I need a new goal

I don’t set goals very often and when I do, they are usually vague. I remember when something really clicked with me about the enormity of nuclear weapons, in 1972, and I wrote to myself, I want to do something about that. I gravitated to the nuclear disarmament movement and ended up working for a dozen years at the premier antinuclear journal, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

My vague goal-setting doesn’t always work out that well. I decided to write a book a number of years ago and did, but when I couldn’t interest an agent or publisher in it, I, too, lost interest. By that time the book didn’t quite hit the target of what I thought I needed to express. The topic still interested me but I wasn’t satisfied with my treatment of it. I didn’t mind setting it aside.

The goals I set late last winter were more modest and more specific. I decided to write a blog and bike a century. You see, I have succeeded in both of those.

The blog goes on. I do not have great ambitions for it. It sustains and entertains me and a few of my friends, known and unknown. It does not yet suggest further goals.

The century is done. I could keep doing centuries and I may, but that kind of repetition doesn’t count as goal-setting, in my opinion. You set goals to kick it up a notch, expand your horizons and capacities, achieve something new.

I’ve often thought goal-setting is overrated. I have often thought I am not ambitious. I have often thought goal-setting can keep you from focusing on the present, where I happily live. But now I am wondering about all of this.

I am really proud of that century. I did something I didn’t think I could do, even halfway through the ride itself. I had biked a century twice before but not for 10 years. I remember thinking after the last time, I don’t ever want to do this again.

I don’t feel that way this time, and the very fact that I am not put off by the experience, difficult as it was, suggests that it has opened a window in my soul. Something new is there.

The modest, specific goals I set this year have not been entirely future-oriented; they have kept me focused on the present. They have introduced regular practices. And both have produced some needed growth.

The blog addresses my sensitivity and perfectionism around writing. I’ve been shy about my personal writing, both yearning for response and fearing it. Oh, what a trial it was, trying to interest the cold, commercial publishing world in that book that exposed my soul! On the other hand, writing “under the table,” as the Russians say, in a journal or for myself alone, wasn’t quite enough. This blog is a happy medium, pun intended.

The century goal and the training it required, besides making me physically stronger, addressed my tendency to give up easily. I’ve even blogged about the joys of quitting. But sometimes persistence is good and I could use more practice in that.

I have another modest goal in mind, related to biking, that I want to think about for a few days before setting it out here. It’s one that also might leverage some growth.