
This will be our reference model.

Sans enters high school.
Sans doesn't remember anything about entering high school because he is a stupid bewildered little boy.
Sans has zero idea what 'work', 'employment', 'income', 'planning' and 'future' are.
Sans is good at running and knows 'goals' belong in soccer.
Sans remembers leaving high school 5 years later, his long hair blowing in the wind, thinking "Gee, it's great to know everything, can life get any better than this?"

Five years and I probably remember two minutes of it.

Now I come to remember, I did positively decide not to enter tertiary education at that time, but to seek employment. Maybe that counts as a goal, or possibly a goalette. Have I just destroyed my own argument? Maybe, but let's continue forward...

I had zero idea which field of employment I should enter. I had not studied with any idea of direction. Mostly I had not studied.

So two, this is how my life was set to continue. No plans, no goals, no set direction. Always starting from 'now' and leaving it to chance to decide my path. And here we are.

Would my life have been different if I had been more forward thinking? Would it have been better?

I have recently stopped carrying my canvas attaché bag. It simply got too heavy. This may be considered an analogy for my life to present.

Remember the junk magnet?

I have ambled along collecting 'stuff' and am over-burdened. Now is the time in my life I need to set goals, decide direction and execute. This will be painful as many 'precious' things will have to go. I simply cannot carry it all any more.

Things that I have worked hard to achieve will have to be sacrificed. I realise this now, but no matter, these are only things, and possibly the main thing is that I did achieve them. I know that.

The wave of life never stops pounding at our door. Always new, always younger, fresher, stronger. How different it never is, and always is.

Maybe life is balanced. Some people work hard climbing at the start of life and get to slide down to the end, while others like me, live an inverted life and slide down at the beginning, only to find we have to climb up at the end.

So three, I start this new chapter in my life with trepidation. At least before if I did not achieve, it could not be considered a failure because there was no goal to be achieved. Now there is a goal, and only time will tell if I achieve it. I'll let you know in thirty years what this post is all about and how it's went...