More thinking.

A dangerous pastime (I know).

I've been thinking lately about how we spend most of our time in the first couple decades of our life achieving goals. Finish homework for the night? Check. Move from Elementary School to Middle School? Check. Make the team or group we tried out for in High School, graduate and get into the college we wanted, find the person we want to spend our life with, etc. We always have things we are looking forward to and working on achieving. When we check one off, there is always another one on the horizon.

And when I really thought about it now, I think part of the reason I feel so . . . adrift now is that I don't have a single goal I am working on.

Now, let's define goal for a second here. When I was a teacher, we often had to make goals for our departments and school. But in order to qualify, a goal needed to be 1) achievable and 2) measurable. Because things like "prepare our students better for the work force" or "make sure every student in our school improves every year" don't work very well. We either don't have control over things well enough to achieve them, or can't tell when we have achieved them.

When I think about the goals I have in my life, I realized that I gave up on them some days because they didn't fit those two standards. I only ever worked out at the gym when I had a measurable goal ahead of me: a race. Once I ran the races I wanted to, and ended up with "stay healthy and fit", I stopped really caring about it as a goal.

And when I started parenting, I had all sorts of goals for my kids. But Tyler has taught me that I don't have complete control of him achieving something. That doesn't mean I stop trying (though many times I certainly feel like it), but it does mean that I can't assume that if I do ___ he will achieve ___. I learned that the hard way when he didn't sleep through the night until he was two years old. I did everything that any book told me would fix the problem (because when you are losing sleep every night, nothing else matters). I made sure I followed the instructions to the letter, and usually for at least three weeks when the books told me it would take three days. And I mentally fell apart. I wasn't used to my goals being dependent on another person like that.

I'm not saying I shouldn't have goals that relate to my kids, but . . . I need to take into account when I make them that I am not the only person involved here. I think the goal has to be phrased right in my head. "I will do x,y and z to help Tyler every day", not "Tyler will learn ___".

With all of that having been said, I have decided what I really need is a goal in my life.

But I have no idea what that should be.

Now, I don't think any of my goals will be the same as anyone else's out there, but I think this might be interesting. So, all two or three of you people who read this:

WHAT IS YOUR GOAL?

What is something you are working on? How do you make it measurable so that you feel like you can achieve it, instead of some lofty "be a better person" that lets you slide most days? And in the SAHM world, where everything we do goes mostly unnoticed, how do you stay motivated without some reward at the end of the tunnel?