On goals

You're not even 10 months yet, and so I suspect that this topic is served a bit early so good thing you can save these until later.  I'm turning 30 soon and while I really don't ever get bothered by getting older, this milestone has caused me to look back and reflect on the last decade of my life and how that has paired with the goals that I had and have for myself.  Here are what I can recall my goals were when I was turning 20:

1.) Turn 21 and drink my face off.  Continue Grey Goose Thursdays (a tale I will tell you when you are much, much older) for-almost-ever
2.) Party as hard as I play and never ever unbalance the two.
3.) Graduate from undergrad with a Bachelors of Science, pre-med, double degree that with a BA in philosophy if I'm feeling bored.
4.) Skate right into grad school.
5.) After grad school, maybe med school.
6.) Have kids before I'm 30. (check!)
7.) Make sure I'm called Doctor before I'm called Mom (not check!)


A lot of my goals around that time were very education and career focused and while that's a good thing, maybe not having everything so "planned" out would have been better.  Because despite plans, life happens and if you're resilient enough you can weather anything and adapt and still be happy.  Because here's how those goals up there actually worked out:

1.) Complete. But I had a good group of friends and we kept each other safe and from being too irreversibly stupid.  Grey Goose Thursdays was an idea spawned by random chance, opportunity, ability, and semi-faulty reasoning.  GGT's had their reign, but such behaviors could not be sustained with the expectation that at least several of us would not end up in jail, severely injured, or in the Mississippi.  Since none of us wanted those outcomes, GGT faded away safely into our foggy memory banks.
2.) Complete.  I actually had this as a priority in college in New Orleans because I knew that an unbalance here could mean disaster in many forms. 
3.) I wasn't bored.  I got the Bachelor's of Science in Psychology, I did pre-med at New Orleans, but that was enough to keep my occupado and realizing that the Philosophy degree really wasn't going to do anything for my career equated it to just a hobby which if treated as a hobby, was much less expensive and time consuming.  I still do love a good treatise or philosophical debate.
4.) Semi-Check. I graduated in Dec. of 2006 with my BS and started my Masters of Science in Fall of 2007. 
5.) Nope.  I was considering a doctorate at this point, but watching some friends go through med school and the amount of soul selling that sometimes had to take place just to get by in the name of the greater good was too much. 
6.) Check and semi-check.  You - before I was 30.  Lili, a few months into 30.  Either way, it looks like I'll be done by 30, which was something I had given up on in my later 20's.
7.) Nope.  Like I said, life happens and truth be told I had started my Doctorate of Psychology degree a few months before finding out we were expecting you.  The "plan" was to resume a few months after you were born if everything went well, or postpone the year if you had higher needs (you didn't, you're freaking perfect).  Buuuut, 4 months after you were born, Lili decided it was her time to shine and so I reluctantly and begrudgingly (towards your father who was the voice of semi-reason in all this) put the doctorate on hiatus until I felt comfortable enough that I was able to still be as good a mom to you guys as I could be, and pay enough attention to my school work to deliver doctorate level work. 

The next post I'll talk about what my goals are going into my 30's and I'll be interested to see how that changes and hopefully be able to give you some insight on how things changing can be just as good as any well laid out plan coming to fruition.