Before I turned 40 I had a whole set of goals. There was a brain goal: finish the novels of Charles Dickens. There was a body goal: get in shape. That one had sub-targets: do a hundred pushups in <15 minutes, run a 5K in less than 30 minutes, and develop enough core strength to do the Pilates move called the Teaser. There was a professional goal: finish the PhD. And there was a home goal: declutter the whole house.
It made for a hectic run-up to my fortieth birthday, but I hit almost all of the goals. (I didn’t get the basement decluttered. Everything else happened, though.)
These days I’m thinking about the next big birthday. I’ll turn 50 in a whisker more than 2.5 years— long enough to accomplish something meaningful if I tackle it wisely.
I’ve thought about another reading project, like finishing all of George Eliot. (My Trollope project will carry me into retirement, even if I read two of his books every year. There are a lot of Trollope novels in existence. A lot.) Or maybe I’ll read Proust. (Oh, I just had a thought for 2018: maybe this will be the year that I read Dance to the Music of Time.)
i could use a house project or six. Things get shabby when you stay put for a while, and then you get used to the shabby.
I also like the idea of a bigger fitness goal, though probably after tenure. A longer triathlon, maybe, or possibly a marathon. Tenure is the obvious professional goal, but what I’d really like to aim for is a research award. I’ll have to think about that.
Tonight at dinner my brother suggested that I think about something else entirely, like learning a new language or another skill. I might prefer to polish up one of the rusty languages. For a while there I was reading Les Misérables in French, which was slow but satisfying. That would be a worthy fiftieth birthday goal.
it probably makes sense to give myself a couple of weeks to decide what I actually want to prioritize. I have some time to figure it out, and choosing a motivating goal is a significant chunk of the battle.
I do not, however, have much time in which to settle on 2018 new year’s resolutions. There’s only one day left in 2017. I’m not quite sure how that happened.
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