I know lots of people that know what they are going to eat for breakfast next Wed. and knew what they were going to do and who they were going to marry by the time they were three, and BY God, they did it! They planned, they set goals, too many goals, in my book. Must be an insecurity thing.
Most of my goals just came like lightning bolts..."Oh, lets do that...till it ain't fun, then I'll take a little vacation until lightning strikes again...or I become financially embarrassed. It was always interesting lightning that struck. I guess the vacations allowed my mind to clear, and you know nature does not suffer vacuums lightly. POW! lightning would strike. I managed to keep busy for a lot of years. No careers, no retirements, no gold watch. My life has been 100's short stories...never intended it to be a novel.
Even as a kid, my "goals" were simple. Three meals a day a nights sleep. Tomorrow is another day. I'll find something interesting to do if we have to root around to find it. I always had a nose for something to do, and usually, somebody to do it with.
I cared not a tinkers damn for school, washing cars for money, mowing grass for money. I had to do that for free at home. My Daddy's goals for me included splitting kindling and sawing firewood with a cross cut saw, my Daddy's idea of a joke, I suppose. Chainsaws were not in my Daddy's vocabulary, and they were loud and archaic in those days, anyway. I did rather enjoy the cross cut sawing, though. I counted the strokes it took to get through a log, which drove my Daddy out of his gourd. Opps, that's two goal, sorry.
Brother Bob always had a job. He had to have the clothes and the cars, and the prestige of being the kingpin. He always had money to burn, blow and spend. His take on money is "Poor is a condition, broke is temporary".
He, at 65, decided to buy a swimming pool company. I guess his goal was to make it pay...seeing real estate was down the tubes, and he needed money to support his yard sale habit. He works like a Trojan in the hot sun everyday all summer long, when the young guys are falling out. He seems to thrive on doing the improbable. His goals have always had to do with cash, and what it will do. He's been in and out of money ever since I can remember. It doesn't seem to bother him much. I usually recycle my dollar bills so many times you can see George Washington on both side time they're gone. Guess that's cause I don't set goals to procure new ones.
My sister went to college on scholarships. She actually made money going to college. She always had money, and she was tight with her money...still is. My brother got a speeding ticket in South Ga. when he was in high school, and Sally lent him the money to pay it so Daddy wouldn't find out. He never payed her back, so for Christmas a couple of years ago, his present from Sally was the IOU he had signed in 1957...payed in full. She never forgets. Is that a goal or a genetic endowment, I don't know if she decided to be a spendthrift by herself or she couldn't help it. I never considered money a goal...enough was all you need.
Both my brother and sister have been driven by some gene I didn't get. The goal gene. My take on it is the best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry...so why not just take your chances...tis an ill wind that blows no one good. For the most part, I have been fairly successful in keeping my head above water.
OK, I can't say I'm completely goalless
I did set a goal once. I decide to play football one night while lined up on the field with the high school band to play the fight song as the team broke through the paper hoop running onto the field. I said to myself, "I'm bigger than any of those guys, and I know for a fact that I'm stronger than all them little boys playing out there. Next year I'M gonna' crash through that paper hoop in stead of playing this TUBA. That was a fairly easy goal. I played football for one full year and got a scholarship, but I was over playing football by then.
I did teach myself to play guitar after Mama taught me three chords, and got good enough to play in a few bands, and have played for some 60 years now. I was determined to learn it. never wanted to play on the Grand Old Opry, but I did make the Kennedy Center Kids Program one Easter thanks to Cathy Fink.
I decided to go to Australia. I just took a notion I wanted to see down under.It took some ten years to make it happen. I then went back and taught school in the Outback. The second time was not a goal, it was an opportunity. A lightning strike...out of the blue.
I always wanted to walk down the Grand Canyon by myself ever since I was a kid. I kept a map of it in a drawer. Why? It made me feel spooky just thinking about that big gully, I did walk it about 5 times. Wish I could do it now, but these old banged up knees have quit the heavy stuff. Oh, I could probably make it up, but going down is the problem. Funny how that works. A goal? You tell me.
I've had a few successful attempts of setting the bar an attaining it. Nothing serious, mind you. Most things that have happened to me were random brain fart lightning strikes. Nothing earth shaking in my life, no inventions, no great humanitarian causes, no career plan, just a few delusions of grandeur, like everyone else has. Don't take me long to get over 'em.
Just one to three meals a day and a decent nights sleep, wherever I happen to be at the time. I seem to be at home more than I ever was in the past. My feet stopped itching, I guess.
See what the morning brings...nothing more boring than wasting sunlight, waiting for dark. That's what I call a 9 to 5'er. I cannot abide doing the same thing day after day.
Why, just today I did something I haven't done in 50 years. I "rebuilt" the S U carbs on the 71 Volvo. A goal? No, It just needed doing. I loved it! They will NEVER run right cause I don't know what I'm doing, and they're so old they don't want to work well anyway. A perfect day. We're even...we both still run, for the time being. Well, it's time for that nights' sleep, or what's left of it. Coffee in the morning, Yippie. I can almost smell it. What a life with no goals!
Night...
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