Goals.

Goals.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmingly un-ambitious.

I started thinking about goals (and my personal lack thereof) this past weekend, when Nick and I were sitting in traffic waiting to pass through the tail-end of a marathon headed toward downtown Sacramento. The only people left at this late point in the race were walking. Of course, Nick made fun of them for walking (…and of course he is so entitled to make fun of people completing a marathon as he is obviously so in shape and completes marathons all the time. Right.). I defended these people by telling him, ‘maybe they tried to run the whole way and just couldn’t make it and now need to walk because they had the goal of completing a marathon – they’re still completing it, even if they’re walking – at least they have goals…. What goals do YOU have?!’ His response: ‘to not be one of the people walking at the end of a marathon.’ In all fairness… it was nearly noon… and these people were a good six miles still from the finish line… and they were REALLY holding up traffic.

I typically am very content and proud of what I’ve accomplished thus far in my 25 years of life. And then I’ll go on facebook and see that most of my college friends now also have masters degrees, or watch The Today Show or read an article about someone much younger than me starting their own business or founding a non-profit to save lives of babies in foreign countries or something incredibly noble and meaningful like that. And then I feel lazy. And guilty that I don’t often set actual goals for myself. I wonder: is it just me? Do these other people have a spark inside them that I just don’t have? Is it bad that my ultimate goal is to make Nick make a name for himself professionally so I can just craft and take care of Nora and be a Craft-At-Home Mom?

When I think about goals, I realize that I do have them, just not any which seem that meaningful in comparison to those of the soon-to-be-doctoral candidates, or the super-entrepreneurial-life-saving-non-profit-founders. But still, they’re goals. Like using as many coupons as possible to spend under $60 on two weeks worth of groceries and toiletries for my family of three (yep, it’s been done). Or bathing the baby more than twice a week (….still working on that one… it’s much more of a challenge than one would think). But, I think it’s time to really sit down and spell out some actual, I’M GOING TO DO THIS type of goals. We’ll start out small…

I will exercise for at least 20 minutes, at least three times a week.

I will take a shot at online selling and will complete at least two craft projects each week.

I will get Nora’s baby book up to date (…including starting it…).

I will sell or at least get rid of the oven that’s been sitting in my garage for the past year.

I will find out what we’ll need to do to finally get an actual working oven installed in our kitchen.

I will completely pay off my Old Navy and Ikea credit cards before using them to make ANY additional purchases (…ouch.).

Whew… okay, that’s enough goal-setting for now. I’m exhausted. We’ll see how long this lasts.