I’ve been thinking a lot about goals lately, and my own personal goals in particular. (”Lately”, in this case, meaning “roughly since I started this whole post-college / real job / Philadelphia adventure”.)

You know, it seems like while you’re in school your goals are basically predefined for you, or at least heavily influenced by the structure of the system. While I was in high school in Alabama, my goals were all about going to college and getting out of there, getting to a better place both personally and geographically. In college, my goals were twofold — both to study and develop in topics that interested me, and to build the necessary skills to get a good job immediately (as required by student loan debt, which I knew I was accepting when I chose Cornell). I managed to do plenty for myself in that time, that wasn’t related to getting a job — like living in Australia and doing my honors thesis — but I knew there was a time limit built in, and money pressures, and something that it all built toward.

Now, for possibly the first time ever, I’m in a place where I could stay a long time. Probably the rest of my life, if I really wanted to. And so for the first time, I’m faced with the task of really setting my own goals and deciding what’s most important to me, what’s the purpose of my life. (Not to sound too metaphysical or anything. I mean purpose in a very concrete sense, as in: What is my work? What is my vocation? What is it that I’m meant to contribute to the world in the time that I am here?)

Right after I started on at the LFC, I set some tangible goals for myself, things I wanted to complete before the end of 2006. One was to get out of credit card debt, which I’ve basically been able to do. (I didn’t have as much as a lot of people, but “too much” means “any” in my opinion.) Another was to go through all of my old half-written, drafted, or incomplete stories that I’ve accumulated, stretching back to my high school days, decide which ones were worthwhile and edit them into publishable shape, and discard the rest. The third was to submit two good stories for publication by the end of this year. (That one I’ve met, as of last Wednesday.)

The themes that come out to me here are a) financial stability, and b) writing. I’ve come to realize that, at least for right now, writing is what I “really do”. I may never do it fulltime, I may never be the next Neil Gaiman, but from my thesis project onward I’ve known that that was it. That is what I have to contribute to the world. Financial stability, of course, is the other, and that’s just part of being an adult and being able to take care of myself and help people.

More thoughts on this will probably come, especially as it re: my “day job”.