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(A tip of the hat to Tom Lehrer for the title.) This is yet another comment I posted elsewhere first.
The other day I had a minor bout of what-have-I-done-with-my-life. I get those from time to time. I figured we all do, especially around birthday time! I asked my beloved whether he ever got those. He said no.
No? Hmm.
Turns out when he was little he had goals. Go to MIT, start a high tech company. He did them. Check. Done!
(Now he has a similar feeling of "where do I go from here?" So from this moment on, we're in the same boat, in a way.)
Once he said that I realized something. When I was a child I didn't have goals. I had dreams. Most of those dreams I discarded for very sane reasons, many of them having to do with being a girl. (No Blue Angels for me.) But goals and dreams are different. Dreams are safe because you don't have to do anything; you don't have to risk failure. I never got around to making goals, because enough of my dreams simply weren't workable. I learned early that it was a bad idea to risk. (There's the difference between Rob's situation and mine. He knows he can achieve big goals. I "know" I can't.)
Now I have a bunch of discarded broken dreams, no goals achieved, and no one to blame for it butMom myself. (Sure, Mom broke a few of my dreams, but I can't blame her for being right. And it wasn't her job to come up with goals.) Veddy intedesting!
I still have dreams. I haven't fully let go of "be an astronaut", but of course that one's got to go. I'm 38 in three days and I have multiple chronic pain conditions. It's a non-starter. But there are other dreams I could turn into goals...
...if I had the courage. It'll take courage. It was painful enough when all the dreams broke; how much more will it hurt when I try for a goal?
But if I don't find that courage, all I'll have in another 37 years is discarded dreams and no one to blame for it but me. Right? RIGHT!
The other day I had a minor bout of what-have-I-done-with-my-life. I get those from time to time. I figured we all do, especially around birthday time! I asked my beloved whether he ever got those. He said no.
No? Hmm.
Turns out when he was little he had goals. Go to MIT, start a high tech company. He did them. Check. Done!
(Now he has a similar feeling of "where do I go from here?" So from this moment on, we're in the same boat, in a way.)
Once he said that I realized something. When I was a child I didn't have goals. I had dreams. Most of those dreams I discarded for very sane reasons, many of them having to do with being a girl. (No Blue Angels for me.) But goals and dreams are different. Dreams are safe because you don't have to do anything; you don't have to risk failure. I never got around to making goals, because enough of my dreams simply weren't workable. I learned early that it was a bad idea to risk. (There's the difference between Rob's situation and mine. He knows he can achieve big goals. I "know" I can't.)
Now I have a bunch of discarded broken dreams, no goals achieved, and no one to blame for it but
I still have dreams. I haven't fully let go of "be an astronaut", but of course that one's got to go. I'm 38 in three days and I have multiple chronic pain conditions. It's a non-starter. But there are other dreams I could turn into goals...
...if I had the courage. It'll take courage. It was painful enough when all the dreams broke; how much more will it hurt when I try for a goal?
But if I don't find that courage, all I'll have in another 37 years is discarded dreams and no one to blame for it but me. Right? RIGHT!
no subject
I reckon if you worked on it you might get a slot flying Space Ship One
or it's successors.
It's just a overblown glider with a large sustainer motor right?
Actually isn't it registered as an experimental glider? You are probably
legally qualified to fly it already ;)
I for one haven't quite given up on the dream promised me by that
"You Will Go to the Moon" childrens book I had.
I didn't start gliding till I was 38. In just a few years I've managed to achieve
a few things I am proud of, Gold Badge, Diamond Goal, Unofficial 500km flight,
top novice pilot trophy at the state championships.
At 38 you can still achieve things if you want to.
no subject
(I have Silver altitude, and that's it.) :)
I reckon if you worked on it you might get a slot flying Space Ship One
or it's successors.
That's a good point. I won't qualify for NASA's astronaut program, but the possibility of commercially- or privately-funded astronauts is becoming more and more real.
At 38 you can still achieve things if you want to.
Absolutely -- I just need to find goals I'm passionate about that don't require things past my physical limitations. 38 isn't the big deal (except if I'm applying to NASA); my health is the big deal. So... fly aerobatics in competition? Get a novel published? Learn Swahili? Swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco? Something. :-)